"God thunders wondrously with his voice; he does great things that we cannot comprehend" (Job 37:5).

Elihu, the youngest of the speakers, patiently waits for his elders to finish before responding to Job. Unlike the others, Elihu does not assume that Job must have sinned because he is suffering. Instead, he rebukes Job for his present sin of challenging God's justice in afflicting him. In making his case, Elihu points to the unknowable greatness of God. People can only behold His work from afar (Job 36:25); otherwise they are ignorant of God's perfect ways.

Friends, about a month ago I asked you to pray for my mother, who was undergoing brain surgery to remove a tumor. I asked for two things: her salvation and her healing. Praise God! He has answered the greater of the two requests. Just about a week ago, she told me that she trusted in Jesus as the One who died for her sins and rose again. I cannot begin to express how my soul rejoices in this. Yet I will be bold to continue praying for the other request, that she might be physically healed and completely restored.

I will not follow the presumptuous folly of some who "prophesy" God's healing, but I will boldly pray, and ask for prayer, that God, in His providence and grace and for His glory, might heal her.

Two doctors give her six to twelve months to live, even with radiation and chemotherapy. At present she has virtually no mobility on her left side, and she remains in a state of constant fatigue. Even so, please pray with me for God's favor on my mother — to heal her and restore her completely, according to His will.

There is much we do not understand and much we cannot begin to comprehend, but rather than feel anguish over this, we can trust and hope in the Lord, for He alone is perfect in wisdom, in power, and in righteousness.

AI-Expanded Reflection

Elihu's final speech (Job 36–37) builds toward the storm out of which God will speak in chapter 38. He describes God gathering the rain, sending the lightning, and commanding the snow, then says, "Stop and consider the wondrous works of God" (37:14). His words prepare Job, and the reader, for the encounter that follows. As noted at #1923, interpreters differ on how to evaluate Elihu, but his emphasis on God's incomprehensible greatness sets the stage for God's own answer.

The comment holds joy and grief together in a way the Psalms often do. The greater prayer — for a mother's salvation — had been answered; the other remained in God's hands. Its refusal to "prophesy" a healing while still praying boldly for one reflects the posture of Scripture's great prayers: the leper who said, "Lord, if you will, you can make me clean" (Matthew 8:2), and Jesus in Gethsemane, "not my will, but yours, be done" (Luke 22:42). Bold asking and humble surrender are not opposites; together they are the heart of faithful prayer in the face of serious illness.

What’s in it for me? What’s the use of living a righteous life? (Job 35:3)

Elihu's criticism of Job strikes at the heart of another major theological lesson in this book: If the righteous suffer as the wicked, what is the use of being righteous? Generations later, the chief musician in King David's royal court would also ask,

Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence. All day long I have been afflicted, and every morning brings new punishments (Psalm 73:13–14).

Again, if the righteous suffer as the wicked, what use is there of being righteous?

Asaph received his answer when he entered the sanctuary of God:

When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny. Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin. Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory (Psalm 73:16–18, 23–24).

The final destiny of the wicked is destruction, but the final destiny of the righteous is glory. Thus, a perspectival change in Asaph gave him the true picture. Even though there was inequity and confusion in this life, where the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper, there will be a day of reckoning, a day of judgment.

And for the righteous sufferers, even though they suffer in this life, there will be glory in their future. Job recognized this as well:

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; I myself will see him with my own eyes —I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me! (Job 19:25–27).

This is why Paul could also write in Romans 8:18,23,

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us... Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.

Even the LORD Jesus endured what He did because of the future joy that awaited Him. And He is to be our example in this:

For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart (Hebrews 12:2–3).

What is this joy, this hope, this glory? It is the resurrection, of which Paul writes,

For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied (1 Corinthians 15:16–19).

If there is no resurrection, Christians are "of all people to be most pitied." Why? Because this is the hope for which any and every suffering can be even joyfully endured. This is also why Paul writes repeatedly that believers need to be heaven-focused, even as they live their earthly lives:

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory (Colossians 3:1–4).

This, then, is the problem with our times. We are too earthly-minded and earthly-focused. Heaven is just a post-mortem insurance policy. Our lives reflect our much greater embrace of earthly realities than heavenly hopes. We put our trust in what we can see and touch, even though we know these things pass away and are passing away.

