The
Wrath of Elihu
Stephen
Terry
Commentary
for the December 3, 2016 Sabbath School Lesson
“When
you're weary, feeling small
When
tears are in your eyes, I'll dry them all
I'm
on your side, oh, when times get rough
And
friends just can't be found
Like
a bridge over troubled water
I
will lay me down
Like
a bridge over troubled water
I
will lay me down”
“Bridge
over Troubled Water” by Simon and Garfunkel
So much of Job to this point has been rather depressing.
He loses his wealth, his children, and his health. His friends come to comfort
him, but instead accuse him. In the process they become the stereotypes of the
proverbial Job’s friends, miserable comforters in times of sorrow. We have all
experienced sorrow of one sort or another, for sorrow and suffering are
intrinsic to human existence. Even children suffer horrendous diseases and
abuse, and because children also suffer we find ourselves troubled with the
suggestion of Job’s three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, that suffering
is the repayment for our personal sins. After all what could a child have
possibly done to result in the terrible suffering some children have to endure?
Yet we still tend to believe in a causal relationship between sin and
suffering. The Book of Job spends twenty-nine chapters exploring that belief
with Job denying it and his three “friends” maintaining it. Eventually, at an
impasse, they collapse into silence, neither moved by the arguments of the
others. At that point, the author of Job provides a bridge to get us from those
earlier chapters to the eventual denouement. That bridge is Elihu.
Interestingly, the name Elihu means “God Himself.” Why
this is interesting is the double word play involved. For instance, many see
Job as a parable for the suffering servant, a role played by Jesus, who
suffered and died in order to provide mankind with a path to salvation. Since
that path could only be accomplished by passing through suffering, Job’s suffering
by allegory may represent a path to some sort of salvation as well. It does seem
so when we consider the final chapter when he has more children and his wealth is
restored in even greater abundance than before the suffering began. It seems
easy to make a comparison between Job’s eventual “glorification” and the
glorification of Christ after He passed through the tomb. But Job is not the
only Christ-like allegory here, for Elihu also makes possible the transition to
that eventual glory for Job. Job represents the suffering servant, and Elihu
represents the ladder between earth and heaven.
Job’s suffering servant can only go so far. Eventually
we cannot move past the “why” of the suffering. If God is good and I have done
everything expected of a righteous man or woman, why am I suffering? Why does
God not “build a hedge around me” to protect me?[i] These are valid questions.
Job’s three friends felt that the answer was that Job had overlooked his own
sinfulness. But Job knew that was not the case, and even God, at the beginning
of the book, states that this is not so.[ii] We are forced in Job to
see that suffering may have nothing to do with our personal sinfulness or
righteousness. Thinking that it does takes us down a very dark path. We begin
to see every aspect of suffering as related to the sin in the lives of those
who are suffering. In so doing, we may be undeservedly painting saints as
sinners. We then become Job’s three friends. We judge others as being inferior whom
God may see as more righteous than us. We may sit down in our self-righteous
superiority, having accomplished little, and the suffering servant we judge sits
in exasperated silence, knowing the truth, but unable to penetrate the wall of
self-righteousness we have erected. But if that is so, how do we deal with it? When
we come up to the very edge of the chaotic waters that churn between this point
and eventual salvation, how do we cross over? We need a bridge.
Elihu challenges us in our spiritual complacency. Angry that Job and his three
friends could not bring to birth a proper theology of suffering, he points out that
if we do not have enough understanding to bridge the raging river of doubt, we
also do not have what is needed to understand God’s purposes. As we take the
invitation and cross Elihu’s bridge, we pass from the justice of God in
punishing sinners,[iii]
through His willingness to forgive and deliver,[iv] and ultimately to His
power and ability that is beyond human comprehension.[v] Then, the bridge being
built, God begins to speak to Job with that same final perspective regarding
our ability to imitate or comprehend His majesty.[vi] This sentiment has also been
echoed by Isaiah[vii]
and Paul.[viii] These writers compare
our state to that of a vessel spun on the potter’s wheel. One would hardly
expect a lump of wet clay to understand the vision of the potter, who makes
each vessel to fulfil a specific purpose. Yet we feel we do, for we challenge
God’s craftsmanship at every turn.
Who has not heard the man or woman who flatly states, “I
could not love a God who is like that.” When they make such a statement, they make
two profound errors. First they make the assumption that they can penetrate the
ineffable with their understanding to the extent that they can say what God is
or isn’t. In this, they are little different than Job and his three friends,
for they, too, assumed a complete or at least an adequate understanding of God.
When we feel that we have grown to the point in our spiritual walk that we can do
that, it is not we that have grown, but God that has shrunk. A God that can fit
within the confines of a mind that cannot even picture all of the infinite
points on a number line is himself a finite God. Many balk at understanding
even elementary principles of Quantum Mechanics. Nor can they follow the
implications for light, sound and time of an event horizon surrounding a black
hole. They cannot understand these finite things, yet freely pass judgment on
the character of a Being that is infinitely more complex than any of these.
I have seen Christians and non-Christians both argue about the idea of the
Trinity. They feel that God cannot at the same time be one God yet still be
three. Because they cannot wrap their minds around the idea, they assume it is
heresy and rail against such an idea. John Wesley tried to illustrate it as
three distinct candles yet one inseparable light.[ix] Some struggle even with
his simple illustration. With our much more advanced scientific perspective, we
still continue to stumble over this relatively simple concept. Quantum particles are now known to manifest
themselves as being in more than one state at a time. Essentially two can be
one or vice versa. But even here, if our minds can barely navigate securely
into this quantum realm, what excuse is there for those who assert the primacy
of their knowledge and intelligence in regards to things that by definition pass
beyond their understanding? But this is only one error we may fall into.
The other error is the error of misplaced authority. We
take to ourselves the right to challenge the authority of Someone that is
beyond our ability to bring to account. If we sit as wet lumps on the wheel,
what ability do we have to compel the potter to move his or her hands thus or
so? We are as malleable to the hand of God as that clay is to the potter. Yet
we pass judgment on what we cannot control. First we pass useless judgment on
the potter, for we cannot call Him to account. Then claiming to finally submit
to what the potter has chosen for our shape, we look around at other clay
vessels and judge them in comparison to what the potter has made of us and find
them lacking. We assume that gender, race, physical ability, mental capacity
and every other attribute the potter has brought forth in our creation is the
standard that reveals the will of the potter for all other vessels. As the clay
hardens and the vessels drying on the shelf knock against one another in
judgment, they become chipped and broken, no longer reflecting the image in
which the potter created them.[x] This is sad, for even if
that image is far from a complete image of the potter yet it still is a
reflection of something greater than the vessel.
This is the error of Job and his three friends. It is
also an error committed by many today. This is an error of presumption that
assumes that our presumed knowledge can replace faith in our relationship with
God. Fortunately for Job, although he felt he had the knowledge to demand an
accounting of God, he was able to find the faith he needed to say, “I know that
my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my
skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God”[xi]
