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Elihu continued speaking and said,2 📚“Do you think this is just? You say, ‘My righteousness is more than God’s 📖.’
3 📚For you say, ‘What advantage would it be to you 📖, what benefit would I have, if I refrained from sinning?’
35:1-3 Elihu thinks he has suitably dealt with Job’s words about God’s justice. Now he takes up a second complaint he has against Job. He had already stated it in Job 34:9. See note there.⚜
4 📚“I will answer you, and your companions with you.
5 📚Look at the heavens and see, and gaze at the clouds which are higher than you.
6 📚If you sin, what are you doing to him? Or if your transgressions are increased, what are you doing to him?
7 📚If you are righteous, what are you giving him? Or what does he receive from your hand?
8 📚Your wickedness hurts a man like yourself, and your righteousness helps only a son of man.
35:4-8 Man’s deeds, whether good or bad, cannot really affect God, Elihu says. God is exalted above the heavens, He is completely self-sufficient. Nothing that man does can add anything to God or take anything away from Him. He deals with men with impartial justice. He has arranged matters in such a way that man’s righteous deeds or evil deeds affect only men. For these reasons righteousness is profitable to men, and wickedness unprofitable. In this Elihu was not altogether accurate. All sins are against God (Ps 51:4); they cause Him pain and grief (Gen 6:6); eventually the Son of God would take on Himself sin's punishment for all His chosen people (Isa 53:4-6), and meant sufferings and death to Him; and God gets satisfaction from the righteous deeds of His people, and their lives are significant in the unseen war going on between God and Satan (Job 1:8-12; 2:3-6).⚜
9 📚“The people cry out because of the many acts of oppression; they cry out because of the arm of the mighty.
10 📚But no one says, ‘Where is God, my Maker, who gives songs in the night,
11 📚Who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth, and makes us wiser than the birds of the sky?’
12 📚There they cry out, but he does not answer, because of the pride of evil men.
13 📚Certainly God will not listen to an empty cry; the Almighty will not pay attention to it.
14 📚Although you say you do not see him, yet the case for judgment is before him, and you must wait for him.
15 📚But now, because he has not punished in his anger, in his great extremity Job does not understand.
35:9-15 Does Job think righteousness is unprofitable because God does not hear the cries of the righteous? Evidently Elihu thinks that Job thinks so. Certainly this is an idea that Satan inserts into many people’s minds. Many true believers also are sometimes tested on this point. They sometimes are tempted to think when they get no answers to their prayers that serving God is useless. Elihu says there are good reasons why God does not hear men when they cry out in their misery.
First, they do not acknowledge God as Creator and Teacher and direct their cries to Him alone (vs 10,11). They act as if they had learned no more than dumb beasts. If they humbly pray to their Maker He would give them “songs in the night” – joy in the midst of troubles.
Second, God often ignores men’s cries because they are both wicked and arrogant. So their prayers are empty and insincere (vs 12,13). In vs 14-16 Elihu applies this to Job. God, he says, is even less likely to hear Job’s pleas than those of wicked, arrogant men. Why? Because of the way Job speaks. According to Elihu, Job has fully denied God’s justice (vs 14,15); so he must be even worse than the arrogant and wicked man. “Teaches” (v 11) – This could also be translated “Who teaches us by the beasts of the earth and makes us wise by the birds of the air”. “Wait for him” (v 14) – the Hebrew here does not mean “trust thou in him” (KJV). “Extremity” (v 15) – the Hebrew word here also means weakness or folly or stupidity. This whole sentence in Hebrew is obscure and difficult.⚜
16 📚Therefore Job opens his mouth for empty talk. He multiplies words without knowledge”.