Chapter Thirty-Three

The conclusion of the introduction and Elihu’s first speech. 1–7. An exhortation addressed to Job to pay careful attention to his speeches. 8–33. A discussion of one of Job’s erroneous views.

Job 33:1. But please, Job, hear my speeches, and listen to all my words. Job 33:2. Behold, I open my mouth; my tongue speaks in my mouth. Job 33:3. My words proceed from the sincerity of my heart, and my lips declare knowledge that is pure. Elihu’s speeches, impartial in content (Job 32:21) and containing nothing but truth (3), must be heard by Job from beginning to end (“listen to all my words”). He should approach them without the prejudice with which he met the reasoning of the friends (Job 13:4).

Job 33:4. The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life. Job 33:5. If you can, answer me; set your words in order before me. Job 33:6. Behold, I am toward God as you are; I too am formed from the clay. Job 33:7. Therefore, fear of me should not alarm you, nor should my hand be heavy upon you. On the other hand, Job can speak with Elihu with complete calm. Both in spiritual (v. 4) and in bodily nature, Elihu is perfectly like Job: “behold, toward God, before God (Hebrew “la-el”, cf. Job 12:16) I am, like you” (v. 6). Elihu is not an overpowering opponent; a dispute with him is perfectly equal, within Job’s power. The latter, without any confusion and fear (v. 7; cf. Job 9:34), can defend his case. The Synodal reading of v. 6: “Behold, I am, according to your wish, instead of God,” finds no justification either in the original text or in Job’s speeches. He, on the contrary, decidedly refuses to debate with men and is eager to bring his case before God’s judgment (Job 13:3-5); all the more does he have no desire whatsoever to see in Elihu the substitute of God.

Job 33:8. You have indeed spoken in my hearing, and I have heard the sound of your words: Job 33:9. “I am pure and without transgression; I am innocent and have no iniquity, Job 33:10. Yet God has found an accusation against me and considers me His enemy; Job 33:11. He has put my feet in the stocks and watches all my paths. Job 33:12. Behold, in this you are not right; I will answer you, because God is greater than man. One of the erroneous opinions held by Job in his conversation with the friends, now being refuted by Elihu. He considered himself pure and blameless (Job 10:7 and following); as a limitation of such a view see Job 8:20-21, and God as “seeking reasons for hostility” (Hebrew “tenuot”; cf. Num 14:34; Job 32:7), a hostile being, binding him like a prisoner (Job 10:13-14). Job is wrong in this because God is “greater than man” (v. 12). To the latter, God’s relation to Job may indeed appear as a manifestation of hostility and anger. But this is because man, limited in understanding, is not capable of grasping the meaning of the actions of God, Who surpasses him in wisdom (“greater than man”). They appear to him hostile, but actually they are not.

Job 33:13. Why do you contend with Him, since He does not give account of any of His matters? Job deduces his thought about God’s hostility to himself, among other things, from the fact that God does not answer him, hides from him (Job 13:24). But in this case too he is also mistaken. God in general does not account for His deeds (cf. Job 9:12), does not explain the motives of His relations to people. To conclude on this basis that in His deeds He is necessarily guided by a feeling of hostility is more than strange.

Job 33:14. God speaks once, indeed twice, but a man does not notice it. What the causes of God’s relations to Job are, one can judge by the analogous ways He affects man.

Job 33:15. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, while they slumber upon their beds,— Job 33:16. Then He opens the ears of men and seals His instruction upon them, Job 33:17. That He may turn a man aside from his deed and suppress pride in man, Job 33:18. To keep his soul back from the pit and his life from perishing by the sword. One of them is dreams. God uses them as a means of communicating a revelation to man (“opens the ears”: cf. 2 Sam 7:27; Ps 39:7) and preserving His instruction from being forgotten (“seals,” literally—“places a seal”: sealing in the sense of preserving Song 4:12; Dan 6:17; Matt 27:66). The purpose of these revelations is to turn a man away from unlawful deed (Russian “enterprise,” Hebrew “maase,” 1 Sam 20:19; Gen 20:3), to remove him from pride (Dan 3), and thus save him from death (“from the pit”; cf. Ps 15:10)—the natural punishment for sin (Gen 3:3).

Job 33:19. Or he is disciplined with pain upon his bed and with continual strife in his bones,— Besides dreams, the Lord uses illness for admonishing man, during which “constant struggle agitates his bones” (cf. Ps 37:4)—the balance and harmony of forces is disturbed, and the members of the body appear to be waging war with one another, fighting for their own existence at the expense of others.

Job 33:20. And his life abhors bread and his appetite the choicest food. Job 33:21. His flesh is consumed away, so that it cannot be seen, and his bones stick out prominently. Job 33:22. And his soul approaches the grave and his life to those who bring death. Natural consequences of illness: the loss of appetite, emaciation, the breakdown of the soul (the bearer of bodily life) and the consignment of life to “lammitim,”—angels who are given authority by God to cause death to man if he does not repent (2 Sam 24:16; Ps 77:49).

Job 33:23. If there is an angel, an interpreter, one of a thousand, to show to man his upright way,— As a corrective measure, the illness that overtakes a man becomes understandable to him with the help of an angel intermediary (Hebrew “melitz,” cf. Gen 42:33; 2 Chr 32:31; Isa 43:27), who shows the sick man the true way (“yashero,” cf. Prov 14:2), that is, the way of faith and repentance for sins as a means to escape death (cf. Gen 48:15; Ps 33:8).

Job 33:24. Then God has compassion on him and says, “Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom for him. The mediation of the angel, who brings the sick man back to consciousness of sin, inclines God’s mercy: in his repentance and suffering He sees a ransom and commands the angel to deliver the repentant from death (Isa 63:9).

Job 33:25. Then his flesh becomes fresher than a boy’s, and he returns to the days of his youth. Job 33:26. He will pray to God, and God will be favorable to him; he will see His face with joy, and God will restore to man his righteousness. The restoration of health to the sick man and the bestowal upon him of God’s righteousness is a thought belonging to Elihu alone in distinction from the friends (cf. Job 5:19 and following; Job 8:21 and following).

Job 33:29. Behold, God does all these things twice or three times with a man, Job 33:30. To bring his soul back from the pit and to illuminate him with the light of the living. The calamities that overtake a man are directed toward his correction and instruction, but do not serve as an expression of divine anger and hostility, as Job asserted.

Job 33:32. If you have anything to say, answer me; speak, for I desire your justification; Job 33:33. But if not, listen to me: be silent, and I will teach you wisdom. Since Elihu’s view of the educative, corrective significance of suffering is new to Job, it is desirable to hear his response to it.