This also explains the appeal of prosperity theology, which teaches that God rewards good behavior in the here and now. But the New Testament clearly teaches that the prevailing characteristic of a Christian's life will be suffering and persecution in this life, as attested by the suffering and martyrdom of Christ and all the apostles, even so, people want to believe, like the Jews of Jesus' day, a "kingdom now" theology, where Christ is already on the throne.

But, as Paul also reminded the hearers of his day, the resurrection is not yet, for people still sin and people still die. But we look forward to that future resurrection, where our mortality will be swallowed up by immortality. With this hope in view, we labor to live lives pleasing to God.

Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed — in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory"... Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:51–54,58).

Therefore, friends, let's not live day by day, praying and serving the Lord for the benefits we might receive in this life. Let's not take the experiences of this life as a barometer for the meaningfulness of a righteous life. But let us live diligently for the Lord with heaven in view and for the benefits that endure forever.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The question “What is the use of righteousness?” exposes the transactional assumption under examination throughout Job. If obedience is worthwhile only because it purchases preferable circumstances, then suffering appears to invalidate it. The adversary raised precisely that suspicion about Job's devotion in the opening chapter. Elihu's treatment of the question therefore belongs to the book's central concern: whether a person can honor God as God, rather than merely as the provider of a protected life.

Psalm 73 broadens that struggle. Asaph's changed perspective includes the precarious end of the wicked, but also the surpassing good of God's presence. The psalm does not merely replace a short-term profit calculation with a longer-term one. Its climax declares that nearness to God is good and that God is the psalmist's portion even when flesh and heart fail. The original rightly stresses final destiny; the relational center of the psalm makes that destiny more than compensation for having endured less favorable conditions.

Job 19:25–27 has long been read by Christians in the light of resurrection. Its immediate language concerns a living redeemer or vindicator who will finally establish Job's cause, and the Hebrew wording about seeing God in or apart from flesh is debated. A Christian canonical reading can connect that hope with Christ without assuming that Job possessed the full detail of Paul's account in 1 Corinthians 15. There the resurrection is explicit and indispensable: Christ's rising grounds forgiveness, the future of believers who have died, and the enduring worth of labor in the Lord.

The contrast with prosperity teaching should also preserve the New Testament's “already” and “not yet.” Colossians 3:1, quoted in the original, places Christ at God's right hand now; Acts 2:32–36 and Ephesians 1:20–23 likewise affirm his present exaltation. The future bodily resurrection and the final removal of death remain awaited. Rejecting a promise of present universal prosperity therefore does not require denying Christ's present reign. Nor does the New Testament document the martyrdom of every apostle, though it clearly anticipates suffering and records the deaths of some witnesses.

Heavenly mindedness becomes practical in this framework. It gives courage to resist profitable dishonesty, patience when faithful work is overlooked, and freedom to share resources without requiring immediate return. It also encourages care for bodies and creation, because resurrection promises their redemption rather than their irrelevance. Our labor matters not because it secures a favorable bargain, but because it belongs to the risen Lord whose victory prevents it from being finally futile.

Job responds to his friends: Do you think this is just, to say "I'm in the right, not God"? What do you gain by refusing to sin? Look up at the heavens and consider them — if you sin, how does that affect Him? If your sins multiply, what does that actually do to Him? If you're righteous, what do you give Him, or what does He receive from your hand? Your wickedness only touches other people like yourself, just as your righteousness only benefits other people (a paraphrase of Job 35:2–8). Whether I'm righteous or sinful doesn't change who God is, yet He deeply cares for me anyway, undeserving as I am. About a week ago, we found newborn baby hares in our backyard — my dog started sniffing frantically at a small hole where four of them were making squeaking noises, clearly upset at being disturbed. The Texas heat was intense, and their mother seemed to have abandoned them; three died, likely from malnutrition, and were then attacked by ants. I rescued the one still alive, and my daughter Anna named him Harry, though we had no real way of knowing if that fit. My children and I tried to take the mother hare's place, taking turns holding him for hours since hares need a confined, secure environment, and it seemed to be working — but we lost Harry yesterday anyway. Anna cried, and I felt the weight of it too. I keep thinking about today's reading in connection with Harry. Even though that baby hare meant nothing to our actual lives, we still rescued him out of pure compassion and cared for him deeply. It made me feel my own inadequacy next to God's love for me — He cares for me just as deeply, even though I've been nobody to Him. I couldn't save Harry because I lacked the knowledge to do it, but God, who saved me, knows everything about me and is more than capable of caring for me. I'm resting in the ocean of His grace this morning. He is good!

