Commentary - Job 36:5-15

Bird's-eye view

In this section of Elihu's final speech, we are presented with a robust theology of God's dealings with men, both righteous and wicked. Elihu's argument is that God's immense power is never arbitrary; it is always coupled with His perfect justice and redemptive purpose. He is mighty, but not a bully. He does not despise the lowly, but rather uses His power to execute justice, preserving the righteous and judging the wicked. A central theme here is the pedagogical nature of suffering for the righteous. When the godly find themselves in affliction, it is not a sign of God's rejection, but rather a form of His fatherly discipline. Affliction is a divine megaphone, intended to get their attention, reveal their sin, and call them to repentance. The passage sets forth a clear covenantal framework: obedience leads to blessing, prosperity, and pleasure, while rebellion leads to judgment and perishing. The godless, in contrast to the righteous, respond to God's disciplinary pressures not with repentance, but with hardened hearts, thereby storing up wrath for themselves and ensuring their own destruction.

Elihu is correcting the simplistic prosperity theology of the other friends, while also pushing back against Job's accusations of divine injustice. He argues that God is always just, and that even in suffering, He is working for the good of His people. The affliction itself becomes the means of deliverance. This is a profound insight that anticipates the theology of the cross, where the ultimate affliction becomes the ultimate deliverance. God's purpose in hardship is not to crush, but to correct; not to destroy, but to deliver.

Outline

Context In Job

These verses come from the final speech of Elihu, the young man who appears suddenly after Job and his three friends have exhausted their arguments. Elihu has been listening to the entire debate and believes all four men have missed the mark. He rebukes the three friends for condemning Job without being able to refute him, and he rebukes Job for justifying himself rather than God. Elihu's contribution is to introduce a more nuanced understanding of suffering. While Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar saw suffering almost exclusively as direct punishment for specific sins, Elihu presents suffering as a potential tool of God's loving, fatherly discipline and refinement, particularly for the righteous. This section (36:5-15) is a concise summary of his doctrine. It sets the stage for God's own appearance from the whirlwind in chapter 38, where God will not answer Job's specific questions but will instead overwhelm him with His majesty and sovereign wisdom, vindicating the general thrust of Elihu's high view of God.

Key Issues

The Divine Megaphone

C.S. Lewis famously said that God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. This is precisely the theology Elihu is articulating here. God is not a distant, disinterested monarch. He is actively involved in the lives of men, and affliction is one of His primary tools of communication. For the righteous, suffering is not punitive in the final sense; it is corrective. It is the loving discipline of a Father who wants to get our attention. When we are bound in the "cords of affliction," it is so that God can show us our work and our transgressions. He "opens their ear to discipline."

This is a crucial distinction. The other friends saw Job's suffering and concluded he must be a secret, heinous sinner receiving his just deserts. Job, knowing he was not such a man, concluded God must be unjust. Elihu charts a third way: the suffering is from God, and it is related to sin, but its purpose is not condemnation but restoration. It is a severe mercy. God brings us low in order to show us where we have magnified ourselves, where pride has taken root. The pain is a summons to return, a loud, insistent call to repentance that we might otherwise ignore in our prosperity. The affliction itself is the means by which God delivers the afflicted. He uses the trouble to accomplish our rescue from the deeper trouble of our own sin.

Verse by Verse Commentary

5 Behold, God is mighty but does not reject; He is mighty in the power of His heart.

Elihu begins with a foundational statement about God's character. Yes, God is mighty. No one can dispute this. But His might is not like the might of a human tyrant who uses his power to crush and despise those weaker than himself. God's might is paired with a refusal to despise or reject anyone out of hand. His power is rooted in the "power of His heart," or as some translations put it, "strength of understanding." This is not raw, brute force; it is power intelligently and lovingly administered. He is strong enough to do whatever He pleases, but His heart and mind ensure that what He pleases is always just and right. This is a direct counter to Job's fear that God is a capricious sovereign who is using His power unjustly against him.

6 He does not keep the wicked alive, But gives justice to the afflicted.

From God's character, Elihu moves to God's consistent actions in the world. His government has two sides, like a coin. On one side, He does not preserve the wicked. Their life is on a short leash; judgment is their certain end. This may not happen on our timetable, which was a major source of Job's complaint, but it is the fixed policy of heaven. On the other side, He "gives justice to the afflicted." He is the vindicator of the poor and the oppressed. This is a theme that runs from Genesis to Revelation. God's justice is not a blindfolded, abstract principle; it is actively biased in favor of the downtrodden. He sees their plight and acts to set things right.

7 He does not withdraw His eyes from the righteous; But with kings on the throne He has seated them forever, and they are exalted.

God's attention to the righteous is constant and unwavering. He never takes His eyes off them. This is a promise of perpetual divine oversight and care. And the ultimate destiny He has for them is not affliction, but exaltation. Elihu uses the imagery of kingship. God seats the righteous with kings on the throne, and not just for a temporary honor, but "forever." This points to the final vindication and glorification of the saints. While they may experience temporary affliction, their ultimate trajectory is upward, toward honor and royal status in the kingdom of God.

