00:00:01:21 – 00:00:40:24
Clint Loveall
Friends. Thanks for joining us. Happy Wednesday. We are in a transition point in the book of job. We’re in the 32nd chapter. This is an interesting part of the book, a difficult part of the book, and the book itself is difficult. What we do with this next section is really challenge of interpreting job. The translation is difficult. In this section there are the most number of Aramaic or non Hebrew words in this section than there are.

00:00:40:26 – 00:01:07:50
Clint Loveall
There are more of those than there are in other places of the book. Scholars have really wrestled with what to make of these chapters, probably a loose consensus from many of them is that these appear to be have been added later. Possibly, though it’s very difficult to say that with confidence there is this new character that drops into the story.

00:01:07:50 – 00:01:36:16
Clint Loveall
His name is Elihu, and he’s going to pick up the the refrain of the friends of Job, and he’s unhappy with them. He’s been we get the impression, though he’s not mentioned anywhere else in the book, in the front or the back. We get the impression that he’s been listening, that he’s heard what these people have said, he’s heard what job has said, and now he’s compelled to respond.

00:01:36:16 – 00:02:04:28
Clint Loveall
And I don’t want to bias this. So I’ll just say, I think there are two ways we can read this, Michael. One is to say that Elihu adds something new to the story, that he adds some perspective that has been missed and that he brings some wisdom. And there are Bible scholars and interpreters that would make that case to some extent.

00:02:04:33 – 00:02:32:24
Clint Loveall
The other end of the spectrum is to say he doesn’t really move the narrative. He ends up saying basically the same things the friends have said. And so in that case, maybe he’s there as a character to just reinforce the idea that nobody gets this. And I don’t know that we know which of those is the case.

00:02:32:28 – 00:03:07:55
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, this is a classic case where once you start looking at the scholarly accounts of what different people are doing with the book, you can tell pretty quick when it’s basically a situation where everybody argues and the arguments are opposite each other. So there are very many legitimate ways of reading this character. I think what you’ve got to recognize is job is not as a book put together in such a way, whether it was originally delivered this way or whether it became this way over the years of collection, dissemination, copying.

00:03:07:57 – 00:03:32:24
Michael Gewecke
Right? Regardless of how the fact is, this book is not attempting at any level to make all of the threads perfectly come together. It’s not trying to answer every question cleanly. It’s not trying to end the narrative in such a way that mystery is dispelled. It’s not trying to offer an answer in such a way that you and I could look at it at the end and say, oh, good, suffering is solved.

00:03:32:24 – 00:04:10:20
Michael Gewecke
And this gets really practical because ultimately Elihu is going to come and he’s going to make some arguments as to why job is suffering, which will contradict the the very first words we have between God and the Saturn about why job is going to suffer. So Elihu doesn’t have insight that the other friends didn’t have necessarily. On the other hand, Elihu is going to go further than what these other three discourses did in offering up some proposed solutions to this problem of why suffering.

00:04:10:30 – 00:04:33:16
Michael Gewecke
He has some ideas which are in some ways generative. Now scholars are going to debate is he eloquent and wise? And this is written in the language and the vernacular and the tone of wisdom in that time, or is this a parody? Is he a fool, putting on wise trappings? And is he saying things that are pompous and sound like they’re good?

00:04:33:16 – 00:04:52:02
Michael Gewecke
But the point of what he’s saying is to basically create a bridge between these friends who thought they know it all this young, arrogant kid. And then ultimately, job is going to have an encounter with the Almighty. Maybe this is a literary bridge to get there. You’re going to find people who are going to argue all of those perspectives.

00:04:52:02 – 00:05:05:50
Michael Gewecke
So we have to go into an account of Elihu recognizing that this is not an open shut case of of who Allah, who is and what he represents and what’s happening with him in the book.

00:05:05:52 – 00:05:24:31
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And having said that, I want to be clear. We want to just dispel any illusions. We won’t know that at the end of these next couple chapters, you and I are not going to stumble upon this. The answer to this.

00:05:24:33 – 00:05:25:36
Michael Gewecke
Find another video.

00:05:25:38 – 00:05:28:52
Clint Loveall
That may be.

00:05:28:57 – 00:05:59:19
Clint Loveall
Maybe even intentionally confusing it. It may have even functioned or been added to this book to increase our conclusion that at the end of the day, we’re dealing with things we can’t know. And maybe that’s part of a lie. Whose purpose? But let’s get in here and at least look at what occasions him to speak. It’s very interesting.

