Job 35:4 Commentary and Bible Study

One commentator criticises Elihu again here for being verbose and overconfident, basing this conclusion in part on Elihu’s use of the emphatic form of the personal pronoun, I. But this is to build a mountain out of a molehill, and to lose sight of the situation in which Elihu appeared to stand alone as the one called upon to defend the honour of God and to correct the three friends and Job, even though he was a younger man. Have we never felt the zeal which we ought to feel for the honour of God when men commit sin or when a godless society denigrates him?Elihu’s point is that nature provides a simple example in which man finds something in the created world high above his reach – obviously in Job’s time it was impossible to think of rising above the clouds. If the created world offers such examples of transcendence above human power, how much more the Creator (to whom all things owe their existence) due to his far more exceeding greatness. Man is taught his limitations in this homely way, and even today he has limitations imposed on him. It does not alter the force of the argument if, in obedience to the creation mandate to subdue all things, he breaks some of these bounds, for new horizons appear for him which continue to teach him that he is not all powerful. Elihu speaks to Job and his companions but his focus is on Job as the use of the second person singular throughout these verses shows. Elihu answers the idea that God should vindicate his people more in this life and deal more severely with the wicked. You have slipped into the same position as the comforters, he tells Job. God dwells beyond the skies in the heaven of heavens: not in the natural realm but in a spiritual. Do the clouds cower at human conduct? Do they hurry to congratulate man for his acts of charity, or immediately rebuke him for the evil he does? Why should God fly out of heaven in judgement in response to human conduct? God’s worth is not harmed by what men do on earth; his policies are not changed; his purposes are not thwarted; he is not affected. He is not added to by man’s righteousness or detracted by man’s sin; he can afford to wait. Job has lost his sense of God’s greatness. Get away from the light pollution of the great cities, and look into the night sky. This helps us to reflect on the majesty of God. He has made all these things and is high above the earth, and must he hurry to respond to what puny man does here below?