Job 34:9

Elihu deals honestly with Job's statements. He either quotes his words, or gives their substance, or draws obvious conclusions from them. Job had declared again and again that he was righteous, or guiltless. This is the whole burden of his complaint against God.

Elihu pays no attention to what the three friends had charged Job with. They had no basis for their accusations. Instead, Elihu points to what Job himself had said: "I am righteous, but God has taken away my justice." However righteous Job was, it was wrong of him to dare to speak of God this way. Job had also said, "My wound is incurable, though I am without transgression."

Job had spoken so wrongly about God, and so lightly about the way wicked people prosper in the world, that Elihu could not help saying, "He goes in company with scorners," with the workers of iniquity, "and walks with wicked men." It was just the kind of talk that would please them. It was talk that would tend to weaken conscience, and to encourage sinners as much as it would grieve saints.

He does not accuse Job of being wicked. He accuses him of speaking the way the wicked speak against God, and so putting himself in their company! In speaking this way, Job did not realise he was inviting further trouble.

The effect of such teaching is that there is no profit in seeking to please God, or in having fellowship with Him. What a monstrous charge to fall from the lips of one who was a child of God! We can be thankful that Job's faith did not fail, despite this cloud of unbelief. But Elihu, to be faithful, must press the point of the knife into the festering sore. It was more serious than his physical illness. How differently our blessed Lord spoke in His path of loneliness: "The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places." In His darkest hour He justified God's ways, saying, "Yet You are holy."

He shows where Job had gone so badly wrong. First, in saying, "I am righteous;" and then in saying it was no use serving God. So this shows how self-righteousness leads to unbelief and the deepest spiritual wickedness.

The verses that follow seem to repeat and expand what was said in Job 34:9. Job had claimed he was more in the right than God, because God took no notice of anything he did. There was no gain in righteousness any more than in sin! Imagine an upright, God-fearing man bringing himself to such a conclusion! It leads to, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."

He shows that the question is not whether man profits God, but whether God profits man. Besides what is due to Him — our will, our love, our glory — no man can walk in His ways without the richest return of blessing. In every possible sense it is God who gives the increase.