Week 34 Job
The last major speech in the book of Job – apart from the Lord’s – comes from a man named Elihu.
Elihu says many things about the Lord that sound pretty accurate to me:
God is greater than any person
God will not do wrong
If God were to take back his spirit…all life would cease, and humanity would again turn to dust
God carefully watches the way people live
God hears the cries of the needy
God is mighty in both power and understanding
God is all-powerful
God is exalted beyond what we can understand
We cannot imagine the power of God.
Elihu says things like this that he knows for sure are true. But along with them he adds other things he thinks are true. For example he says some nasty things about Job:
Has there ever been a man as arrogant as Job, with his thirst for irreverent talk?
Job speaks without knowledge; his words lack insight
Job, you deserve the maximum penalty for the wicked way you have talked
Do you think it is right for you (Job) to claim, ‘I am righteous before God’?
One of the things that jumps-out at me reading Elihu is that it’s possible to say things that are totally accurate as well as things that aren’t.
Elihu called himself: a man of well-rounded knowledge. But that didn’t stop him from arriving at some dopey and uninformed conclusions.
Note: quotes from Job 33:12, 34:12, 14-15, 21, 28, 36:5, 22, 26, 37:23; and 34:7, 35, 36, 35:2, 36:4 (NLT).