The View from the Cockpit: Elihu's Rebuke Text: Job 35:1-8
Introduction: The Impudence of the Creature
We come now to the intervention of Elihu. The three friends of Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, have exhausted their arguments. They came with their tidy theological boxes, saw a man suffering immensely, and concluded that two plus two must equal four. Great suffering must mean great sin. They were, as we have noted, right woodenly. They possessed true propositions but applied them with all the grace and nuance of a falling anvil. Job, for his part, has rightly defended his integrity against their specific charges, but in the heat of his anguish, he has overstepped his bounds. He has begun to sound like a plaintiff serving a subpoena on the Almighty. He has demanded a court date with God, convinced that if he could only get a fair hearing, he would be vindicated.
Into this stalemate steps the young man, Elihu. He has been waiting patiently, holding his peace out of respect for his elders, but he can no longer contain himself. And what he brings is not simply another round of the same dreary argument. He brings a different perspective, a necessary corrective not just to Job's friends, but to Job himself. Elihu's central task is to re-establish the proper altitude. Job and his friends have been arguing as though God were a man on their level, a mayor they could haul before the city council. Elihu tells them all to look up. He is here to remind them of the infinite Creator/creature distinction.
The problem is not that Job is insincere. The problem is that his suffering has made him myopic. He is so focused on his own righteousness, his own case, his own pain, that he has forgotten who he is and who God is. He is arguing with God as though his righteousness or his sin could somehow affect God's balance sheet, as though God were a shareholder fretting over quarterly profits. Elihu's speech is a splash of cold, cosmic water to the face. It is a rebuke to the therapeutic mindset that places man and his feelings at the center of the universe. It is a call to remember that God is God, and we are not.
This is a message our generation desperately needs to hear. We live in an age of cosmic impudence. We believe our little fists shaken at the sky are a profound argument. We think our complaints indebt the Almighty. Elihu comes to dismantle this entire framework of thought. He is preparing the way for the Lord, who will shortly speak from the whirlwind. Elihu is the opening act, and his job is to get the audience to shut up and look at the sky.
The Text
Then Elihu answered and said, "Do you think this is according to justice? Do you say, 'My righteousness is more than God's'? For you say, 'What use will it be to You? What profit will I have, more than if I had sinned?' I will respond to you, And your friends with you. Look at the heavens and see; And perceive the clouds, they are higher than you. If you have sinned, what do you accomplish against Him? And if your transgressions are many, what do you do to Him? If you are righteous, what do you give to Him, Or what does He receive from your hand? Your wickedness is for a man like yourself, And your righteousness is for a son of man."
(Job 35:1-8 LSB)
Framing the Indictment (v. 1-4)
Elihu begins by going straight to the heart of Job's implicit, and sometimes explicit, charge against God.
"Then Elihu answered and said, 'Do you think this is according to justice? Do you say, "My righteousness is more than God's"? For you say, "What use will it be to You? What profit will I have, more than if I had sinned?" I will respond to you, And your friends with you.'" (Job 35:1-4)
Elihu is a sharp listener. He cuts through Job's eloquent laments and grabs the central, blasphemous assumption. "Do you think this is according to justice?" In other words, "Job, are you actually accusing God of being unjust?" He then paraphrases what he has heard Job saying: "My righteousness is more than God's." Now, Job never said these exact words. This is the besetting sin of the self-righteous man; he rarely states his core belief so baldly. But Elihu has rightly diagnosed the heart condition. When a man says, "I have lived righteously, and yet I am suffering, therefore God is treating me unfairly," the unspoken premise is that his own standard of righteousness is higher or more reliable than God's.
This is the essence of all self-righteousness. It is not simply about being proud of one's good deeds. It is about setting up one's own ledger, one's own system of accounting, and then judging God by it. It is an attempt to reverse the roles, to place God in the dock and ourselves on the bench. This is precisely what Paul confronts in Romans. The Jews were going about to establish their own righteousness, and in so doing, they refused to submit to the righteousness of God (Rom. 10:3). Job, in his agony, was perilously close to this same cliff.
Elihu then exposes the faulty logic. "For you say, 'What use will it be to You? What profit will I have...?'" Job had essentially argued that if there is no clear, immediate profit for his righteousness, then the whole moral economy of the universe is bankrupt. He was operating on a quid pro quo basis. "I do good, so God owes me good." When the expected payment did not arrive, he concluded the system was rigged. Elihu sees that this reduces righteousness to a cosmic business transaction with God. It is fundamentally man-centered.
Notice that Elihu addresses not just Job, but "your friends with you." This is key. Though the friends argued from a different starting point, they ended up in the same place. They also believed in a tight, transactional system of blessing and cursing. They just thought Job had miscalculated his side of the ledger. Both Job and his friends were trying to manage God, to figure out His system so they could leverage it. Elihu is here to tell all of them that God is not a system to be managed, but a sovereign to be worshipped.
The Argument from Altitude (v. 5)
Having stated the problem, Elihu's first argument is simple, profound, and visual.
"Look at the heavens and see; And perceive the clouds, they are higher than you." (Job 35:5 LSB)
This is not poetry; it is theology. It is a summons to remember the Creator/creature distinction. Before you continue with your legal briefs against the Almighty, step outside. Look up. The sheer, physical transcendence of the heavens is meant to teach us about the metaphysical transcendence of God. The clouds are higher than you. God is infinitely higher than you.
