Elihu: What Does It Profit You?
1 Moreover Elihu answered, 2 “Do you think this to be your right, or do you say, ‘My righteousness is more than God’s,’ 3 that you ask, ‘What advantage will it be to you? What profit will I have, more than if I had sinned?’ 4 I will answer you, and your companions with you. 5 Look to the skies, and see. See the skies, which are higher than you. 6 If you have sinned, what effect do you have against him? If your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to him? 7 If you are righteous, what do you give him? Or what does he receive from your hand? 8 Your wickedness may hurt a man as you are, and your righteousness may profit a son of man. 9 “By reason of the multitude of oppressions they cry out. They cry for help by reason 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 animals of the earth, and makes us wiser than the birds of the sky?’ 12 There they cry, but no one answers, because of the pride of evil men. 13 Surely God will not hear an empty cry, neither will the Almighty regard it. 14 How much less when you say you don’t see him. The cause is before him, and you wait for him! 15 But now, because he has not visited in his anger, neither does he greatly regard arrogance, 16 therefore Job opens his mouth with empty talk, and he multiplies words without knowledge.”
God gains nothing from a man's goodness and loses nothing by his sin, which removes the transaction the whole book has been arguing about.
Elihu takes up the question Job asked in chapter 7 and answers it, which nobody else attempted. Job had said if I have sinned, what do I do to you, you watcher of men? Job 7:20.
The answer is put twice, symmetrically. If you have sinned, what effect do you have against him?... If you are righteous, what do you give him? Or what does he receive from your hand? Job 35:6–7.
He prefaces it with an instruction to look up: look to the skies, and see. See the skies, which are higher than you Job 35:5. The distance is the argument. Nothing a human being does adds to God or takes from him, and this cuts the ground out from under both sides of the debate.
It undoes the accuser's premise from the first chapter, which was that Job's piety was bought and paid for Job 1:9–10. If God gains nothing from human righteousness, he has nothing to buy it with in that sense, and the transaction the whole book has been arguing over does not exist.
It also answers the friends, whose system runs on a ledger — good conduct in, prosperity out. And it answers Job, who has been asking for a settlement of accounts.
Where the effect does land is stated in the next verse and it is not nothing: your wickedness may hurt a man as you are, and your righteousness may profit a son of man Job 35:8. Human conduct matters enormously, and it matters horizontally. It is other people who are damaged or helped.
The second half deals with unanswered prayer, and it is harsher. People cry out under oppression, but no one says, 'Where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night' Job 35:9–10.
The distinction is between a cry of pain and a cry to God. Elihu says the oppressed often want relief without wanting the one who relieves, and that such a cry is not really addressed to anyone — God will not hear an empty cry Job 35:13.
That is a real distinction and it is being applied to the wrong man. Job has spent thirty chapters addressing God directly, by name, insisting on being heard. Whatever else is true of him, his cry is not empty. Elihu's category is sound and his aim is off.
One phrase in the passage is finer than anything the friends produced. God gives songs in the night Job 35:10. Not deliverance from the night, and not an explanation of it. Something to sing while it is still dark.
settled What this mark means