Commentary - Job 37:1-5

Bird's-eye view

Here at the end of Elihu’s discourse, we are being prepared for the main event. God is about to speak, and Elihu, for all his youthful zeal, is here directing our attention away from himself and toward the heavens. This is not abstract theology for him; it is a visceral, heart-pounding reality. He is describing a thunderstorm, but he is not doing so as a meteorologist. He is doing so as a theologian, and as a man who knows he is a creature. The thunder is not just a natural phenomenon; it is the very voice of the Almighty. This passage is a call to listen, to tremble, and to stand in awe of a God whose ways are far beyond our full comprehension. Elihu is setting the stage for God's own appearance, reminding Job, and us, of the immense and untamable power of the one with whom we have to do.

The central theme is the majesty of God revealed in creation, specifically in the storm. Elihu moves from the physical reaction in his own body to the global reach of God's power, and finally to the incomprehensible nature of God's works. This is a necessary corrective to the kind of sterile debate the friends had been engaged in. Before we can rightly understand our own suffering or righteousness, we must first be rightly oriented to the God who is glorious, majestic, and utterly transcendent. The thunder is His sermon, and the lightning is His punctuation.

Outline

Context In Job

Elihu's speeches (chapters 32-37) serve as a bridge between the circular and increasingly frustrating arguments of Job and his three friends, and the climatic appearance of God Himself in the whirlwind. Elihu, the younger man who waited to speak, brings a different perspective. While he still maintains that suffering can be tied to sin, he emphasizes its corrective and instructive purpose. More than that, he consistently points to God's sovereignty and majesty as the ultimate answer to Job's predicament. This section, the very end of his final speech, is the crescendo of that theme. He is not just talking about God's power in the abstract; he is pointing to a literal, audible, and visible manifestation of it in the storm. He is telling Job to stop looking inward at his own integrity and outward at his friends' flawed counsel, and to look up.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1 “At this also my heart trembles, And leaps from its place.

Elihu begins with a personal, physical reaction. He is not detached. The "this" he refers to is the approaching storm, which he interprets as the audible approach of God. His theology is not a matter of intellectual assent alone; it has physiological consequences. His heart trembles, which is the proper response of a creature in the presence of the Creator. This is not the cowering fear of a slave before a tyrant, but the awesome reverence, the holy dread, that accompanies an encounter with infinite power and majesty. The heart that does not tremble before the thunder of God is a heart that is either deaf or dead. His heart also "leaps from its place." This is a violent, involuntary reaction. It speaks to the startling, sudden, and overwhelming nature of God's revelation in creation. We are meant to be shaken out of our complacency. God is not safe, and when He draws near, our very bodies register the shock.

2 Listen closely to the thunder of His voice, And the rumbling that goes out from His mouth.

Having described his own reaction, Elihu now commands Job (and us) to do the same. "Listen closely." This is not a passive hearing. The Hebrew implies careful, attentive, and focused listening. We are so often distracted by the rumblings of our own hearts, our own arguments, our own justifications. Elihu says to shut all that down and listen. Listen to what? The thunder of His voice. He makes the direct connection: the thunder is not an impersonal atmospheric event. It is the very voice of God. Psalm 29 says the same thing repeatedly: "The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders" (Ps. 29:3). The rumbling that follows is the vibration, the resonance of that voice. It is a voice that doesn't just speak, it reverberates through the whole created order. It comes "out from His mouth," a personal and direct communication, even if the content is wordless power.

3 Under the whole heaven He lets it loose, And His lightning to the ends of the earth.

Here we see the scope of God's dominion. His voice is not a localized phenomenon. He "lets it loose" under the "whole heaven." There is no place to hide from it. This is not a private whisper in the ear of a prophet, but a global broadcast of His power. And with the voice comes the lightning. The lightning is sent "to the ends of the earth." From one horizon to the other, the sky is illuminated by His power. This is a picture of God's omnipresence and His sovereignty over all creation. Men may draw their little maps and claim their little kingdoms, but God's authority knows no such boundaries. His voice fills the heavens, and His light touches every corner of the earth. This is the God who is speaking into Job's situation, a God whose parish is the entire cosmos.

4 After it, a voice roars; He thunders with His majestic voice, And He does not restrain the lightnings when His voice is heard.

The sequence here is true to nature and to theology. First the flash of lightning, then the roar of thunder. "After it, a voice roars." The roar is the voice of a lion, the king of beasts. This is not a gentle, soothing voice. It is a voice that communicates authority, power, and righteous ferocity. He thunders with His "majestic voice." The majesty is inherent to who He is. When God speaks, He cannot help but speak majestically. And notice the final clause: "He does not restrain the lightnings when His voice is heard." There is an untamable quality to God's power. He is not holding back. When He speaks in the thunder, He unleashes His power. This is meant to humble us. We serve a God who does not need to restrain Himself to keep from accidentally destroying us. Rather, His full-throated roar is the very thing that upholds the world, while at the same time reminding us of our precarious position as creatures before Him.

5 God thunders with His voice marvelously, Doing great things which we do not know.

Elihu concludes this section with a summary statement of worship. "God thunders with His voice marvelously." The thunder is not just powerful; it is wonderful, extraordinary, full of marvels. It is a work of divine art. And this marvelous thunder is emblematic of all His works. He is constantly "doing great things which we do not know." This is the heart of the matter for Job. Job has been demanding an explanation, a day in court, a reason for his suffering that he can comprehend. Elihu's answer is that the demand itself is flawed. We are finite creatures, and God is an infinite Creator. His purposes and His ways are necessarily beyond our full grasp. We cannot "know" them in the exhaustive way we want to. The thunder is a sermon in sound, teaching us this very lesson. It is loud, it is powerful, and we cannot begin to understand the intricate physics and meteorology behind it, let alone the mind of the one who orchestrates it. Our place is not to put God in the dock, but to stand in awe of the great things He does that are, and will always be, beyond our complete understanding.

Application

The first application is simply this: we must recover a right and biblical fear of God. Elihu's heart trembled. Ours should too. We have domesticated God, making Him into a manageable, predictable deity who fits neatly into our theological systems. But the God of the Bible is the one whose voice is the thunder. He is wild, majestic, and untamable. A right relationship with Him begins with the kind of awe that makes the heart leap.

Second, we must learn to listen to God in His creation. We are surrounded by God's general revelation, but we often have our earbuds in, listening to the noise of our own making. Elihu tells us to "listen closely." The heavens are declaring the glory of God. The thunder is speaking of His power. We need to cultivate the habit of seeing and hearing the Creator in the things He has made. This is not pantheism; it is basic biblical theism. The world is God's handiwork, and it speaks of Him.

Finally, we must embrace the mystery of God's ways. Elihu's conclusion is that God does "great things which we do not know." This is not a call to intellectual laziness, but to intellectual humility. There are things about God and His governance of the world that we will not understand in this life. Our task is not to solve every riddle, but to trust the God who thunders marvelously. When we are faced with suffering that makes no sense, like Job was, the answer is not always a neat explanation. Sometimes the answer is a fresh apprehension of the majesty and incomprehensible greatness of God. He is God, and we are not. And in that truth, there is profound peace.