Commentary - Job 33:19-22

Bird's-eye view

In this section of his discourse, Elihu presents his second major point on how God communicates with mankind. Having just described how God speaks through dreams and visions to turn a man from his pride (vv. 15-18), he now turns to a more severe method: suffering. Elihu argues that physical affliction is not merely punitive, as Job's other friends simplistically assumed, but is rather a form of divine reproof or discipline. It is God's megaphone. When a man will not listen to the whisper of a dream, God will sometimes shout through the pain of a sickbed. The description is graphic and visceral, detailing a man's complete physical collapse to the very edge of the grave. This is not random, meaningless pain; it is a purposeful, sovereignly administered stripping away of all earthly comforts and self-reliance, designed to bring a man to the end of himself so that he might be ready to hear a word of grace and be delivered from the pit.

Elihu's theology here is a significant corrective to the arguments that have preceded it. He does not say Job is suffering because he is a secret, heinous sinner. Nor does he agree with Job's assessment that God is a capricious tyrant. Instead, he presents God as a wise and loving Father who is willing to use drastic measures for the ultimate spiritual good of His child. This is the school of hard knocks, and God is the headmaster. The goal is not destruction, but redemption.

Outline

Context In Job

Elihu's speech (chapters 32-37) comes after the three cycles of debate between Job and his friends have ground to a halt. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar have been silenced by Job's relentless defense, and Job has concluded his final oath of innocence (chapter 31), effectively resting his case. At this point, the young man Elihu, who has been listening quietly, erupts onto the scene. He is angry with Job for justifying himself rather than God, and he is angry with the three friends for failing to provide a true answer. Elihu's contribution is to introduce a more nuanced understanding of suffering. While the friends saw suffering almost exclusively as direct, retributive punishment for sin, Elihu presents it as primarily disciplinary and preventative. God uses it to humble the proud and keep them from the ultimate destruction of the pit. These verses (19-22) are the heart of his description of this disciplinary process, setting the stage for his introduction of a mediator, an interpreter, who can bring deliverance (v. 23ff).

Key Issues

The School of Pain

There are two fundamental errors we can fall into when considering suffering. The first is the error of the health and wealth gospel, which essentially says that God's favor is always demonstrated by a lack of suffering. This was the basic operating system of Job's three friends. The second error is that of the stoic, who sees suffering as a meaningless brute fact to be endured with a stiff upper lip. Elihu corrects both. He teaches us that God is a Father, and like any good father, He has a woodshed. The pain we experience is not always, or even usually, a sign of His rejection, but rather of His attention. It is a form of instruction, a severe mercy.

God speaks to us in the glories of creation, in the kindness of a friend, in the reading of His Word. But we are a deaf and stiff-necked people, and sometimes we refuse to listen to these quieter voices. And so, in His love, God turns up the volume. He puts a man on his back so that he has no choice but to look up. The sickbed becomes a classroom, the pain becomes the teacher, and the lesson is humility. The entire process described here is a dismantling of human pride, a stripping away of every other hope, so that a man is left with nothing but God Himself. This is not cruelty; it is the most profound form of kindness.

Verse by Verse Commentary

19 “Man is also reproved with pain on his bed, And with unceasing contention in his bones,

Elihu says "also," connecting this method of reproof to the previous one of dreams. If the dream doesn't work, God has other tools in His bag. The place of rest, the bed, becomes a place of torment. The pain is not superficial; it is an "unceasing contention," a constant war, located deep within his very "bones." The bones are the framework of a man, his foundational strength. This is a picture of a man's entire structure being at war with itself. It is an internal, inescapable conflict. God is not just afflicting him from the outside; He is orchestrating a civil war within the man's own body to get his undivided attention.

20 So that his life loathes bread, And his soul favorite food.

The consequence of this deep, internal pain is a complete revulsion to the basic necessities and pleasures of life. Bread is the staff of life, the fundamental means of sustenance. "Favorite food" represents the choicest delights. The suffering man wants none of it. His very life, his nephesh, loathes what it was designed to desire. This is a profound picture of how deep affliction turns the world upside down. The things that once sustained and delighted him now seem disgusting. This is a physical manifestation of a spiritual reality. God is weaning him from the world, making him sick of earthly bread so that he might develop an appetite for heavenly bread.

21 His flesh wastes away from sight, And his bones which were not seen stick out.

The internal decay now becomes gruesomely visible. His flesh, his substance, the very thing that gives him presence in the world, simply vanishes. He becomes a wraith, a ghost of his former self. And the result is that his bones, the hidden framework, are now exposed. He is emaciated, a walking skeleton. This is a process of utter humiliation. God is stripping him of his strength, his dignity, his appearance, his health. All the things that the flesh glories in are being systematically removed. The man is being deconstructed, taken apart piece by piece, so that he can be rebuilt on a new foundation.

22 Then his soul draws near to the pit, And his life to those who bring death.

This is the climax of the process. The man is brought to the very precipice of death. "The pit" is Sheol, the grave. His soul is knocking on death's door. "Those who bring death" are the destroying angels, the messengers of mortality. He is at the absolute end of his rope, with no human hope left. And this is precisely the point. God often brings us to the point of death in order to teach us how to truly live. He brings a man to the edge of the abyss so that he will stop trusting in himself and cry out for a deliverer. This is the moment of crisis. Will he curse God and step into the pit? Or will he, in his utter helplessness, look for the "messenger, the interpreter, one among a thousand" whom Elihu is about to describe?

Application

The message of Elihu is a timeless word for every believer who finds himself on a bed of pain. Our first question in suffering should not be, "Why is this happening to me?" but rather, "Lord, what are you teaching me?" We must resist the temptation to view our trials as evidence of God's displeasure and instead see them as evidence of His fatherly love and attention. He loves us too much to leave us in our pride and self-reliance.

This passage forces us to see that God's highest goal for us is not our comfort, but our holiness. And He will use the severe tool of pain to carve the image of Christ into us. He will make us loathe the bread of this world so that we will feast on His Son. He will strip away our fleshly confidence so that we will learn to glory only in the cross. He will bring us to the edge of the pit to show us that the only one who can deliver us is the one who went into the pit for us and came out the other side.

Therefore, when you find yourself in the school of pain, do not despise the lesson. Do not waste your suffering. Recognize it as the classroom of a loving Father. Listen for His voice in the contention of your bones. Allow Him to strip you of your self-sufficiency. And look for the Interpreter, the Lord Jesus Christ, who stands ready to declare what is right for you and to ransom you from going down to the pit, because He Himself has found your ransom.