Monday - Job 37 - Elihu Concludes

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ummary: God is mighty and just (fair; or better than fair... generous). Elihu may have gotten many things right, but perhaps he crossed a line into a hypothetical land of sugar and spice in Job 37:23 when he stated that God "will not afflict" ...that is: abase, hurt or do violence to His children. Really? I'll admit that He doesn't enjoy it, but affliction is far too prevalent and useful for anyone to claim that God doesn't use it. Lamentations 3:33 says, "He does not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men" (see also Ezekiel 18:32 & 33:11). But reticence and reluctance to unleash damaging pressure is very far from refusing to use it altogether. Nobody could read our Bible with objective simplicity and imagine that the God of the Bible stops short in allowing and using affliction to teach and even to destroy.

For 2 dozen verses (in this chapter) Elihu speaks about how God uses the weather to accomplish His purposes... sometimes as a blessing; at other times, a curse (Job 37:13). Much of what he says seems to have merit, but his line about affliction misses the mark. God had originally initiated the conversation with Lucifer about Job... knowing all along what would become of that exchange. And, there was not even one thing done by Lucifer that wasn't allowed by God. So, whatever you take the beginning of the next chapter to mean in relation to Elihu, it seems easy enough to figure out that in this one place at the end of his speech, he missed the mark.