Bible Commentaries

The Speech of Elihu.
I.

Job 32:2-3).

Elihu is full of wrath. This is right. Wrath ought to have some place in the controversies of men. We cannot always be frivolous, or even clever and agile in the use of words, in the fencing of arguments; there must be some man amongst us whose anger can burn like an oven, and who will draw us away from frivolity, and fix our minds upon vital points. "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath "; "Be ye angry, and sin not." There is a holy anger. What can make men so wrathful as to hear preachers, leaders, teachers, writers giving the wrong answers to the burning questions of the time? We shall have more hope of the Church when men become more wrathful about the words that are spoken to them. The pulpit will respond to the impatience of the heart when it will not follow the lead of the arbitrary intellect. Who can sit still and hear men's deepest questions treated lightly? Here it is that wrath comes to fulfil its proper function. It will not ask little questions, it will not be content with superficial replies; it says in effect, You do not understand the disease; you are crying Peace, peace; when there is no peace, or you are daubing the wall with untempered mortar: silence! ye teachers of vanity and followers of the wind. Anything is better in the Church than mere assent, indifference, neglect, intellectual passivity, the sort of feeling that has no feeling, mere decency of exterior, and a cultivation of patience which is only anxious to reach the conclusion. Let us have debate, controversy, exchange of opinion, vital, sympathetic conference one with another; then we shall know the true meaning, and the real depth and urgency of human want, and be sent back to find solid and living answers to the great cries of the soul.

Job 32:6-7).

The old might be dismissed with some dignity. A time does come in human teaching when we pass from one set of teachers to another; but in passing to the higher range of teachers we need not be uncivil to the men who have told us all they knew, and who have brought their religious knowledge up to date. We cannot live in tomorrow; we cannot now speak the language that will be spoken in the Church fifty years hence: all we can do is to make one another welcome to our present acquisitions, and our present information, and our present sympathy. We do not claim finality for these things; we say in effect, This is all we know today: if we knew more, we would speak more; but knowing only this, we have only this to tell. Why sneer at the old theologians? They worked much harder than many work who are endeavouring to bring them into contempt. Why smile with a species of patient complacence upon the long-laboured theological treatises of the men of the seventeenth century? If they lived now they would speak the language of the day, they would adapt themselves to the methods of the day; but they did all that in their power lay, and really if we are going to leave them, what if we show some sign of civility, courtesy, indebtedness, thanking the men who went so far and saying to them, You would have gone farther if you could: in God's name we bless you, for you have done all that lay in your power? This is not the way with men. The old preacher is often turned off uncivilly; he is said to be out of date, not to be abreast with the times, to have fallen astern; he has had his day, and he must be content to sit down. That is rough talk; that is uncourteous treatment. You would hardly treat a horse Job 32:8).

Inspired instinct is greater and trustier than cultivated intellect Let nature speak. Let all that is deepest in you have full expression. We so often talk up through the burden of our information, acquisition, attainment of any and every kind. We are kept back by the very fact that we may possibly be offending something that is written in the books. We more frequently go by the book than by the soul. By "the book" we do not mean the Book of Job 32:11.)—and now I can bear it no longer. Let the pew speak when the pulpit cannot handle the occasion. This truth we must establish, that somebody must tell us really what God means in his communications with the human race. A man does not necessarily know what God means because he happens to stand on an eminent place in the church, as for example, a pulpit, or a platform, or within the shadow of the holy altar. We must know what right he has to be there by the speech he makes. What is it? Does it touch the reality of the case? Is he coming into the holiest places of the heart, and discussing the most solemn questions of life? Does he bring with him burning oil or healing balm? Does he speak in the tone of experience, or in the tone of mere adventure and conjecture? When it is ascertained that he has not given the right answer to a multitude of men gathered around him, somebody ought to stand up and say, The wrong answer has been given; the right answer is this—. Then let us hear it, consider it, and form an estimate of its value. Who told the laymen of the Church that they had no right to speak? Who imposed silence upon listeners beyond a given point? Where is the infallibility of official speech? Men who sit in pews and keep up churches, and are yet sure that the right word is not spoken, ought, by speech or by writing, by conversation or by open declaration, to tell us what the mistake Job 32:2). This is usually understood to imply that he was descended from Buz, the son of Abraham's brother Nahor, from whose family the city called Buz ( Jeremiah 25:23) also took its name. The Chaldee paraphrase asserts Elihu to have been a relation of Abraham. Elihu's name does not appear among those friends who came in the first instance to condole with Job , nor is his presence indicated till the debate between the afflicted man and his three friends had been brought to a conclusion. Then, finding there was no answer to Job's last speech, he comes forward with considerable modesty, which he loses as he proceeds to remark on the debate, and to deliver his own opinion on the points at issue. It appears from the manner in which Elihu introduces himself, that he was by much the youngest of the party; and it is evident that he had been present from the commencement of the discussion, to which he had paid very close attention. This would suggest that the debate between Job and his friends was carried on in the presence of a deeply interested auditory, among which was this Elihu, who could not forbear from interfering when the controversy appeared to have reached an unsatisfactory conclusion.—Kitto's Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature,