Commentary - Job 34:13-15

Bird's-eye view

In this section of Job, the young man Elihu is speaking, and while he is not without his own errors, he stumbles upon a bedrock truth that is essential for understanding everything else. He is defending God's justice against Job's complaints, and he does so by appealing to God's absolute sovereignty as Creator. The argument is profound in its simplicity: God cannot be unjust because there is no standard of justice outside of or above Him. He is the standard. He wasn't given a job or a set of rules to follow. He is the uncreated Creator, the uncaused Cause. Elihu's point is that our very existence, our every breath, is a moment-by-moment gift from this sovereign God. If He were to simply think of Himself, to recall the life-giving spirit He lends to us, all creation would instantly and rightly return to dust. This is not a threat of arbitrary petulance, but a statement of ontological reality. God is the source of all being, and our dependence upon Him is total and absolute. To question His justice is therefore a profound category error; it is for the clay to critique the potter's right to shape it.

Elihu's argument serves as a necessary corrective, not just for Job in his suffering, but for all of us in our pride. We are tempted to think of God as a cosmic manager, appointed to His position and accountable to some external board of cosmic ethics. Elihu demolishes this foolish notion. God is not a functionary; He is the foundation of all reality. The world is His, not by appointment, but by authorship. This radical dependence is the beginning of wisdom. Before we can understand the cross, we must understand this. Before we can appreciate grace, we must see that we have no claim on God for our next heartbeat, let alone for eternal life.

Outline

Context In Job

These verses are part of the speeches of Elihu, who appears suddenly in chapter 32 after Job and his three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, have fallen silent. Elihu is a younger man who has been listening to the entire debate and is angry with both sides. He is angry with Job for justifying himself rather than God, and he is angry with the three friends for failing to answer Job's arguments, thereby condemning him without cause. Elihu's discourse functions as a bridge between the flawed counsel of the friends and the majestic appearance of God Himself in chapter 38. While Elihu's theology is a significant step up from the rigid retribution-theology of the friends, it is not perfect. However, in this particular passage, he strikes a chord of profound truth. He shifts the argument away from a strict accounting of Job's sins to the fundamental nature of God's sovereignty. He is preparing the ground for God's own line of questioning, which will focus not on the "why" of Job's suffering, but on the "who" of God's absolute authority as Creator.

Key Issues

The Unappointed God

At the heart of our fallen nature is a deep-seated desire to put God in the dock. We want to be the judge, and we want God to be the one who has to answer our questions and submit to our standards of fairness. Elihu confronts this sinful impulse head-on. The questions he asks in verse 13 are rhetorical and their answer is devastating to human pride. Who gave God a "charge" over the earth? Who appointed Him? The answer, of course, is no one. You cannot appoint the ground of all being. You cannot give a "charge" to the one from whom all authority is derived.

The word authority has the word author embedded within it. God's authority is the authority of the author. He wrote the story. He created the characters. He built the stage. There is no one to whom He must report. There is no committee that oversees His work. He is not a CEO hired by a board of directors. He is the owner, creator, and sustainer of all things. His authority is not delegated; it is intrinsic. His justice, therefore, is not conformity to an external standard; His very character is the standard. This is a truth we must get straight, or nothing else in our theology will be straight either.

Verse by Verse Commentary

13 Who appointed Him with authority over the earth? And who has laid on Him the whole world?

Elihu lays the foundation with two unanswerable questions. The first question deals with authority, the second with responsibility. Who gave God the right to rule? Who saddled Him with the burden of running the universe? The implied answer to both is a resounding "no one." God's authority is not an assigned role; it flows directly from His nature as Creator. He has authority over the earth because He made the earth. Think of it this way: a potter has authority over the clay. No one needs to grant him that authority; it is inherent in the relationship between creator and creation. So it is with God, but on an absolute and ultimate scale. The second question is equally potent. Who "laid on Him" the whole world? This is not a job He applied for. This is not a burden someone else gave Him. The universe is not some cosmic hot potato that got tossed into His lap. He holds it all together by the word of His power because He brought it all into existence in the first place. There is no higher court of appeal, no one who can call God to account, because He is the source of all things.

14 If He should set His heart on it, If He should gather to Himself His spirit and His breath,

This verse gets to the heart of our radical and constant dependence on God. Elihu posits a hypothetical: what if God were to become self-regarding? What if He were to simply "set His heart on it," meaning, to act only for Himself, to recall His life-giving power? The language is personal and intimate. He speaks of God gathering "to Himself His spirit and His breath." This is the spirit and breath that He has graciously loaned out to His creatures. We see this in Genesis, where God breathes into Adam the breath of life (Gen 2:7). Our life is not our own. We do not possess it independently. We are breathing borrowed air, living on borrowed time, animated by a borrowed spirit. Every single moment, the sustaining power of God is the only thing keeping us from annihilation. He does not have to actively smite us to end our existence; He would only have to cease actively upholding us. He would only have to recall His loan.

15 All flesh would breathe its last together, And man would return to dust.

The consequence of God recalling His spirit is immediate and universal. "All flesh would breathe its last together." Not one by one, but all at once. The entire biological enterprise would collapse in a single instant. The cessation of God's sustaining grace would mean the simultaneous cessation of all creaturely life. And what would become of man? He "would return to dust." This takes us right back to the beginning, to the curse of Genesis 3. Man was formed from the dust, and because of sin, to dust he shall return. Elihu's point is that this return to dust is not just a future certainty upon our individual deaths, but a constant, present possibility, averted only by the active, sustaining mercy of God. Our existence is fragile, contingent, and utterly dependent. We are but dust, and the only thing that keeps this dust organized, animated, and breathing is the sovereign will of God. To stand as dust and accuse the Almighty of injustice is therefore the height of absurdity and rebellion.

Application

The truth of our absolute dependence on God should cultivate in us a profound humility. We are not stakeholders in a cosmic corporation who get to vote on the CEO's performance. We are creatures of dust, animated solely by the good pleasure of our Creator. This should crush our pride and silence our complaints. When we are tempted to grumble about our circumstances, to question God's fairness, we should remember this passage. Our very breath to utter the complaint is a gift from the one we are complaining against. This is not meant to stifle honest lament, which the Bible is full of, but to frame it properly. We come to God with our pain not as litigants demanding our rights, but as children dependent on their Father's mercy.

Furthermore, this radical dependence is the backdrop against which the gospel shines so brightly. God does not just sustain our physical lives, which would be grace enough. He has acted to save our souls from the dust-heap of eternal death. The same God who breathes life into our lungs sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to breathe eternal life into our dead hearts. On the cross, Jesus had His own breath taken from Him, crying out "It is finished," so that we, who deserved to be returned to dust forever, might be gathered to Him as His eternal treasure. He did not recall His spirit from us; He gave His Spirit to us, as a seal and a down payment of the resurrection to come. Our response should be one of perpetual gratitude, of joyful submission to the One who did not have to create us, does not have to sustain us, but who chooses to do both, and to redeem us on top of it all. This is the God we serve.