Bible Commentary - Job 33

In this chapter, Elihu argues that God is speaking to Job through Job’s suffering to bring him to repentance.

Verses 1- constitute an introduction of sorts. The only part of this that I find interesting is when Elihu says “no fear of me should terrify you” (v. 7). In comparison, Job said several times that God had all this power and strength to “terrify” Job, and that Job could not speak to him on equal terms because of it.  What Elihu is saying then is that Elihu does not have the strength to overpower Job, and therefore only the persuasion and virtue of his arguments stands against Job’s complaint.

The meat of Elihu’s response is verses 14-30.  In this passage, Elihu presents a story of some kind to explain, in a sense, how God relates to men.

In the beginning of this story, God speaks to men in dreams at night (v. 15) to warn them and instruct them in God’s ways, to turn them away from sin.  Afterwards, if instruction does not suffice, then God “chastens” men with pain and sickness.  This is still when they are on their beds, but instead of lying in bed in the restfulness of sleep, they now lie in bed in tremendous pain, wasting away and drawing near to the pit of death.

Man draws near to this pit of death, but then there is a moment when “a ransom” is found and the man is saved from death.  Even though he draws near to the very edge, he is not cast over into the darkness of the abyss.  An angel comes and declares some kind of ransom, then beginning in verse 25 the man is restored to health and is received by God.  This begins the upward arc as the man “sees [God’s] face with joy” and is “brought back” from “the pit” (v. 30).

Even though Elihu is presented as being an alternative voice from the three friends, his argument here seems to have a lot of similarities to the repentance-and-redemption narrative that that Eliphaz shared in chapter 5.  Eliphaz made the same argument a second time in Job 22:21-23.  I felt that “repentance leads to restoration” was implicit in all of the three friends’ arguments, though they did not always say it directly.  Here it seems central to Elihu’s moral framework as well, with verse 26 expressing the thought: “Then he will pray to God, and God will accept him”.  Elihu also echoes the three friends in his repudiation of Job’s self-proclaimed innocence.  That Job has some kind of sin in his life is implicit to the very notion that Job should repent, because otherwise he would have no reason to repent.

The biggest difference I can perceive between Elihu and the three friends is that Elihu views suffering as part of God’s redemptive work, to bring people to repentance, rather than viewing it through the justice framework as a punishment for sin, meant to destroy our lives as retribution for what we have done wrong.  Elihu also responds to Job’s complaint that God is silent; Elihu says that God speaks to us in dreams, and in the quiet of our soul God convicts us of the things we have done wrong.  Even suffering itself is a form of God speaking, when he is “chastening” us for our sins (once again, implicitly denying Job’s innocence).

Elihu also denies that God is Job’s enemy.  Otherwise the restoration narrative would not make sense, because God would never try to restore an enemy; instead, God is rebuking and chastening us for our sins, that we would repent and be restored to life and joy.

In conclusion, I think Elihu’s arguments share many fundamental characteristics with the three friends, but he does present a slightly different view on God’s character and God’s intent when causing Job to suffer.  He nevertheless shares with the three friends the basic assumption that Job is sinning and God is punishing him as a form of rebuke.

In the next chapter, Elihu speaks to the three friends.