JOB 30, 31, and 32
Compared with Job’s glorious past, his present is deplorable. His contemporaries, who once revered him, have taken the opportunity to ‘put the boot in’! Job 30:1,9-11 NIV. “But now they mock me, men younger than I, whose fathers I would have disdained to put with my sheep dogs. [9] “And now those young men mock me in song; I have become a byword among them. [10] They detest me and keep their distance; they do not hesitate to spit in my face. [11] Now that God has unstrung my bow and afflicted me, they throw off restraint in my presence. Job has lost respect, dignity, sleep, status, and peace; and yet God seems to ignore all his prayers too.
In Chapter 31, it is as though Job was making a deposition in a heavenly court case, ticking off the sins that he has avoided committing and ‘signing’ his statement at the bottom. His ‘defence’ is now complete!
Today in Chapter 32, a new character appears on the scene: Elihu, whose name means ‘He is my God’. A man is never going to be half-hearted with a name like that! Having waited for his elders to exhaust their arguments with Job, he now takes the opportunity to launch his own defence of God’s position and to attack what he sees as Job’s self-justification. He is young, zealous, and with the undiluted idealism that comes with youth. He reacts rather strongly to Job’s claims of innocence, taking them perhaps too literally, and seeing these as a direct attack on God’s justice.
I feel sorry for Job; he has been honest with his feelings towards the Lord, with whom he has had a great relationship, he is suffering much, and his heart-felt words are being twisted or taken to an extreme by this young, oh-so-spiritual, upstart, Elihu. Job is not claiming to be sinless – just to have lived a godlier life than most of his generation; if his sufferings are the result of his sins, as his friends claim, then he would simply like God to let him know what these specific sins are, so that he can repent of them.
The Big Picture 