AI-Expanded Reflection

The parallel this comment draws — compassion extended to a creature that "meant nothing" to the family's actual lives — is a genuinely useful illustration of a point Job 35 itself is making about the asymmetry between our actions and God's nature. Job's argument is that human righteousness or wickedness doesn't add to or subtract from God at all, and yet Scripture consistently insists God still cares intensely about human beings anyway. This family's response to Harry the hare models exactly that kind of care: nothing about the hare's survival benefited them practically, and yet the compassion was real and costly in time and attention regardless. That's a small, tangible picture of a love that isn't transactional — offered fully even when there's genuinely nothing to be gained from offering it.

Reading Elihu's response to Job and his three friends, I find myself thinking he comes nearer the truth than the others. Unlike the three friends, Elihu doesn't accuse Job of any specific sin — instead he challenges Job's underlying presumption that since no one can point to a specific sin, God must therefore be unjust in afflicting him. God says Job's three friends were not right, but notably never says this about Elihu; in fact, it's something of a compliment to Elihu that God enters the conversation immediately after his speech, with striking parallels between the two. Elihu essentially asks Job, "Who are you to question God?" and piles up unanswerable questions to make his point; God asks the same kind of question in His own response, only raising the difficulty even further. Elihu accuses Job of multiplying words without knowledge (a paraphrase of Job 35:16); God brings the identical accusation, asking who obscures His plans with words lacking knowledge (a paraphrase of Job 38:2). Part of me wonders whether God intervened precisely when He did in order to keep Job from responding to Elihu the way he'd responded to the other three — if Job had tried to defend himself against Elihu specifically, he might have ended up in the wrong. Instead, God's timing effectively lends authority to Elihu's argument. Elihu's own name, meaning "My God is He," fits his central point about God's sovereignty rather well. One lesson here might be not to underestimate the insight of the young, since Elihu was admittedly the youngest voice in the conversation. But the larger truth is that God is sovereign, does as He pleases, and isn't bound by the laws He sets for mankind. Does God only afflict the wicked, never the upright? Job alone disproves that — and even without this book, plenty of other examples would too. The real stumbling block for people is assuming that because God isn't the one doing the immediate afflicting, He must not be involved at all. Does God's sovereignty stop with the actions of the wicked? Or, as it's sometimes put, does God's sovereignty stop at the boundary of free will? There's a popular movie built on exactly that premise — that God can't override a person's free will — and plenty of popular commentators argue the same thing. My own view is that "free will," in the fullest sense, belongs to God alone, since true freedom means being free from any external influence whatsoever, and no human being can claim that. It's by God's own free will that He chose Israel — the smallest and, by its own account, the most stubborn and rebellious of peoples. In the same way, it's by God's free will that He chose us, undeserving as we are of His grace. Perhaps the closest humanity ever came to real free will was Adam in the garden — and what did he do with it? He sinned, and as Paul writes, through that one man's sin, sin entered the world and spread to everyone (a paraphrase of Romans 5:12). Whatever freedom humanity once had is long gone. Only God retains a truly free will — which is part of His very nature, as He told Moses: He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy, and compassion on whom He will have compassion (a paraphrase of Exodus 33:19). Notice what God doesn't say — He doesn't say He'll show mercy to the righteous or compassion to those who deserve it; He simply chooses, without any additional reason or qualification. Job's three friends kept adding reasons and qualifications, and God rebuked them for it. Elihu had the right perspective: God is sovereign and does as He pleases, and He afflicted Job not because Job sinned, but because He chose to. Let's praise God for His sovereignty, and thank Him for the mercy He's freely and generously extended to us.

AI-Expanded Reflection

This comment builds toward a strongly Reformed, sovereignty-centered account of both suffering and salvation, explicitly extending its argument to reject "free will" theology in salvation entirely. As with similar comments elsewhere in this project, it's worth noting that this remains one of historic Christianity's most sincerely contested internal debates — Reformed and Arminian/Wesleyan traditions both affirm God's sovereignty and human sinfulness while disagreeing on precisely how divine sovereignty and human responsibility relate in the moment of choosing faith, and thoughtful, faithful theologians continue to land differently on it. What's less contested across traditions is the specific point Elihu's speech makes and this comment highlights well: however the sovereignty-and-freedom question gets resolved, human beings remain in no position to put God's justice on trial, which is the error Job himself is corrected for — not for asking honest questions, but for effectively demanding God answer to a human court.