THE INTERVENTION OF ELIHU

The three friends of Job have failed. They have failed to convict him of sin. They have failed to alleviate his grief. They have failed to justify the ways of God to men. The weakness of the case made out by them has become more and more apparent as the controversy has run on. This is the design of the author. He means us to see and feel that the older interpretations of the problem of pain break down as soon as they are brought to the test of detailed and careful examination. He succeeds perfectly in his intention.

He succeeds too well. The unsatisfactory nature of the speeches was just as obvious to Hebrew readers as it is to Christian. It was as clear to the third or fourth century B.C. as to the twentieth A.D. And some later author, of lower inspiration, boldly took upon himself to construct a stronger polemic. He attempted to enter into the spirit of the drama. He created another character. He called him Elihu. He represented him as a deeply interested auditor who had listened with amazement and growing anger to the impotent discourses of the three friends. And he placed upon the lips of Elihu the arguments which, to his mind, come nearer to a solution of the problem than those advanced by Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.1

The Contribution of Elihu.

Elihu is more than angry. "Then was kindled the wrath of Elihu . . . against Job was his wrath kindled . . . also against the three friends was his wrath kindled because they had found no answer" (chap, xxxii. 2, 3). He is a young man, and he explains that he has refrained from speech because of his youth, but he finds that it does not follow that the "great" are wise or that the aged understand justice (vers. 6-10). He has listened with what patience, with what show of respect was possible (vers. 11, 12); he has been amazed and humiliated by the dialectical victory which they have allowed Job to win (vers. 15, 16), and now he simply must speak:

"For I am full of words;

The spirit within me constraineth me.

Behold, my breast is as wine which hath no rent;

Like new wine-skins it is ready to burst."2

He has no doubt of his own inspiration, none as to the finality of his great deliverances:

"The Spirit of God hath made me,

And the breath of the Almighty giveth me life.

If thou canst, answer thou me;

Set thy words in order before me, stand forth."3

And again:

"Suffer me a little, and I will show thee;

For I have yet somewhat to say on God's behalf.

I will fetch my knowledge from afar,

And will ascribe righteousness to my Maker.

For truly my words are not false;

One that is perfect in knowledge is with thee."4

And throughout he speaks in the same tone.

We are bound to ask what contribution he makes to the discussion of the tremendous theme on which our minds are busy. And we find that he really is in possession of one great idea which the friends have not brought out with any distinctness. They have insisted that suffering is punishment, and that punishment is retributive. Elihu, not less convinced than they that suffering is punishment, holds that it may be and often is curative. The friends have all along maintained that such retributive punishment is compatible with the divine justice, is, indeed, demanded by it. Elihu affirms that it is compatible with divine love and tenderness, and is the outcome of these. He has earlier stated that God draws near to man in dreams and in visions of the night for the purpose of warning him against sin and deterring him from it.

"In a dream, in a vision of the night,

When deep sleep falleth upon men,

In slumberings upon the bed;

Then he openeth the ears of men,

And sealeth their instruction,

That he may withdraw man from his purpose,

And hide pride from man;

He keepeth back his soul from the pit,

And his life from perishing by the sword."5

This is a great conception, and it is rendered greater and more gracious by his belief that when such visions fail and the interpretation of them, when a man has gone down to sin, then God draws near to him, even the third time, in chastisement, in sickness, and affliction, because God wills

"To bring back his soul from the pit,

That he may be enlightened with the light of the living."6

The Grace of Chastisement.

