What was Elihu's message to Job?

But the intervention of Elihu is of the greatest moment, however people may disparage it who do not enter into the truth or feel their personal need of it. For he speaks as the requisite interpreter, "one of a thousand," and while exposing the rashness of Job and the inability of his friends to solve the difficulty, he furnishes the key: — God uses trial and suffering for the blessing of souls. This he shows in Job 33 as to man generally, to deliver him from going down to the pit; while in Job 36 it is to open to instruction the ears of the righteous, who might be sadly wrong and fall.

To what then have we come in the course of this book? What have we been taught by the help of Elihu? Much every way, I believe. Job had failed in understanding the purpose of God in that most pitiless storm to which he had been subjected. The friends of Job had failed far more seriously; for Job was rather negative at worst, while his friends were positively wrong at best, quite out of the mind and current of God. Elihu brings in, as far as man could in that day, the light of God. He shows that, instead of there being mere judicial dealing, there is a righteous and gracious discipline on God's part, which, as it deals with the unconverted to break him down, and save his soul, so also addresses itself to the converted for his correction where he has slipped aside, and encourages him where he needs to be quickened in his pace while following the Lord. And so he spreads out before him and vindicates the worthy ways of God, reproving Job's self-righteousness and impatience and irreverence, but eschewing any such imputations on Job as his friends had allowed; for we have seen Job in the agony of grief, again and again giving way to the sense of desertion by God, and then uttering words rash and violent, but soon again asking pardon after each fresh outbreak, when stung to the quick by the deeply cutting words of his friends — the more cutting because they seemed quiet, but not the less severely wounding to his open and generous spirit. In Elihu we have had quite another tone and judgment — a man who does not spare impropriety, or conceal its heinous consequences; but who can see in the darkest troubles the gracious end of God in His ways, even with the unconverted, and particularly so with His saints.

Job was to be rebuked. He had argued the arbitrariness of the divine hand in dealing with man, and, accounting for his present sufferings in that way, he was so far "righteous in his own eyes." Elihu shows that this was not so; that all was the holy discipline of One who, knowing the end from the beginning, ever counsels the best for His people. Nor will he, like the others, draw either from himself, or from the elders or fathers. He will not, in the way of human religiousness, bow to any names or traditions, however venerated, but, led of the Spirit, press on in the path where the light of God shines.

Elihu will not join in laying to Job's charge what his conscience truthfully resisted. But he will tell Job that the thoughts of conscience are not to rule his judgment, or dictate his speeches; that he should rather have allowed the divine wisdom in all this sore discipline, than concluded on the divine arbitrariness in it, just because conscience was clear. He tells Job this should have been his word — "Surely it is meet to be said unto God, I have borne chastisement, I will not offend any more: that which I see not, teach Thou me: if I have done iniquity, I will do no more."

All this reads our souls a deep and blessed lesson. "Let God be true, but every man a liar." A false humility is not to lead us to bow to carnal authority, however venerable in the esteem of the world. A true humility will hinder our drawing from ourselves. These three practised the first but not the second, for they were blindly led by tradition or Church-authority, and also were wise in their own conceits: they drew both from the ancients and from their own experiences. But Elihu was led of the Spirit, apart from both, and the Spirit ever uses the word of truth and ever teaches us accordingly, forcing its holy path onward after God, through every resistance from the false lights both of men and of our own hearts. Job, however, was to be rebuked. He was suffering, but he traced this suffering up to the mere good pleasure or sovereign will of God. He did not justify God in these sufferings. For God does not willingly afflict. He has a purpose in all that He does or allows to be done. Job, therefore, was to be rebuked. And Elihu does rebuke him. He stands for God and God's goodness against all that Job had said; and though Job insisted that, as touching this life, it was vain to serve God, for all were equally subject to sorrow, and God made no difference; yet did Elihu insist that there was profit in waiting on the Lord. And the voice from the whirlwind confirms all this judgment of Elihu, and Job is humbled and restored.

Then Elihu appears. He is the messenger and type of the Lord (chap. 32:8; 33:4). He points out that God chastises man to refine him and bring him nearer to Himself. By this Elihu brings light into the darkness and brings Job into the presence of God. The reason for Job's wrong conclusions was that he did not understand that God wanted him to go into a deep trial.

But these spiritual affections of Job did not prevent his turning this consciousness of integrity into a robe of self-righteousness which hid God from him, and even hid him from himself. He declares himself to be more righteous than God (Job 10:7-8; 16:14-17; 23:11-13; 27:2-6). Elihu reproves him for this, and on the other hand explains the ways of God. He shews that God visits man and chastises him, in order that when subdued and broken down — if there is one who can shew him the point of moral contact between his soul and God, in which his soul would stand in truth before Him — God may act in grace and blessing, and deliver him from the evil that oppresses him. Elihu goes on to shew him that, if God chastises, it is becoming in man to set himself before God to learn wherein he has done wrong: in short, that the ways of God are right, that He withdraweth not His eyes from the righteous, but if they are in affliction He shews them their transgressions, and if they return to Him in obedience when He openeth their ear to discipline, He will give them prosperity; but that the hypocrite shall perish. The first case which Elihu brings forward (Job 33) is God's dealings with men. He awakens their consciences to their state, and puts His bridle on the pride and self-will of man. God chastises and humbles him. The second is specially with the righteous (Job 36), the case of positive transgression but in one righteous in God's sight, from whom He withdraws not His eyes, in whom He allowed not iniquity; but in the first case he was in the path of destruction. It was this case ** which needed the interpreter to place him in uprightness before God. Finally, he insists upon the incomprehensible power of God Almighty.

