IN THE last chapter Job had been glorying in what he was in the former days of his prosperity, but now in the days of his calamity he complains that “they that are younger than I have me in derision.” He has become a byword of those he considered useless men, “whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock.” It was very unbecoming of a saint of God to speak thus of his fellow-men, no matter how low and disreputable they might be. They were those who would not follow any means of earning a steady living, and he calls them children of fools. “And now,” says he, “am I their song, yea, I am their byword. They abhor me, they flee far from me” —they could not bear to look at him in his agony and with all his sores— “and spare not to spit in my face,” “Upon my right hand rise up the youth; they push away my feet,” as if to trip him and make him fall. Beside his bodily agonies it must have been terribly crushing to Job’s spirit to have to endure these tauntings and disrespect after having commanded such respect and lived for so long in the high opinions others had of him.
But what grieved the heart of Job most of all was the feeling that it was God who had brought him into this. “He hath cast me into the mire, and I am become like dust and ashes¨ I cry unto Thee, and Thou dolt not hear me,” he complains bitterly. But God did hear Job, though He did not answer him just then. “Thou art become cruel to me,” he says, “For I know that Thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living.” Here he was quite wrong again, for God had a wonderful blessing in store for Job. But he could not understand it all until Elihu introduces a different ministry and shows Job that there was something else neither he nor his friends had considered with respect to that which had come upon him.
In chapter 31 Job rehearses some of the things the wicked do, and he knows that he has not done them for he feared God. “For destruction from God was a terror to me,” he says. Then he speaks of that which is a snare to many. He had not made gold his hope, nor had he rejoiced because his wealth was great, “because mine hand hath gotten much” —even though he had worked for it. Neither had he shown any adoration for the sun or the moon, which was the earliest form of idolatry. “This also,” he says, “were an iniquity to be punished by the judge: for I should have denied the God that is above.” But Job did not understand the deceitfulness of his heart for in going over his former days of ease and wealth, he did not realize that there was a secret spirit of pride beneath it all.
This last lengthy discourse of Job was one of self-justification from beginning to end. Finally he comes to the point where he can say no more, so he concludes: “Let thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley. The words of Job are ended.”
Apparently all the while the discussions between Job and his friends had been going on, another man, much younger than the rest, had been sitting with them. We hear nothing of Elihu until chapter 32 but now he comes forward. It is evident he had been an attentive listener; he heard both sides patiently and found them both wrong. Job was wrong in seeking to defend himself, and his friends were wrong in seeking to condemn him. Elihu was entirely on God’s side.
ML-07/03/1960