Job 37:1

This closing part begins with a summing up along the lines already followed. But it ends with a description of God's workings in nature, and for grandeur it has no equal. At the beginning he speaks in a plain teaching way, aiming at the judgment and the conscience. The close is so vivid that it has rightly been thought to describe an actual storm, whose approach announced the presence of God — a most fitting prelude to Jehovah's word from the whirlwind.

Having warned Job in this way, Elihu turned again to the greatness of God as shown in creation. The rest of his speech stays on this theme. He thought above all of how the Creator controls what lies wholly outside man's control — the clouds, the winds, the thunder, the lightning, the rain, the snow, the frost. As these things came before his mind, he had to confess that his heart trembled and was deeply moved.

"At this also my heart" — that is a very different thing from the mere instinct of the cattle — "my heart trembles." … Even the beasts have more sense than some men.

As the storm breaks on them, Elihu himself trembles (v.1). … Here before Job's eyes was an object lesson about the spiritual storm he had been through. He certainly could not stop the storm, yet God would allow it only for a time. He knows how to make the storm a calm (Ps. 107:29), as the Lord Jesus did when His disciples were torn with fear (Mark 4:38-39).

Elihu calls on Job to hear God's voice in it all. And may we not well believe that he calls him to hear His voice also in the storm of sorrow that has fallen on him? It came blow upon blow — the sharp lightning stroke of affliction, the awful thunder of God's discipline. God has been doing marvellous things, things beyond our understanding — but it is God. "Be still, and know that I am God."

Job 37 … finally turns our eyes to the wonderful works of God in the outward world. … I admit these are very far indeed from the depth of truth that the doctrine of Christ or His grace gives. It is not the unseen, but the visible. Here we can understand that we are in the infant days of even God's saints. They spelled out the vast letters of heaven and earth they could see, before the Scriptures were read. … For that very reason, because Christ was not here, God used the outward world to show His majesty, faithfulness and gracious power in all that surrounded man.

Snow may cover the earth like a burial cloth. Winter may lay its icy hand on man and stop all his activity. It is still His snow, His hand, teaching man His supreme power. The beast goes into its shelter; let us too enter into the "cleft of the rock" until these troubles have passed. Whether the storm comes in the whirlwind of the south, or from the frozen north, it is only His breath. How good then to humble ourselves under His mighty hand!