8-9 And if they are bound in fetters, And are caught in the cords of affliction, Then He declares to them their work And their transgressions, that they have magnified themselves.

Here is the pivot. What about when the righteous, those whom God watches and intends to exalt, find themselves in deep trouble? Elihu describes this as being "bound in fetters" and "caught in the cords of affliction." The language is of being trapped and helpless. Is this a contradiction of God's favor? No. Elihu says this is a diagnostic tool. The affliction is the occasion for God to speak. The purpose of the binding is revelation. God uses the hardship to show them "their work and their transgressions." Specifically, He reveals the root of pride, showing them that "they have magnified themselves." Affliction has a way of humbling us, of popping our balloons of self-sufficiency and revealing the pride that was there all along.

10 He opens their ear to discipline, And says that they return from wickedness.

The revelation of sin is not meant to condemn, but to lead to repentance. God does not just show them their sin; He "opens their ear to discipline." In prosperity, our ears are often clogged with the cotton of comfort and self-satisfaction. God uses the sharp point of adversity to clear them out so we can hear His instruction. And the content of that instruction is a simple, gracious command: "return from wickedness." It is a call to come home. The discipline is not an end in itself; it is a means to restoration.

11 If they hear and serve Him, They will end their days in prosperity And their years in pleasures.

Now Elihu lays out the covenantal fork in the road. There are two possible responses to God's discipline. The first is the path of obedience. If the afflicted man "hears" the instruction and responds by turning to "serve Him," the result is blessing. Elihu is not shy about describing this blessing in terms of earthly well being: "prosperity" and "pleasures." This is standard Old Covenant language. Obedience brings blessing in the land. While we must not reduce this to a simplistic health and wealth gospel, we must also not spiritualize it away. God delights in the well being of His servants, and a frequent result of repentance and restored fellowship is a restoration of temporal blessings.

12 But if they do not hear, they shall pass away by a weapon And they will breathe their last without knowledge.

This is the other path, the path of rebellion. If the afflicted man refuses to hear, if he stiffens his neck against God's discipline, the outcome is judgment. He will "pass away by a weapon," a violent end. He will die "without knowledge," meaning he dies in his ignorance, having refused the wisdom God offered him through his trials. To be offered divine instruction in the midst of suffering and to refuse it is the height of folly, and it seals one's doom.

13-14 But the godless in heart lay up anger; They do not cry for help when He binds them. They die in youth, And their life perishes among the cult prostitutes.

Elihu now describes the inner disposition of those who refuse to hear. They are the "godless in heart." Their response to God's disciplinary pressure is not repentance but resentment. They "lay up anger," storing up wrath against God. Instead of crying out to God for help when He "binds them" in affliction, they sullenly and stubbornly resist Him. Their end is tragic and sordid. They "die in youth," their lives cut short. And their life "perishes among the cult prostitutes," indicating a life given over to shameful, idolatrous impurity that leads to an ignominious end. They choose the filth of rebellion over the cleansing discipline of God, and they reap the foul harvest.

15 He delivers the afflicted in their affliction, And opens their ear in time of oppression.

Elihu concludes this section with a beautiful paradox that summarizes his entire point. How does God deliver the afflicted? He delivers them in or by their affliction. The very thing that feels like destruction is the instrument of salvation. The oppression is the context in which God opens their ear. The fetters are the means of their freedom. God does not waste our sorrows. He repurposes them. He takes the cords of affliction with which we are caught and uses them as the surgeon's thread to stitch up the deeper wounds of our pride and sin. The trial is the therapy.

Application

Elihu's wisdom is a timeless corrective for the church. We are constantly tempted by two equal and opposite errors when it comes to suffering. The first is the error of Job's friends: to see every trial as a simple, one-to-one punishment for a specific sin, leading to harsh judgment of others. The second is the error of our modern therapeutic culture: to see every trial as a meaningless tragedy from which we are entitled to be rescued with no questions asked and no lessons learned.

Elihu teaches us to see our afflictions as a classroom. When hardship comes, our first question should not be "Who can I blame for this?" or "How can I escape this?" but rather, "God, what are you saying to me in this? What are you trying to teach me? Open my ear to discipline." We must learn to ask if the trial is revealing some pride, some self-reliance, some sin we have been coddling. Is God using this pressure to expose a weakness in our faith? Is He prying our fingers off some idol?

This does not mean we become morbidly introspective, blaming ourselves for everything. But it does mean we must have a humble, teachable posture. The promise here is that if we hear and obey, if we submit to the Father's discipline, it will yield the "peaceable fruit of righteousness" (Heb. 12:11). God's goal is our holiness, and He is a wise and resourceful teacher. He will use whatever means necessary, including the hard providences of affliction, to make us more like His Son. Our task is to listen for the divine megaphone and, when we hear it, to turn and serve Him.