This is the fundamental fact of reality that modern man, and Job in his distress, had forgotten. We are creatures. We are contingent, dependent, small. God is the Creator. He is self-existent, independent, infinite. He is not just a bigger, smarter version of us. He is a different category of being altogether. His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His ways higher than our ways (Isaiah 55:9). Elihu is giving Job a dose of Isaiah 55. He is telling him to get his bearings, to remember his place in the cosmos.
This is why all attempts to put God on trial are absurd. It is like an ant trying to psychoanalyze an astronomer. The ant is living in the astronomer's terrarium, eating the astronomer's food, and breathing the astronomer's air, all while complaining that the astronomer doesn't understand his plight. The whole enterprise is ludicrous from the outset. Before we can talk rightly about justice or suffering, we must first establish the basic coordinates of who is God and who is not.
God's Aseity (v. 6-7)
Elihu now applies this principle of divine transcendence to the issue of sin and righteousness.
"If you have sinned, what do you accomplish against Him? And if your transgressions are many, what do you do to Him? If you are righteous, what do you give to Him, Or what does He receive from your hand?" (Job 35:6-7 LSB)
Here Elihu introduces a crucial theological concept: the aseity and impassibility of God. Aseity means God is self-existent and independent. Impassibility means He is not subject to being manipulated or harmed by His creation. Job had been speaking as though his suffering was a problem for God. Elihu corrects him. Your sin does not diminish God. It does not weaken His throne or cause Him to lose sleep. He is not pacing the battlements of heaven worried about your rebellion. To sin against God is not to harm God; it is to harm yourself. It is like punching a battleship. You only break your hand.
The same is true for our righteousness. "If you are righteous, what do you give to Him?" This demolishes the transactional model of religion. We cannot enrich God. We cannot put Him in our debt. Our righteousness is not a gift we bring to a needy deity. He is not a cosmic beggar, hoping we will toss a few good deeds into His cup. As Paul would later say, "Who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to him again?" (Romans 11:35). All our righteousness is a gift from Him in the first place. We are simply giving back to Him what is already His. To think our obedience indebts God is like a lightbulb thinking it does the power company a favor by shining.
This is a liberating truth. It means God's love for us is not based on our performance. He does not love us because we are profitable to Him. He loves us because He is love. His grace is truly grace; it is unmerited and unearned. If God needed our righteousness, His grace would be a sham. But because He is utterly self-sufficient, His grace can be utterly free.
The Horizontal Reality (v. 8)
If our sin and righteousness do not affect God in His essential being, then where do they have their impact? Elihu provides the answer.
"Your wickedness is for a man like yourself, And your righteousness is for a son of man." (Job 35:8 LSB)
This is a brilliant stroke. Elihu brings the entire argument down from the heavens to the earth. The consequences of your actions are primarily horizontal. Your wickedness harms your neighbor, your family, yourself. Your righteousness benefits your neighbor, your family, yourself. God has structured the world in such a way that sin is destructive and righteousness is beneficial within the created order. He commands us to be righteous not because He needs it, but because we need it. He forbids sin not because it threatens His throne, but because it destroys His world and the people in it.
This reframes the entire problem. Job was looking at his suffering and questioning God's vertical justice. Elihu tells him to consider the horizontal plane. God's commands are for our good. When we obey, we are a blessing to those around us. When we sin, we are a curse. This does not mean there is always a one-to-one correspondence between personal righteousness and personal prosperity, that was the error of the friends. But it does mean that our actions have real, tangible consequences in the lives of other human beings.
In this, Elihu is pointing toward the great summary of the law: love God and love your neighbor. Our righteousness is "for a son of man." It is meant to be lived out in community, for the good of the community. This is why faith without works is dead. True, saving faith is not a private transaction with God that leaves our horizontal relationships untouched. A living faith, a righteous faith, immediately begins to bear fruit in how we treat other people.
Conclusion: Right-Sizing Man
Elihu's intervention is a necessary deflation of human pride. He comes to right-size Job, and by extension, all of us. We are not the center of the story. Our righteousness is not a bargaining chip, and our sin is not a threat to God's sovereignty. We are creatures, and our lives are lived out on a horizontal plane before a transcendent and holy God.
Does this mean God is indifferent? Not at all. He is not a distant, deistic clockmaker. The Scriptures are clear that God is grieved by our sin (Gen. 6:6) and delights in the obedience of His people (Zeph. 3:17). Elihu's point is not that God is an unfeeling stone, but that His essential being and happiness are not dependent upon us. His reactions to us are the free expressions of His sovereign character, not the coerced responses of a dependent being. He chooses to care. He chooses to enter into covenant with us. He chooses to be affected by us.
And this makes the gospel all the more staggering. The God who needs nothing from us, who is not threatened by our sin or enriched by our righteousness, is the same God who chose to become a "son of man" for our sake. In Jesus Christ, the transcendent God became immanent. The one who is higher than the heavens stooped to our level. He entered the horizontal plane of human wickedness and took it upon Himself. Our sin, which could not touch God in His heaven, was laid upon God the Son on the cross.
And our righteousness, which is "for a son of man," finds its ultimate meaning in Him. We are called to live righteously for the good of our neighbor, but our ultimate standing before God has nothing to do with our own performance. It has everything to do with the perfect righteousness of another Son of Man, Jesus Christ, which is imputed to us by faith. We must abandon all claims of our own righteousness, which is more than God's, and submit to the righteousness that is from God. Elihu tells Job to look at the clouds. The gospel tells us to look at the cross, where the one who is higher than the clouds was made low for us, so that in Him, we might become the righteousness of God.