Commentary - Job 34:10-12

Bird's-eye view

In this section, the young and zealous Elihu continues his discourse, shifting from a personal address to Job to a more general appeal to the "men with a heart of wisdom." He is laying down a foundational, non-negotiable axiom of all sane theology: God is just. Elihu is incensed by what he perceives as Job's accusation that God has been unjust in His dealings. Before dissecting Job's case further, Elihu establishes the bedrock principle upon which any right understanding of God and the world must be built. He argues from the very nature of God, the Almighty, that wickedness and the perversion of justice are utterly alien to His character. This is not just a theological nicety; it is the anchor of all reality. Elihu asserts that God's justice is demonstrated in His meticulous and equitable governance of the world, where every man is ultimately paid according to his work and finds the consequences of his own way. This is a robust, full-throated defense of divine rectitude, a necessary corrective to the wild charges that can fly from the lips of afflicted men.

While Elihu's theology is, in its basic formulation, entirely correct, we must remember the dramatic context. He is right about God, but he is still misapplying this correct theology to Job's specific situation, assuming a direct and immediate correlation between Job's suffering and some great hidden sin. Nevertheless, the truths he articulates here are central to the biblical worldview. God is not a cosmic tyrant who can be charged with misconduct. He is the very definition of justice, and all His actions flow from His perfectly righteous nature. This passage serves as a crucial theological reset button in the midst of the chaotic and emotional arguments of the book.

Outline

Context In Job

Elihu's speech (Job 32-37) serves as a bridge between the circular and increasingly bitter debates of Job and his three friends (Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar) and the final, decisive appearance of God Himself (Job 38-41). The three friends operated on a rigid, almost mechanical, doctrine of retribution: you are suffering, therefore you must have sinned. Job, knowing his own general integrity, has pushed back, at times coming perilously close to accusing God of being arbitrary and unjust (e.g., Job 9:22-24). Elihu enters the scene as a younger, more passionate voice. He is angry with Job for justifying himself rather than God, and he is angry with the friends for failing to provide a compelling answer. In chapter 34, Elihu is essentially putting God on trial, but as the defense attorney. He is refuting Job's implied charges by arguing from first principles about the nature of God's character and His governance. This passage is the core of his theological defense of God, establishing the absolute righteousness of the Almighty before he goes on to apply it to Job's situation.

Key Issues

The Non-Negotiable God

Elihu begins his argument not with an appeal to evidence, but with an appeal to a fundamental axiom. He is not trying to prove that God is just; he is declaring that God, by definition, cannot be anything else. This is a crucial point. For the creature to sit in judgment of the Creator is a category error of the highest order. It is like a character in a novel accusing the author of poor grammar. The author is the one who defines what good grammar is within the world he has created. In the same way, God does not conform to an external standard of justice; He is the standard of justice. As Abraham argued, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Gen. 18:25). The question is rhetorical. The answer is embedded in the identity of the one being asked about. For the Judge of all the earth to do wrong would be a contradiction in terms. Elihu is calling Job, and all men of wisdom, back to this first principle. Before we try to make sense of our suffering, we must settle it in our hearts that God is God, and therefore God is good and just. Any other starting point leads to madness and blasphemy.

Verse by Verse Commentary

10 “Therefore, listen to me, you men with a heart of wisdom. Far be it from God to do injustice, And from the Almighty to do wrong.

Elihu summons an audience of the wise. He is not just talking to Job anymore; he is making a public, theological declaration. He wants men of understanding to assent to what he is about to say, because it is the foundation of all understanding. His central thesis is stated as a visceral rejection of a monstrous thought: Far be it from God to do injustice. The Hebrew expresses a sense of abhorrence, as if to say, "The thought is profane! Unthinkable!" God and wickedness are mutually exclusive categories. He uses two names for God here, God (El) and the Almighty (Shaddai), emphasizing both His power and His supreme authority. The one with all power cannot be unrighteous, because there is no standard above Him to which He must answer, and His own nature is perfect righteousness. For the Almighty to do wrong is a logical and moral impossibility. This is the bedrock. If you get this wrong, nothing else you say about God will be right.

11 For He pays a man according to his work, And makes him find it according to his way.

Here is the proof, the demonstration of the principle. How do we know God is just? Because His universe operates on a moral principle of cause and effect. He renders to every man according to his deeds. This is the law of the harvest that runs through all of Scripture: "whatever a man sows, this he will also reap" (Gal. 6:7). God is not arbitrary. He has woven this principle of accountability into the fabric of reality. A man's "way," his path of life, has consequences, and God ensures that he "finds" them. The outcome is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of divine administration. Now, the mistake of Job's friends, and to some extent Elihu, was to assume this process is always immediate, visible, and simplistic. They saw the "payment" of suffering and worked backwards to assume a corresponding "work" of sin. The Bible teaches that the final accounting is at the judgment seat of Christ (2 Cor. 5:10), but the principle itself is inviolable. God is a meticulous bookkeeper, and no deed, good or bad, is ever lost or ignored.

12 Truly, God will not act wickedly, And the Almighty will not pervert justice.

Elihu circles back to his main point, restating it with even greater force for emphasis. Truly, or "of a truth," this is an absolute certainty. He repeats the two names for God, El and Shaddai. God will not act wickedly. The Almighty will not pervert justice. To pervert justice means to bend or twist it, to make it deviate from the straight line of what is right. Elihu's point is that God's justice is the straight line. It cannot be bent because it is the standard itself. A crooked ruler cannot be used to measure anything, and if God, the ultimate standard, were crooked, the entire moral universe would collapse into meaninglessness. This is why Job's complaints were so dangerous. In his agony, he was questioning the very ruler by which reality is measured. Elihu rightly sees that this cannot be allowed to stand. The integrity of God is the linchpin that holds everything together.

Application

The words of Elihu, though spoken thousands of years ago in a context of immense personal suffering, are directly applicable to us. Every Christian, at some point, will be tempted to do what Job did: to look at their circumstances, at the pain, the loss, the apparent randomness of tragedy, and to wonder if God has made a mistake. We are tempted to put God in the dock and serve as the prosecuting attorney.

At that moment, we must do what Elihu commands. We must listen as men and women of wisdom and declare, first to our own souls, "Far be it from God to do wrong!" Our theology must govern our experience, not the other way around. Our feelings of confusion or pain do not alter the character of God. He is the Almighty, and He does not pervert justice. This does not mean we will always understand His ways. His justice is often hidden, and His purposes are worked out over centuries, not just in the span of our short lives. The principle of sowing and reaping is absolutely true, but the final harvest is not always in this life.

The ultimate vindication of God's justice is the cross of Jesus Christ. At the cross, the principle of verse 11, "He pays a man according to his work", reached its terrifying and glorious climax. All the sinful works of God's people were gathered together and laid upon Jesus, and God paid Him for them, in full. The wrath that our way deserved, He found. And all the perfect work of Christ, His perfect obedience, is credited to our account. God did not pervert justice to save us. He satisfied it. He is both "just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Rom. 3:26). Therefore, when we suffer, we do not suffer as those receiving a final payment for sin. That debt has been cancelled. We suffer as sons and daughters being disciplined, refined, and conformed to the image of the one who suffered for us. Our confidence, then, is not in our ability to figure God out, but in the unwavering, immutable, and perfect justice of His character, which was most clearly displayed when He did not spare His own Son.