Let us never be tempted to think lower things of the government of God. "No chastisement seemeth for the present to be joyous," and few of us can find joy in it. But chastisement is mercy. Punishment is grace. It is good of God and good to us to punish us when we go wrong. If we refuse to be held by the silken cords of His affection, then it is kind of Him and kind to us to reveal to us by the lightning flashes the abysses toward which our steps are tending. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews thought that "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God." Even if "the hands of the Living God" represent to us only catastrophe and terror, then we may be very sure that it would be a far more fearful thing to fall out of them. If we could sin with a hard heart and a determined purpose and no stroke fall upon us, if we could sow to the flesh without reaping corruption, and sow the wind of unlawful desire without reaping the whirlwind of retribution, it would be ill with us and not well, it would be cruel to us, not kind. And it is all of the mercy of our God that when we refuse to serve Him "with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, by reason of the abundance of all things," then He causes us "to serve the enemies that the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things"; and it is for our good and for our salvation that in such a case He "puts a yoke of iron" upon our neck.7

It is too late in the day for us to be afraid of the love of God or of the implications of our own Evangel. The theology of the middle ages contended in the mind of Dante against his large humanity. Over the gates of hell he saw written:

"All hope abandon, ye who enter here";

and a thousand times we have quoted the woeful words. We strangely forget that even in Dante's view this "city of woe" was still an expression of God's love. The same inscription reads:

"To rear me was the task of Power divine,

Supremest wisdom, and primeval love."

We know the "fear of the Lord" and we are glad to know it; knowing it we "persuade men"8 — we do not coerce them — and we are ourselves persuaded that deep down in the lowest depths of the nethermost hell the love of God goes blazing and consuming on.

The Justice of God.

In chapter xxxiv Elihu enters fully upon his reply to Job's repeated charges against the jusfice of God. He develops his argument at great length and illustrates it in many ways.9 But the heart of it all is this: God,and injustice together are unthinkable. Elihu would not have known the meaning of our phrase, "a contradiction in terms"; yet this is what he is really saying. You may say "God" or you may say "Justice," but you cannot say "God" and "Injustice" too. They cannot be thought.

"Far be it from God that he should do wickedness,

And from the Almighty, that he should commit iniquity" (chap, xxxiv. 10);

but why?

"Yea of a surety, God will not do wickedly,

Neither will the Almighty pervert justice" (ver. 12).

Why? Simply because God is God! The modern thinker may say, "But if I find that the system under which I live is wrong, I will not call it right; and if the course and constitution of nature are characterised by cruelty and injustice, then I will not profess that I see evidence of the rule of a wise and benevolent God." But it would not occur to Elihu or to his contemporaries to speak in this way. God is: so much is postulated. It has to be admitted before one can enter into the discussion. And Elihu is not wrong when he insists, vigorously and triumphantly, "God" and "Injustice" are absurd! He does not add argument when he insists that God's beneficence is seen in the continued existence of created things upon the earth, all sustained by His spirit and His breath:

"If he set his heart upon himself,

If he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath;

All flesh shall perish together,

And man shall turn again unto dust"  (vers. 14, 15).

But he does add emphasis. For the devout soul of any age, learned or illiterate, feels that without God's just rule over all the earth admitted by the reason or realised by faith, the universe rolls back to chaos,

"The pillared firmament is rottenness,

And earth's base built on stubble."10

The Impossibility of Injustice.

There is value in Elihu's rough and ready method of dealing with the problem. It may look like a swift cut at the gordian-knot just because one finds that he cannot untie it. But the method is more reasonable than it looks. If we have once said "God," and said it with all our mind and soul and strength, we have said Justice, Goodness, Mercy, Love. The suggestion which challenges these attributes is not thought: it is absurdity. When we think we are saying such things we are not saying things at all. We are using words which cancel each other out.

Fairbairn, in his most masterly discussions of the Problem of Evil, affirms that "impossibilities must exist to God as to men; possible things Omnipotence may achieve, impossible things not even Omnipotence may accomplish." And he particularises: "These inabilities or impossibilities may be said to be of three kinds: physical, intellectual, and moral. The moral inability may be stated in the familiar phrase: 'It is impossible for God to lie.' The intellectual may be represented either under the category of thought: It is impossible for God to conceive the false as if it were true; or under the category of knowledge: It is impossible for God to know things that are not as if they were real things. The physical impossibility may be expressed in various forms: It is not open even to God to make a part equal to the whole; to make the same thing both be and not be; to make a circle at once a circle and a square, or to make a square out of two straight lines."11

