Job 36:13 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Job 36:13

Comments

Why say this to Job whom Elihu did not believe to be a hypocrite? Was he speaking to a wider audience and trying to lay down a comprehensive doctrine of God? Certainly this book was written for all God’s future people, but Job too needed to hear these things, for such warnings are the very way in which God keeps his children on the right path. Is it a real possibility that a true child of God could go the way of the hypocrite? No, it is not possible when all is said and done, for God prevents them from falling. But yes, it must be treated as a real possibility in their minds whenever they are tempted to act the hypocrite, lest they think that the danger is not real. Temptation will certainly come to the believer. If he meets it by saying, it is impossible for me to fall and therefore I do not need to take the danger seriously, then he is deceived, but if he meets it by saying, there is a real danger in sin but the Lord will keep me and therefore I flee to him from this snare, then he will be kept safe. The difference is that in one case the person has a complacency that is not of the Lord, and which does not take hold of all the help that God gives; it is a self-sufficient complacency. In the other case he recognises that he faces a very real danger but he knows that God has provided a remedy sufficient to cope with this danger and he comes to the Lord for his full support. The lives of those whom Elihu describes end tragically. They seemed for a time to escape the corruption that is in the world and to be enlightened by the word of God but they returned to their carnal nature because that nature had never truly been changed. Eventually it exerted an influence over them which they could not resist. Elihu, though he speaks like this, hopes for better things from Job. The wicked die in youth and their end is a seal on their true unbelieving state.

Application

The hypocrite’s reaction to chastisement is very different and ends up as a fatal mistake. Their hearts and the problem and because their hearts are the problem, there is no possibility that they will behave any differently, for there is nowhere else from which any behaviour can come out of them. Their hearts will cause them to store up wrath, for their hearts will cause them to behave in such a way that they do not react well to the correction of the Lord, and instead of humbling themselves, they become resentful under it and harden their attitude to the Lord. Who is the Lord to correct them? They are master of their own lives and will behave how they like. They will not cry to God for help, for to do so would be to admit that they are not self-sufficient, that God has real help to give them, and it would mean that they are willing to accept his help on the terms that he is prepared to give it, which they are not. In short, it would mean that they are prepared to humble themselves before him, and that he has been right to bind them in suffering and trial. Job needed to hear this because he had not yet come to the point where he openly admitted that he was in error, as later he will do.

All of this correction Elihu may deliver even though God has already said that Job had no equal on the earth, for the lesser may admonish the greater when the greater fall, since our authority to admonish does not come from any righteousness of our own, but from the word of God before which we all submit. For this reason he who admonishes must do so with godly fear, knowing they are under the same word, lest they also fall.

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Job 36:13 Commentary and Bible Study