00:05:59:19 – 00:06:31:33
Clint Loveall
We just so the three men cease to answer job because he was righteous in his own eyes. Then Elihu became angry and anger. If you pay attention, I think angry gets used maybe four times here in this few verses. He was angry at job because he justified himself rather than God. He was angry at jobs, three friends because they found no answer, though they had declared job to be in the wrong.

00:06:31:38 – 00:06:59:50
Clint Loveall
Now, Elihu had waited to speak to job because they were older than he, but when Elihu saw that there were no answers in the mouth of the men, he became angry. And then most of this introductory stuff is Elihu saying, I waited to speak. You’re older and supposed, supposedly wiser than I am, but I can’t contain it anymore.

00:06:59:55 – 00:07:22:43
Clint Loveall
I have to say something. It’s not always the old that have wisdom. I have wisdom, I have to share it. It’s burning in me and I have to get it out. I think that makes a lot. Who kind of an interesting character, Michael. I don’t know if others have struggled with this, but certainly I continue to struggle with it.

00:07:22:43 – 00:07:54:24
Clint Loveall
But I think as a young person, that idea of hearing something and just wanting to, wanting to get your opinion out, wanting to be heard, wanting to confront a professor or jump into a conversation because you believed you had something to say. And Elihu here is agitated as he’s heard this. He believes he has insight. He believes the friends have failed to defend God well or to convict job.

00:07:54:24 – 00:08:22:52
Clint Loveall
And so he launches in. And if we jump through, maybe verse 18, I’m full of words. My the spirit within constrains me. My heart is like wine that has no vent. Like a new wine skin ready to burst. I must speak so that I find relief. I must open my lips and answer. I will not show partiality to anyone or use flattery.

00:08:22:52 – 00:08:50:14
Clint Loveall
I do not know how to flatter, or my maker would soon put an end to me, which is an interesting foreshadowing of the kind of things that he’s about to say. But Elihu here is moved with passion. And I again, Michael, what is the author trying to do here? He presents this as though Elihu has some nugget of wisdom that he just has to get out.

00:08:50:14 – 00:09:12:31
Clint Loveall
And we we, maybe, as a reader, are prepared. Oh, this is we’re this is where we’re going to get something deep, something substantive, something significant. I won’t spoil it, but I’ll let people judge as we go through this, whether that happens or not. But certainly the text seems to be nudging us toward that expectation.

00:09:12:31 – 00:09:47:43
Michael Gewecke
I think the only thing I would add here would be, and I think verse 15 helps illustrate that they are dismayed. They answer no more. They have not a word to say. I think one of the things that Elihu does is presents the account that these friends have made the case that they have built to be non satisfactory, basically, to say, you haven’t argued this well, I’ve sat and I’ve listened and I’ve tried to hear you out and that you there’s more to it, there’s more that can be said and you all have wound yourself up.

00:09:47:45 – 00:10:08:28
Michael Gewecke
I, I’m sure Clint, we’ve all been in a situation where someone was arguing for something that we believed in, and we heard the argument and thought to ourselves, well, that’s a horrible way to present it, that I would have said it this way, or I think you could make a better case. I get that sense here, that Elihu, is that pride.

00:10:08:28 – 00:10:47:12
Michael Gewecke
Is it rooted in fact? Is is it trying to create the a new act in which we are already getting tuned into this idea that there is going to be a divine encounter necessary, that you could look at it from all those different perspectives. But I do think there’s a way in which ally who helps job the book, signal to us that the case made by jobs, friends and maybe as we’re going to see a light who go on maybe jobs case also all find themselves wanting when put under the microscope from a different perspective.

00:10:47:16 – 00:11:20:48
Clint Loveall
Yeah. You know, maybe there’s a a helpful guidance in the early part of the text where, you know, those several times we’re told that Elihu is angry. And that’s a word that can just mean agitated. He’s frustrated. He’s he’s boiling over. I suspect one could count very few significantly productive conversations in life that begin from a place of anger.

00:11:20:52 – 00:11:56:02
Clint Loveall
We are generally not at our best when we’re speaking in anger. You know, later in the New Testament, you’ll get be slow to speak, slow to anger. And Elihu here has been slow to speak. In fairness, he’s let the older men speak first. But I think it helps to remember that we begin with him being upset because he is going to go on to say some pretty harsh things to job and about job.

00:11:56:02 – 00:12:24:33
Clint Loveall
And you know, that anger does find does find event here. So chapter 33 is kind of when he jumps in here. My speech. Oh job. Verse six Before God I’m like you, I was not formed from a piece of clay. So no fear of me need terrify you. My pressure will not be heavy on you. This is something very different.

