Chapter 34 began, “Then Elihu continued and said…”
Chapter 35 began, “Then Elihu continued and said…”
Chapter 36 begins, “Then Elihu continued and said…”
Someone needs to
signal the sound booth to cut Elihu’s microphone.
Elihu, suddenly
aware of his long-windedness, noticed that the gathered throng was beginning to
fidget. As a result he pleads in verse 2,
“Wait for me a little, and I will show you that there is yet more to be said in
God’s behalf…” The King James Version puts it best, “Suffer me a little…” Believe me Elihu, they were! Writes Spurgeon,
“Assuredly, short and pointed addresses are more likely to reach the heart than
long and dreary sermons.” Elihu’s
marathon sermon had a good beginning, a good ending, but a meandering
middle. So much so that some in the
congregation began counting the ceiling tiles.
36:2 “Wait for me a little, and I will show
you that there is yet more to be said in God’s behalf. 3 I will fetch my knowledge from afar, and I
will ascribe righteousness to my Maker. 4 For truly my words are not false; One
who is perfect in knowledge is with you.”
Misinterpreting
Job’s strenuous defense, Elihu gives the impression that he wants to counteract
Job’s assertion that he (Job) is more righteous than God. Again, the brashness of this young preacher causes
the three comforters to roll their eyes, because when he says “I will fetch my
knowledge from afar,” Elihu implies that this knowledge is coming direct from
God and is only available to him.
In the first part of
verse 4 Elihu seems to assert that his words are beyond contradiction or
rebuttal. And although commentators
differ on the interpretation of the second part of verse 4, when the young
preacher declares, “One who is perfect in knowledge is with you…” he appears to
be speaking about himself. Writes FI
Anderson, “It seems as if Elihu is giving himself a certificate of
genius!”
36:5 “Behold, God is mighty but does not
despise any; He is mighty in strength of understanding.”
The second half of the
verse is literally, “He is mighty in heart.”
We often think of God as being “mighty in power,” but “mighty in heart?” Writes Poole ,
“He is truly magnanimous, of a great and generous mind or heart, and therefore
not unrighteous; for all injustice proceeds from littleness or weakness of
heart…”
36:6 “He does not keep the wicked alive, but
gives justice to the afflicted. 7 He
does not withdraw His eyes from the righteous; but with kings on the throne He
has seated them forever, and they are exalted.”
Trapp reminds us
that a deluge of calamites may simply be the precursor to a season of
blessing. On the ash heap, with maggots
as his kingdom, Job will soon be elevated out of his prison of pain and
restored to his previous estate. In our trials
it is at times hard to see through the tears and beyond the present
circumstances, but remember that God NEVER takes His eyes off the
righteous! There is an intensity to His
care – He is so lost in love for the crushed and the poor that they are
constantly in His thoughts.
36:8 "And
if they are bound in fetters, and are caught in the cords of affliction, 9 then He declares to them their work and their
transgressions, that they have magnified themselves.”
God doesn’t give up
on us; He has a goal for our lives. And
if we stray or tend to let the flame of our passion for Him begin to ebb, then
His love seems to take the form of a “gentle severity.” We should never forget the words of Hebrews
12, “No discipline for the moment seems to be joyous, but grievous.” We may one day find that when we look back on
the “Job Episode” in our lives that this time was of the greatest benefit to us.
Seasons of
difficulty tend to focus our priorities and make us think about eternal
things. Writes Trapp, “By these sharp
waters he clears up their eyesight...”
In a pivotal episode in the life of the prodigal son (Luke 15), in my
minds eye I picture the younger brother, on his way to feed the pigs on a gloomy
Monday morning, tripping and falling face down in the mud with the slop
spilling all over him. At that moment
the Bible says “he came to his senses.”
36:10 “He opens their ear to instruction, and
commands that they return from evil.”
“He opens their ears”
is literally “He uncovers their ears.” Sometimes
it takes a covering of pig slop for our ears to become uncovered!
The NLT puts it “He
gets their attention.” As a kid I
remember our dad sneaking up the stairs into our bedroom and suddenly grabbing
the end of the bed and shaking it. We
had apparently been goofing around instead of going to sleep. A suddenly-shaking-bed tends to get your
attention. The conclusion I am trying to
draw is obvious…God can shake our beds and get our attention!