Thereon appears a hitherto unnoticed person, Elihu, who had kept silence as became one considerably younger, but now speaks as interpreting God's ways with man, with the soul, so that Job is reduced to silence no less than his friends. Their assaults Elihu defends no more than he insinuates hidden evil against Job; but he reproves the irreverence of his replies, vindicates the dealings of God, whether in judgment of man or in discipline of the righteous, and proves how perilous his language might be for encouraging men in the path of reckless pursuit of prosperity here below. He urges on Job self-judgment and submission to God, exposing his self-righteousness, and condemning the wish for death to escape suffering as wholly unworthy, as well as vain before Him whose glory and withal interest in creation he describes in forms of great beauty and force. He completely avoids the error of those who see not correction but only judgment in God's ways (Job 32 - 37).

Elihu then came forward: he is a type of Christ as mediator, and spoke on God's behalf. He said, "The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life . . . . . I am according to thy wish in God's stead." Job 33:4-6. He showed that Job was not just in justifying himself rather than God. He spoke of God's dealings with mankind; how He speaks to man, even in dreams, to give him instruction; and if there be an interpreter, one among a thousand, who can show him how his soul can stand in truth before God, he may be delivered from going down to the pit; for God has found a ransom. God chastises man to bring him into subjection, so that He may be favourable to him.

Verses 8-18. But what about the afflictions of the righteous? Here Elihu speaking in God's behalf lifts the veil. He permits them to be bound in fetters and in sorrow's bonds, so that He, the righteous God, may show to them their deeds, to uncover their transgressions which have for its source that which God hates, pride (the crime of the Devil; 1 Tim. 3:6). It is love and kindness, not his wrath and displeasure, which are revealed in the afflictions of the righteous. He wants to instruct them by suffering. And if they hearken and learn the lesson, they shall spend their days in prosperity, and end their earthly existence in peace and pleasantness. It was a call to Job to acknowledge this, it is a prophecy that ere long he would find it out, when God has accomplished His purpose with him, and his end would be peace and prosperity. The wicked do not heed this and therefore perish. Let any man refuse to hear Him and harden his heart against Him, they shall perish among the unclean. He would have led out Job in a broad place, but if Job continues in the argument of the wicked, reasoning and pleading as they do, charging God falsely, then let him beware. "Because there is wrath, beware lest He take thee away with His stroke, then a great ransom cannot deliver thee." We dare not meddle with this verse as others have done. Let it stand as it is, this solemn truth! There is wrath and if man does not hearken to God His wrath in judgment will be displayed and the great ransom, not even the great ransom, can deliver.

Elihu had yet somewhat to say on behalf of the impugned dealings of God, who is not one-sided, like man, always apt to fail in power if benevolent, if mighty in compassionate goodness. In God not only is each reality perfect, but so is the whole, if we may so speak of the Infinite. If His greatness be beyond measure, so is His condescending mercy, and His heart, or understanding, is as vast as His power. The Lord, the New Testament, asserts to us incessantly, the minutest care of His Father, while all things serve His will. Hence the assurance to the soul that knows Him, that, in the long-run, the godly shall not be permitted to wither, nor the afflicted be denied their right. But, as Job had already insisted most truly against his friends, it is not yet the day for the exercise and display of His earthly righteousness in His kingdom; and hence piety suffers, and iniquity of every sort, especially toward God, may flourish in high places. He speaks of the righteous, as under His eye, in the highest honour, but presently as bound with fetters of humiliating sorrow, which God nevertheless uses for good in showing them their ways of pride, opening their ears to discipline, and turning them back from the evil which they had failed to judge. Obedience is the path of good and joy; heedlessness, of ruin in every way. They do always err in their heart; they have not known His ways. Corruption, or hypocrisy, and its course and end, are graphically set forth; as is the patient goodness of God in using affliction for the blessing of him who is taught by it. Not that He has pleasure in inflicting sorrow, but contrariwise, when the lesson is learnt, He brings out the sufferer into a large place, where is no straitness, but all abundance. Still, wrong is wrong in whomsoever, and he that does it, though righteous in the main, must bear his own burden; and justly, for nowhere is it worse than in one who has so far forgotten God, after, it may be, long serving Him.

Job, therefore, had reason for care, lest his excited feeling might stir him up against the blow, and a worse thing befall him, where all resources fail, and the night, wherein none can work, is no comfort. It is dangerous, but very possible, to choose what is worse than affliction, or because of it. Elihu presses how God works loftily by His power, as he challenges anyone to say, Who is a Master like Him? Who has given Him a charge concerning His way? or who has ever said, Thou hast acted unjustly? It were better to reflect that His work should be magnified which men have beheld, or celebrated, all looking at it with amazement, mortals gazing at it from afar.