The Affliction You Choose: Elihu's Hard Counsel Text: Job 36:16-21
Introduction: The Untuned Instrument
We come now to the speeches of Elihu, the young man who waited impatiently while Job's three friends made a complete hash of things. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar operated on a very tidy, but ultimately false, principle: that all suffering is direct, punitive judgment for specific sins. They were worldly-wise prosperity preachers in reverse. Job, in his righteous anguish, knew this was false but was careening toward the opposite ditch, which was to accuse God of injustice. The whole debate was stuck in a mire of bad assumptions.
Elihu comes on the scene, full of youthful zeal, and it is easy for us, with our modern sensibilities, to dismiss him as arrogant. But we must not do that. While he is not the Lord Himself, who is about to speak from the whirlwind, Elihu's words are a significant course correction. He does not get rebuked by God at the end of the book, as the other three do. He introduces a category that the others had missed entirely: the reality of God's loving, fatherly discipline. God does not just punish His enemies; He chastens His sons. And there is a universe of difference between the two.
Elihu is trying to retune the entire conversation. Job has been playing the same discordant note over and over, the note of his own righteousness and God's apparent unfairness. The friends have been hammering on their one-note drum of "you must have sinned." Elihu comes in like a skilled musician and says, in effect, "You are all playing the wrong tune on the wrong instruments." He tells Job that God is not his enemy, but rather his instructor. Affliction is not always a gavel; sometimes it is a schoolmaster's pointer. The question Elihu puts before Job, and before us, is this: when God puts you in the school of affliction, will you learn the lesson, or will you choose a darker, more ruinous path?
This passage is a dense and potent warning. It contrasts the broad, free place of deliverance that God offers through His discipline with the cramped, self-imposed prison of rebellion. It is a call to see affliction not as an outrage to be protested, but as a crossroad where one must choose between wisdom and wickedness.
The Text
Then indeed, He enticed you from the mouth of distress,
Instead of it, a broad place with no constraint;
And the comfort of your table full of fatness.
But you were full of judgment on the wicked;
Judgment and justice take hold of you.
Beware lest wrath entice you to scoffing;
And do not let the greatness of the atonement turn you aside.
Will your cries keep you from distress,
Or all the forces of your power?
Do not long for the night,
When people vanish in their place.
Be careful, do not turn to wickedness,
For you have chosen this to affliction.
(Job 36:16-21 LSB)
The Gracious Enticement (v. 16)
Elihu begins by framing Job's suffering not as a trap, but as a doorway to something better. God's purpose in it was redemptive.
"Then indeed, He enticed you from the mouth of distress, Instead of it, a broad place with no constraint; And the comfort of your table full of fatness." (Job 36:16)
The word "enticed" here is crucial. It is not the language of a jailer, but of a suitor. God's afflictions are a severe mercy. They are designed to woo us away from our self-reliance and our flimsy worldly comforts. The "mouth of distress" is a picture of being cornered, hemmed in, about to be devoured. Think of a sheep trapped in a narrow ravine with a wolf approaching. God's intent, Elihu says, was to call Job out of that tight spot, that dead end.
And where does He entice us to? To a "broad place with no constraint." This is the language of freedom, of liberty, of open pastures. It is the opposite of being cornered. It is the life of faith, where we walk not in the narrow confines of our own understanding, but in the wide-open spaces of God's sovereignty and grace. And it is a place of provision: "the comfort of your table full of fatness." This is covenant language. It speaks of fellowship, peace, and abundance. God's discipline is not meant to starve us, but to bring us to the feast He has prepared.
This is the gospel logic of Hebrews 12: "For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives." The goal of the chastening is not destruction, but participation in His holiness, which yields the "peaceable fruit of righteousness." Elihu is telling Job, "You are misinterpreting the entire event. God was trying to save you, to bring you into a wider, richer place, and you are fighting Him every step of the way."
The Judgment You Cling To (v. 17)
But Job did not accept the enticement. Instead, he doubled down on his own sense of justice, becoming a judge himself.
"But you were full of judgment on the wicked; Judgment and justice take hold of you." (Job 36:17)
Here is the tragic irony. While God was trying to deliver Job, Job was busy obsessing over the "judgment on the wicked." He was consumed with the problem of evil, with the fact that wicked men often prosper while he, a righteous man, suffered. He was so full of his own legal case, his own verdict on how the world ought to be run, that he had no room for God's wisdom. He wanted to be the prosecutor and the judge, putting God in the dock.
And the result is that the very thing he was obsessed with has now captured him: "Judgment and justice take hold of you." He wanted a courtroom, and now he is trapped in one. But it is a courtroom of his own making, a prison of bitterness. When you appoint yourself as the judge of all the earth, the burden of that office will crush you. You become what you behold. By focusing morbidly on a perceived injustice, Job has become unjust in his accusations against God. He is so full of his own case that he cannot see God's grace.
Two Dangerous Temptations (v. 18)
Elihu now issues two sharp warnings. Because Job is in this state of self-righteous judgment, he is vulnerable to two specific and deadly temptations.