00:12:24:48 – 00:12:35:55
Clint Loveall
You know. I’m job. I’m. I’m a mortal. I’m. I’m not here to attack you. Although.

00:12:36:00 – 00:12:58:48
Clint Loveall
Verse nine, you say I’m clean without transgression. I’m pure. There’s no iniquity in me. Job hasn’t really said that, but he has certainly leaned that direction. He finds occasions against me. He counts me as his enemy. He puts my feet in stocks and watches my path. But in this job, you are not right. I will answer you. God is greater than any mortal.

00:12:59:02 – 00:13:23:43
Clint Loveall
Why do you contend against him? Saying he will answer none of my words, for God speaks in one way and in two, though people might not perceive it. Then he goes on to kind of flesh this out in. In other words, God does speak, and sometimes people don’t hear him because they haven’t listened. Sometimes the speech of God is mysterious, dreamlike, or envisions.

00:13:23:48 – 00:14:01:28
Clint Loveall
And so this is a challenge against jobs contention that God has been silent and and partly Elihu here makes, I think, a two fold argument that is actually pretty good. God is more than mortals, and we don’t always understand the ways in which he speaks to us and and comes to us. The ways in which God interacts with us are sometimes a mystery beyond our understanding.

00:14:01:28 – 00:14:20:50
Clint Loveall
I actually think that’s pretty good, Michael. I mean, that’s not a bad place to start on, unfortunately. I mean, he’s going to amp up the intensity on it, but I, I think it would be hard to argue with either of those points.

00:14:20:55 – 00:14:58:33
Michael Gewecke
I don’t know if we’ll see this bore out. I think a person can make an argument that Elihu has a little bit of a slow burn. And I do think as the text continues on and his argument becomes stronger, maybe almost, you even get a sense that he’s getting confidence as he goes. I’m reading that into the text, but I think as we go, what you’ve got to recognize here is the core argument I see Elijah making from the jump is to say that the gap between you and God, job is one in which you wanting to have voice with him is ridiculous.

00:14:58:36 – 00:15:38:50
Michael Gewecke
The idea that the mortal wants to take into account the divine, the fact that the person born of Clay wants to demand justice from the creator of Clay. I read this as being a kind of step back, trying to point out the gap between where Joe feels he is versus where he actually is, and God’s created economy, and then ultimately, this idea that we’re we are often quick to not hear the ways that God does actually speak, a way that God’s even gracious and accommodating.

00:15:39:04 – 00:15:59:19
Michael Gewecke
Yes, there is a dream. Yes, food came again today. Like there is a kind of wisdom in in that word of saying that we get after God and you want something from God, even though this gap is way larger job than what you think it is. Yet even with that gap, God is still been accommodating you in ways you might not be giving credit for.

00:15:59:21 – 00:16:06:40
Michael Gewecke
I think both of those tease out, if not new. I do think they’re constructive paths forward from the previous arguments.

00:16:06:40 – 00:16:52:43
Clint Loveall
I agree, and I don’t. I don’t know that they’re subsequently different than what the three friends have said. But if you read, oh, I don’t know, versus say 16, 17 down through 20, maybe 28, 27, Elihu is making the case that there is a corrective, there is a sort of corrective pathway of suffering. In other words, whereas the friends would argue and did to some extent that suffering is an expressions of an expression of God’s displeasure to correct and to move somebody back on the path.

00:16:52:48 – 00:17:16:50
Clint Loveall
Elihu, I think, leans into that a little stronger. They they are chastened by the pain upon their beds, and with continual strife in their bones, so that their lives loathe bread, their flesh is wasted. But this is to deliver them from the pit. Then they pray to God. They are accepted by God. He comes into the presence with joy, and God repays him for his righteousness.

00:17:16:50 – 00:17:53:52
Clint Loveall
That person sings to others and said, I, I’ve sinned. I perverted what was right and it was not paid back to me. He redeemed my soul from going down to the pit, which is a repeat of jobs earlier words, and my life shall see the light. And again Elihu begins to at least add some depth to the idea that suffering is punitive, because here not only is it punishment, but it is a pathway that leads people back to God.

00:17:53:52 – 00:18:22:04
Clint Loveall
Now, ultimately, again, job will argue that that’s not his situation, but job has said he feels distanced from God, and job has not looked at his suffering as a pathway back to God. But the problem that is between He and God. And so I do think there is a nuance to this that we did not see in the argument of the friends.

00:18:22:09 – 00:18:38:14
Clint Loveall
And I think, you know, I had you lie who stopped here. It might have it might have been helpful. But I do think this does sound a touch different from what we’ve heard.

