Job 36:15 Commentary and Bible Study

When rightly received, affliction is the means that God uses to cure the soul, but we must be so careful how we respond to it because it can either bring us to repentance and admission of our guilt, or it can drive us further into bitterness and resentment. These words are spoken to encourage Job to respond correctly. God by affliction opens the ears of those whose ears were closed to any instruction from him. It is not the first approach he makes to the soul but normally always follows a gentler word which however has been ignored. Nevertheless, affliction can open the ear and sometimes the righteous need affliction, even the best of them. God delivers the poor, who understand their spiritual poverty, their utter dependence on him. They do not expect great things because of who they are, but they ask for Christ’s sake and appeal to God’s mercy.Elihu implies that Job has delayed his recovery by his bad reaction. He says that Job has been suffering unnecessarily, because if he had responded appropriately, then God would by now have lifted this affliction however severe and even terminal it seemed to be, and brought Job into a place of liberty and freedom from restraint. But because he has not humbled himself and accepted correction, it had needed to be prolonged. That affliction would still have come and he would have learnt profitable things by it, but he would then have been lifted up again, and a sense of God’s love restored to him. The continuation of his trial was self-inflicted, says Elihu. This is a very different message from that of the comforters, who dismissed Job as a condemned and wicked man. You have been a judge yourself in the past and meted out judgement. Now it comes to you and you won’t learn from it. You have not only delayed your relief and prolonged your suffering, but you have heightened it, causing God to treat you harshly on account of your intransigence. What started off for you as a discipline to advance you in holiness, has turned into chastisement to correct your bad reaction to the Lord’s handling of you. By behaving and speaking like the wicked, you have placed yourself among them, and therefore you are being treated like one of them. This judgment from the Lord is not something that you are able to escape, for God has ensured that it takes hold of you so that you are powerless to resist or know how to find a way out. We are no match for the Lord and if we enter into conflict with him, we will always lose.