Pain as a Possible Means of Warning

None of the three friends ever addresses Job by name in all their speeches. Elihu does it at once, and will again in 33:31 and 37:14. “Speeches” is millin, a word for words that Elihu uses constantly, almost as a signature.

The second half is literally “my tongue has spoken in my palate”. The palate was the organ of taste and discernment; in 6:30 Job asked, “cannot my taste discern perverse things?” Elihu announces that his words have been tasted before they are served.

“Clearly” is barur, purely or sifted, the way grain is sifted clean. Elihu promises that his knowledge will come without chaff. The uprightness of the heart, yosher, is the same quality ascribed to Job himself in 1:1 under a related word.

Elihu repeats the claim he made in 32:8 about the breath of the Almighty, now applied to his own making. Job had said something similar of himself in 10:8: “Thine hands have made me and fashioned me.” Both men are God's handiwork, which is the point of the next two verses.

“Stand up” is a courtroom instruction, take your position as a party to the case. Elihu invites Job to do with him what Job has asked to do with God: lay out his words in order and stand his ground to answer.

“Formed out of the clay” uses qorats, to nip or pinch off, the potter's action of pinching a lump from a mass of clay. Elihu is cut from the same material as Job. Whatever he offers, he offers from the same side of the potter's wheel.

Elihu all but quotes Job's own conditions for a fair hearing: “Withdraw thine hand far from me: and let not thy dread make me afraid” (13:21), and “let not his fear terrify me” (9:34). A man of clay has no terror to deploy.

The phrasing is a witness's: spoken “in mine hearing”, the voice heard with my own ears. Elihu presents what follows as testimony of what Job actually said, and for the next three verses he reports it, part quotation and part summary.

“Clean” is zakh, the word Zophar used when he summed up Job's position in 11:4: “My doctrine is pure, and I am clean in thine eyes.” Elihu's summary follows Zophar's more than Job's own words, such as 10:7, “Thou knowest that I am not wicked.”

“Counteth me for his enemy” is Job's own complaint from 13:24 and 19:11. In Hebrew the words carry a pun that is hard to miss: Job is Iyyov, and enemy is oyev. Job has felt that God treats his very name as a synonym for foe.

This is nearly a verbatim quotation of 13:27: “Thou puttest my feet also in the stocks, and lookest narrowly unto all my paths.” The stocks were a wooden frame clamping the feet, used for prisoners. Elihu has been listening closely.

Elihu's whole rebuttal to the quotations is a single axiom, “God is greater than man”, which Job has never denied; he has said as much repeatedly (9:4, 12:13). The disagreement lies in what follows from God's greatness, not in the greatness itself.

“Strive” is riv, to bring a lawsuit. The second half can mean God does not give account of his doings, or that he does not answer every one of man's words. Either way Elihu tells Job the suit is misdirected before explaining why.

“Once, yea twice” is a Hebrew numerical idiom for repeated action, as in Psalm 62:11: “God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this.” The failure lies on the human side: God speaks, and man does not notice that he has been spoken to.

The line almost repeats Eliphaz in 4:13, “In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men.” “Deep sleep” is tardemah, the sleep God sent on Adam before taking his rib (Genesis 2:21) and on Abram at the covenant (Genesis 15:12).

“Sealeth their instruction” pictures a warning stamped like a sealed document, fixed and authenticated. The theory meets Job's own experience: in 7:14 he complained, “thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions.” Elihu offers a reason for the nightmares.

“His purpose” is literally his deed, the act he is about to commit. A dream that stops a man short is what happened to Abimelech in Genesis 20:3–6, warned in a dream before he touched Sarah. The warning cuts pride off before it can do damage.

The pit is the grave. “Perishing by the sword” renders shelach, which may mean a weapon, but can also mean a channel or canal, and some take it as the river that the dead must cross. Either way the warning keeps the man on the living side.

“Chastened” is yakach, to reprove or correct, the root of “convinced” in 32:12: pain argues with a man. The Hebrew of the second half can also be read as “the strife of his bones is continual”, the bones themselves at war.

“Abhorreth” is zaham, to loathe. Even delicacies turn the stomach. Job described exactly this in 6:7: “The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat.” Elihu's picture of the sick man is drawn close to the man in front of him.

The flesh wastes until it seems to vanish, and bones once covered now stand out. Psalm 22:17 gives the same sight from the inside: “I may tell all my bones.” The sufferer can count them.

“The destroyers” is literally the ones who cause death, perhaps the angels of death; 2 Samuel 24:16 calls the angel that struck Israel's people “the angel that destroyed”. The soul is drawing near to the grave, and something is waiting at its edge.

“Interpreter” is melits, the word for the go-between who stood between Joseph and his brothers in Genesis 42:23. The go-between's task here is to declare to the man what is right for him, to show him his proper course, so that he understands his own condition.

“Ransom” is kofer, the price paid to redeem a forfeited life, as in Exodus 21:30. Psalm 49:7 says no man can give to God a kofer for his brother. Here it is God who says “I have found” it; the finding is his, not the sufferer's.

Naaman's flesh, after he dipped in the Jordan, “came again like unto the flesh of a little child” (2 Kings 5:14). The same picture of restored skin is used here. “The days of his youth” is a word for youthful vigour, the strength of a young man.

“With joy” is teru'ah, the ringing shout of worship or of a trumpet blast. Seeing God's face with that shout means coming to worship in public again. “Render unto man his righteousness” means restoring him to his standing, as a judge vindicates the innocent.

The verb for “looketh” can also mean to sing, and many take it as “he sings before men”: the restored man confesses in public. “It profited me not” is literally “it was not repaid to me”: I did not get what I deserved. The confession includes gratitude for being spared.

The Hebrew as written reads “my soul” and “my life”, continuing the restored man's own song in the first person; the King James follows the scribal reading “his”. On the first reading the rescued man is still speaking.

“Oftentimes” is literally “twice, three times”, extending the “once, yea twice” of verse 14. The graded numbers make the point: God does not give up after one attempt to turn a person from the pit.

“The light of the living” is the phrase Psalm 56:13 uses: “that I may walk before God in the light of the living.” To be brought back from the pit is to be returned to the sunlit world of people who are alive.

In 13:5 and 13:13 Job begged the friends, “hold your peace, let me alone, that I may speak.” Elihu turns the same words on Job himself. It is the second time he has named him, and he tells him to listen twice in one verse.

“Justify” is the verb tsadaq, the very word of 32:2, where Elihu was angry that Job “justified himself rather than God”. Now he says he wants to justify Job. Whether his argument can bear that desire is what his next chapters must show.

Chapter 28 ended by placing wisdom with God, beyond every search. Elihu offers to “teach thee wisdom”, a large promise. “Teach” is alaf, a rarer verb for instruction, used again in 35:11, where God teaches humans more than the beasts.