36:11 “If they hear and serve Him, They will
end their days in prosperity and their years in pleasures.”
The goal of God’s
dealings with us is to make us sweet and pleasant. Our heavenly Father doesn’t want His kingdom populated
with crabby and ungrateful children. The
phrase “end their days” emphasizes that He has a desire to bring the process to
completion. The word “prosperity”
carries the idea of the well-being of a servant with a good master; “pleasures”
is used to describe David’s anointed music upon the lyre or the taste of bread;
its also used in Psalm 16:11, “…at Thy right hand there are pleasures
forevermore.”
36:12 “But if they do not hear, they shall
perish by the sword and they will die without knowledge.”
Writes Barnes, “They
shall die without knowledge…That is, without any true knowledge of the plans
and government of God, or of the reasons why he brought these afflictions upon
them. In all their sufferings they never “saw” the design. They complained, and murmured, and charged God with severity, but
they never understood that the affliction was intended for their own benefit.”
Do not refuse to see
the blueprint that the Grand Designer has for you! Believe that God has a wonderful plan for
your life even though you cannot see one right now.
36:13 “But the godless in heart lay up
anger; they do not cry for help when He binds them.”
Note the phrase “lay
up anger.” Various versions of the Bible
translate it this way: “heap up anger”…”store up wrath”…”cherish anger”…”pile
grievance upon grievance”…”harbor resentment.”
And the word “anger” is literally “flaring nostrils.” (I recently read somewhere that back in Bible
times a teenager put a dent in his father’s camel while learning how to drive. The next day at school he told his buddy
Ishmael, “Wow were my dad’s nostrils flaring last night!”)
Are you harboring or
piling up anger in your life? Are you so
angry at God that the song your heart used to sing is silent? The problem may not be your circumstances,
but your heart.
36:14-16 "They die in youth, and their
life perishes among the cult prostitutes.
15 He delivers the afflicted in their affliction, and opens their ear in
time of oppression. 16 Then indeed, He enticed you from the mouth of distress,
instead of it, a broad place with no constraint; and that which was set on your
table was full of fatness.”
Do you see the word
“oppression” in verse 15 and the word “distress” in verse 16? Both are used in the story of Balaam and the
donkey in Numbers 22:25-26, “When the donkey saw the angel of the LORD, she pressed herself to the wall and pressed Balaam's foot against the wall,
so he struck her again. And the angel of the LORD went further, and stood in a narrow place, where there was no way to
turn either to the right hand or to the left.”
The word “oppression” is the same as “pressed” in Numbers 22:25. One writer says of this word, “…no more graphic word picture of the meaning of “lahas” (oppression/pressed) can be given than that of Balaam’s donkey squeezing up against the wall and thereby crushing or “oppressing” Balaam’s foot.”
And the word
“distress” is the same as “narrow” in Numbers 22:26. It’s the Hebrew word “tsar” and refers to
something that confines or hampers or hinders.
It conveys the pressure and anxiety that is felt when our circumstances
have hemmed us in. Balaam and his donkey had come to a “tsar” place, a place where one could only travel in one direction:
there was a wall on the left, a wall on the right and an angel with his sword
drawn (that only the donkey saw) directly in front of him. Simply put, there
was no where to go!
Those two words
aptly describe Job’s condition: he was oppressed
or crushed (lahas) and thus felt as though he was trapped in a “tsar” place because
he didn’t see any way out.
I realize I am getting a little Elihu-ish with this section of chapter
36 and these manifold word pictures and definitions, but if you could bear with
me for just one more. The Amplified
Version puts verse 16 this way, “Indeed, God would have allured you out of the
mouth of distress into a broad place where there is no situation of perplexity…” “Perplexity” comes from two words: “per”
meaning "completely" and “plexus” meaning "entangled or entwined.
The picture is that of a ball of twine so utterly entangled that one despairs
of ever making something useful of it again.
A tangled, complicated and confused situation. At this juncture that describes Job’s life
perfectly. But while Job battles through
his befuddlement (and pain), the One Who is able to “un-perplex” is swiftly
approaching.
God will make a way where there seems to be
no way! Listen to this song by Don Moen:
God Will Make A Way!
