Biblion Bible Commentary
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Elihu: His Eyes Are on the Ways of a Man
Job 34:21-37
21 “For his eyes are on the ways of a man. He sees all his goings. · WEB
God needs no investigation because he already sees, and Elihu's case ends by wishing the trial extended.
The section opens with an answer to Job's complaint about being watched. His eyes are on the ways of a man. He sees all his goings Job 34:21.
Job had experienced that as surveillance and asked to be left alone long enough to swallow Job 7:19. Elihu presents the same fact as the ground of justice: there is no darkness, nor thick gloom, where the workers of iniquity may hide Job 34:22.
And then a legal point that answers the demand for a hearing. He doesn't need to consider a man further, that he should go before God in judgment Job 34:23. Human courts exist to establish facts nobody knows. God does not need to convene one, because the discovery stage is unnecessary.
That is a real answer to Job's request for a trial, and it is not a satisfying one. Job never asked for an inquiry into what he did; he asked to be told the charge. Elihu has explained why God need not investigate, which is a different question.
One clause in the middle is easy to pass and it names something the whole book has been circling. Rulers are overturned because they turned away from following him... so that they caused the cry of the poor to come to him. He heard the cry of the afflicted Job 34:27–28.
God's action against the powerful is triggered by a cry from below. Job had asked why there were no set days for judgment while the poor were being stripped Job 24:1–12, and this is an answer to that too: the cry reaches, and it is what moves.
Then the sentence that goes furthest, and it cuts both ways. When he gives quietness, who then can condemn? When he hides his face, who then can see him? Job 34:29.
God's silence is not a failure of the system; it is within his freedom, and no one is in a position to appeal it. That is true, and it is precisely what Job finds unbearable. Elihu has correctly identified God's right and has said nothing to a man who is dying of it.
The questions in verses 31 and 32 are the fairest thing in the speech, and they describe what Elihu wishes Job would say: teach me that which I don't see. If I have done iniquity, I will do it no more Job 34:32. He is not asking for a false confession. He is asking for an openness to correction rather than a demand for acquittal.
But the close undoes the good of it. Elihu quotes the wise men's verdict — Job speaks without knowledge Job 34:35 — and adds a wish of his own: I wish that Job were tried to the end, because of his answering like wicked men Job 34:36.
He wants the testing prolonged. The reader knows what the testing is and what it has already cost, and this is the sentence for which Elihu, like the friends, has no standing at all.
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