"Beware lest wrath entice you to scoffing; And do not let the greatness of the atonement turn you aside." (Job 36:18)
First, "Beware lest wrath entice you to scoffing." The wrath here is Job's own anger at his situation. Bitterness, when it is nursed, curdles into cynicism. The suffering saint is always in danger of becoming a scoffer. He starts with a legitimate complaint, but if he does not submit it to God, he will soon be mocking the very idea of divine goodness. He will sound like the men in Psalm 73 who say, "How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?" This is the path to apostasy, and Elihu sees Job is right on the edge of it.
The second warning is more difficult, but profoundly insightful: "And do not let the greatness of the atonement turn you aside." The word for "atonement" here is "ransom" or "redemption price." Elihu is saying, "Do not let the high cost of your deliverance become a stumbling block." This can be understood in a couple of ways. It could mean, "Do not think that any ransom you could pay, any fortune you once had, could get you out of this." But given the context, it more likely means this: "Do not let the sheer magnitude of what God is doing in your life through this suffering cause you to reject it." The price of the wisdom and holiness God is forging in you is immense. The affliction is great because the end result is glorious. Do not balk at the cost. Do not be turned aside by the greatness of the ransom God is paying to redeem you from your self-righteousness. In the New Covenant, we see the ultimate expression of this. The ransom for our souls was the blood of Christ. It was a terrifyingly great price. We must not be turned aside by the scandal of the cross, which is the ultimate affliction leading to the ultimate glory.
The Uselessness of Self-Reliance (v. 19-21)
Elihu concludes this section by showing the utter futility of every alternative to humble submission.
"Will your cries keep you from distress, Or all the forces of your power? Do not long for the night, When people vanish in their place. Be careful, do not turn to wickedness, For you have chosen this to affliction." (Job 36:19-21)
First, he dismisses Job's own efforts. "Will your cries keep you from distress?" Your protests, your legal arguments, your loud complaints, what good are they? They will not deliver you. "Or all the forces of your power?" Your former wealth, your strength, your reputation, all of it is useless now. You cannot rescue yourself. This is bedrock spiritual reality. We are not saved by the volume of our complaining or the strength of our own resources.
Second, he warns against a nihilistic despair. "Do not long for the night, when people vanish in their place." Job had repeatedly wished for death, for the oblivion of the grave. Elihu identifies this for what it is: a sinful escapism. It is a desire to be blotted out, to simply disappear from the trial. But this is not an option God offers. We must go through our trials, not vanish from them. To long for the night is to reject the God of the morning.
And this leads to the final, devastating conclusion. "Be careful, do not turn to wickedness, For you have chosen this to affliction." This is the sharpest point in Elihu's entire speech. He tells Job to be careful not to turn to wickedness, meaning the wickedness of continued rebellion, bitterness, and scoffing. Why? Because, Elihu says, "you have chosen this to affliction." The Hebrew is stark. It means, "You have preferred wickedness over affliction."
This is the choice every suffering believer faces. God brings a sanctifying affliction into your life. You have two options. You can submit to the affliction, learn from it, and be led by God into that "broad place." Or, you can rebel against the affliction, get angry, nurse your bitterness, and accuse God. That second path is the path of wickedness. And Elihu's charge is that Job has been consistently choosing wickedness rather than simply enduring his affliction in faith. He would rather sin against God than suffer under Him. This is a terrible exchange. He is trading a temporary, purifying trial for a soul-destroying sin. He is choosing the poison of rebellion because he dislikes the taste of the medicine of affliction.
Conclusion: The Medicine or the Poison
Elihu's counsel is a hard word, but it is a necessary one. It is the kind of word a true friend speaks. He is calling Job, and us, to a fundamental re-evaluation of our suffering. When affliction comes, we are presented with a choice that reveals the true state of our hearts.
Will we see the affliction as God's fatherly hand, enticing us out of the narrow place of our own self-sufficiency and into the broad plains of His grace? Will we accept the chastening, knowing that the ransom price for our holiness is great, and that the end result is a table laden with the fatness of His fellowship?
Or will we choose the other path? Will we become full of our own judgment? Will we allow our wrath to entice us into scoffing? Will we prefer the wickedness of a bitter, rebellious heart to the pain of a sanctifying trial? Will we, in the final analysis, choose sin over suffering?
This is the question that hangs in the air as Elihu finishes. And it is the same question that confronts us in our own trials. God, in His mercy, often brings us to a place of distress. He does it to get our attention. He does it to entice us, to woo us away from our idols. He offers us medicine. It may be bitter, but it is designed to heal. The great temptation is to refuse the medicine and to choose poison instead, the poison of anger, pride, and unbelief.
The ultimate answer to Job's dilemma is found at the cross of Jesus Christ. There, the only truly innocent sufferer was afflicted, not for His own purification, but for ours. He endured the ultimate "mouth of distress" so that we could be brought into the ultimate "broad place." He drank the cup of God's wrath so that we would only ever have to drink the cup of God's fatherly discipline. Because of His cross, we can know with absolute certainty that our afflictions are not punitive. They are medicinal. Therefore, let us be careful. Let us not turn to wickedness. Let us choose the affliction, trusting the Father who sent it, and the Son who redeemed us from its curse.