00:18:38:16 – 00:19:25:55
Michael Gewecke
So I think the language that gets at what you’re saying here, Clint, is in verse two of 32 to go backwards a little bit. So Elihu was angry at Joe because Joe justified himself rather than God. And that language, I think, really matters. And it really accentuates your point. Justified himself. I think here in these first chapters, you see, Eli, who making that case, exactly that, this idea that you have nothing wrong with you or in, you know, iniquity, despite no matter how faithful you attempted to be, the the pride, you have job to think that God can’t use suffering to bring you on a path of reconciliation and reconnection it regardless if you want

00:19:25:57 – 00:19:51:16
Michael Gewecke
to start in that area of what exactly Jobe did wrong, which is the case jobs been vehemently arguing you can’t make against him. I do think that Elihu is taking a different tack here is to say, okay, instead of us trying to nail down what you did wrong, let’s ask the question how God’s actions or how this suffering might be a vessel by which God could do something productive, even job?

00:19:51:16 – 00:20:10:52
Michael Gewecke
If you don’t totally understand the argument, I think I’m being very generous in that interpretation. But I think if you wanted to give a lie, who up to this point credit for redirecting conversation, I think that would be the argument I would take that he’s making, I think, a counterargument, and I’d be interested in your thoughts on this.

00:20:11:00 – 00:20:32:38
Michael Gewecke
I think it kind of argument could be made that this is really a similar argument with a different frame. And I think you could argue that really what Elihu is tempted to do here in this is to tell job ultimately shut up and accept the suffering because you have it coming whether you like it or not. And he he comes at it.

00:20:32:40 – 00:20:43:26
Michael Gewecke
Up to this point, I think a little bit more generously, a little less caustically, though, I don’t know that that will hold. And I do think you could argue either of those perspectives so far.

00:20:43:31 – 00:21:19:16
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And and again, that’s the challenge and the wisdom and the amazing thing about this book, if we were reading it independent of the beginning of the prolog, sure, we could say, yeah, there’s something to this, but the assumption in ly who makes is the same assumption that the friends have made. That job is distanced from God, and he’s going to be very comfortable in a moment or in, in the words to come saying that that’s jobs fault.

00:21:19:21 – 00:21:59:28
Clint Loveall
We know that’s not the case, right? And though the language of that he justified himself rather than God is that’s a little problematic. We do know from the beginning of the story that sin is not what occasioned right job suffering. In fact, exactly the opposite. Righteousness is what occasion jobs, suffering. And so, while I do think there are nuggets of wisdom here, I do think Elihu says some things that in a general conversation about the nature of suffering could be helpful.

00:21:59:31 – 00:22:30:12
Clint Loveall
I’m not sure they’re particularly helpful to job. And interestingly enough, as he ends chapter 33, he says, pay heed, job, listen to me. Be silent. I will speak. If you have anything to say, answer me. Speak, for I desire to justify you. I have the answers. Job. If you listen to me say anything and job doesn’t speak, and the fact that job doesn’t speak, I think may be significant here.

00:22:30:16 – 00:22:50:33
Clint Loveall
And then Elihu says, if not, listen to me, be silent and I will teach you wisdom. This is I wonder if this is a breadcrumb trail toward what’s coming next. There seems to be a note of.

00:22:50:38 – 00:22:57:09
Clint Loveall
Generously speaking. We call it confidence. We might call it arrogance.

00:22:57:14 – 00:23:04:04
Michael Gewecke
That’s why I say, I think the train’s getting speed. I think he’s building up and getting confidence as he goes.

00:23:04:07 – 00:23:31:45
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I mean, I will, I will say, you know, this is just my own bias, so please be aware of that, everybody. But I think if we could limit Elihu comments to chapter 32 and 33, he is a less problematic character than he will be in where he takes the next couple of chapters.

00:23:31:50 – 00:23:39:38
Clint Loveall
I think it’s it’s not getting better in some ways, but we’ll take a look at that tomorrow.

00:23:39:50 – 00:23:56:45
Michael Gewecke
That’s enough for today. Thanks for being with us. I certainly hope that you will engage in the ongoing conversation with us in the comments below. Like this video helps others find it as they study scripture themselves. Subscribe so you do not miss how this continues. Because friends, there’s many more twists left in the book of Job. Don’t miss any of them.

00:23:56:48 – 00:23:57:35
Michael Gewecke
We’ll see you tomorrow.

00:23:57:36 – 00:23:58:12
Clint Loveall
Thanks, everybody.