And the point, of course, is that God cannot make a human being who should start as if he had a long experience behind him or an acquired character within. So that the experiences of life, conflict, pain, temptation are unavoidable if there is to be on earth such a being as man. The conclusion is indisputable, but the explanations about things which are impossible to Almightiness are superfluous. It is simpler to say that these "impossibilities" represent only our own incapacity for thinking or the inherent incapacity of words for conveying thought By a square we mean the space that is enclosed by four straight lines, and when we say that two cannot enclose a square we are merely playing tricks with words. The limitation is not in the power of God but in our ability to see that we are not seeing at all! Nine-tenths of the common difficulties connected with the existence of evil slip into the background when we remember the first law of thought, that "a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time." God is: that is Elihu's postulate — and ours. In Him a deflection from Justice, Goodness, Mercy, Love is unthinkable. It contradicts the primary law of thought.

Love as Justice.

It is significant that Elihu, who gives fresh emphasis and point to the contention of the three friends as to God's unfailing justice, is the one who brings into prominence the mercifulness of God's approach to the man in danger of yielding to sin, the approach in dreams, in visions and their interpretation, and in affliction. Is it going too far, is it ascribing to Elihu modern conceptions of which he was incapable, if we find in the whole of the second part of chapter xxxiii an undefined conviction that God's justice demands this mercifulness? Did Elihu see that it would not be just of God to leave a man alone, unwarned, unsought, unredeemed? It is amongst the deepest notes of the Gospel: in some unrealised way was Elihu feeling after the truth of it? 'If we

confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins."12 Righteous! It is just of Him to do it, and it would not be just not to do it! He owes it to Himself, to the everlasting rectitude of His holy name! "Never in all your preaching

admit that the Atonement is demanded by the justice of God," a theological teacher now dead used to say to his students; "insist that the Atonement grows out of God's love."13 Yet what if God's love and His justice are not two but one? If His justice is the same thing as His love, if He loves because it is just that He should? When we warn men and women to beware of God's justice and close with the offers of His love, how we misconceive and misrepresent Him! Because He is just we can trust His love, for ever and for ever we can trust the love of a God who is just.

"Thank God that God shall judge my soul, not man!

I marvel when they say,

'Think of that awful Day —

No pitying fellow-sinner's eyes shall scan

With tolerance thy soul,

But His who knows the whole,

The God whom all men own is wholly just.'

Hold thou that last word dear,

And live untouched by fear.

He knows with what strange fires He mixed this dust.

The heritage of race,

The circumstance and place

Which make us what we are — were from His hand,

That left us, faint of voice,

Small margin for a choice.

He gave, I took: shall I not fearless stand?

Hereditary bent

That hedges in intent

He knows, be sure, the God who shaped thy brain.

He loves the souls He made;

He knows His own hand laid

On each the mark of some ancestral stain.

Not souls severely white,

But groping for more light,

Are what Eternal Justice here demands.

Fear not; He made thee dust.

Cling to that sweet word — 'Just'

All's well with thee if thou art in just hands."14

1 For the reasons which lead to this unqualified conclusion the reader is referred to the larger commentaries. A lengthy critical discussion would be outside the purpose of the Short Course Series. W. T. Davison's article on "Job" in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible should by all means be consulted.

2 Chap, xxxii. 18, 19.

3 Chap, xxxiii. 4, 5.

4 Chap, xxxvi. 2-4.

5 Chap, xxxiii. 15-18.

6 Chap, xxxiii. 30.

7 Deuteronomy xxviii. 47-8.

8 2 Corinthians v. 11.

9 The preacher will do well to construct his own analysis of the Elihu speeches contained in chaps. xxxii.-xxxvii., and he cannot do better than take Davidson for guide.

10 Milton, Comus.

11 Fairbairn, The Philosophy of the Christian Religion,

12 1 John i. 9.

13 The late Thomas Goadby, Principal of the Midland Baptist College.

14 Anna Reeve Aldrich.