Commentary - Job 37:21-24

Bird's-eye view

Here at the end of Elihu’s discourse, we are brought to the absolute limit of human understanding. Elihu, for all his youthful zeal, concludes with a magnificent confession of God’s utter transcendence and majesty. He has been making the case that God’s ways, particularly in suffering, are not for man to judge. Now he brings it to a climax. He points to the heavens, to the blinding light of the sun, and uses it as an analogy for the unapproachable glory of God. The argument is simple: if you cannot even stare at the sun, what makes you think you can stand and question the one who made it? This passage serves as a fitting prelude to the appearance of God Himself in the whirlwind. It sets the stage by silencing all human wisdom, all human attempts to "figure God out," and prepares Job, and us, to simply listen. The central theme is the fear of the Lord, which is not a cowering dread, but a right-sizing of ourselves in the presence of infinite glory, power, and justice.

Elihu’s final words are a crescendo of awe. He moves from the visible creation to the invisible Creator, asserting that God is beyond our finding out, exalted in power, perfect in justice, and therefore, the only proper response from man is fear. Not the fear of a slave before a tyrant, but the reverent awe of a creature before his magnificent and righteous Maker. This is the beginning of all true wisdom, a lesson Job is about to learn in a very personal and direct way.

Outline

Context In Job

These verses are the capstone of Elihu’s speeches. He entered the conversation in chapter 32, claiming to have wisdom that the older friends of Job lacked. While he can be seen as a bit long-winded, his theology is a marked improvement on that of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. They insisted on a rigid and immediate tit-for-tat system of retribution, which forced them to conclude that Job's suffering was a direct punishment for some heinous secret sin. Elihu, on the other hand, presents suffering as potentially corrective and instructive, a tool in the hands of a sovereign God whose purposes are far beyond our ken.

This final section (37:21-24) functions as a bridge. It concludes all human attempts to explain Job's predicament and prepares the ground for God’s own revelation. Elihu essentially says, "We are done talking. We have reached the end of our intellectual tether. Look up!" By pointing to the overwhelming power and light in the skies, he is directing Job’s attention away from his own suffering and his own righteousness, and upward to the sheer, unsearchable greatness of God. It is the perfect setup for the Lord to speak from the whirlwind in the very next chapter.

Clause-by-Clause Commentary

v. 21 “So now men do not see the light which is bright in the skies; But the wind has passed and cleared them.”

Elihu begins with a physical illustration that every man can understand. You cannot stare into the sun. After a storm, when the wind has blown all the clouds away, the sky is clear and the sun is at its most brilliant. To look at it directly is painful, blinding. The light is too much for our eyes. Elihu’s point is an a fortiori argument. If we cannot handle the glory of a mere creature, a ball of burning gas that God spoke into existence, how could we possibly presume to gaze upon, let alone understand, the Creator? The light is there, bright and glorious, but our weakness prevents us from seeing it. This is a picture of God's revealed glory. He is not hidden in the sense of being obscure, but in the sense of being overwhelmingly bright. We are the ones with the deficiency. The wind clearing the skies is a picture of God’s revelation breaking through. He sometimes sweeps away the clouds of our confusion, but when He does, it is to reveal a glory we are not capable of fully processing.

v. 22 “Out of the north comes golden splendor; Around God is fearsome majesty.”

The north, in ancient cosmology, was often seen as the location of the divine council, the dwelling place of God. Elihu speaks of "golden splendor" coming from that direction. This is not just poetic language for the weather. It is theological language. He is describing a theophany, an appearance of God’s glory. The splendor is golden, evoking imagery of purity, value, and royalty. But this is not a gentle, welcoming light. It is accompanied by "fearsome majesty." The Hebrew word for fearsome is the same root as the word for fear. The majesty of God is terrifying. It is awesome, dreadful, and awe-inspiring. This is not the therapeutic God of modern evangelicalism. This is the God before whom seraphim cover their faces (Isaiah 6:2). This majesty is not something God puts on; it is what He is. It is "around" Him, an aura of terrible glory that is inseparable from His being. Elihu is preparing Job for the fact that an encounter with the living God is not a cozy chat, but a soul-shattering experience.

v. 23 “The Almighty, we cannot find Him; He is exalted in power And He will not afflict justice and abundant righteousness.”

Here is the theological heart of the matter. "The Almighty, we cannot find Him." This is a profound statement of God's transcendence and incomprehensibility. We cannot, by our own searching, discover God. We cannot put Him under a microscope or solve Him like a puzzle. He is not an object to be mastered by our intellect. Why can't we find him? Because "He is exalted in power." He is infinitely above us. His power is not just greater than ours in degree, but different in kind. But this incomprehensible, powerful God is not a cosmic tyrant. Elihu immediately balances this statement with a crucial affirmation of His character: "He will not afflict justice and abundant righteousness." The word "afflict" here can mean to bend or pervert. God will not, and cannot, bend justice. His righteousness is "abundant," overflowing. This is the central problem Job has been wrestling with. He cannot reconcile his suffering with God's justice. Elihu’s answer is not to explain how they reconcile in Job's specific case, but to assert that they do, in fact, reconcile in the character of God, even if we cannot see how. We must trust His character when we cannot trace His hand.

v. 24 “Therefore men fear Him; He does not regard any who are wise of heart.”

This is the conclusion, the "therefore" that flows from everything Elihu has just said. Because God is unsearchably great, fearsomely majestic, and perfectly just, the only logical, sane, and righteous response for mankind is to fear Him. This fear, as the rest of Scripture teaches, is the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 9:10). It is the foundational attitude of the creature before the Creator. And then comes the final, sharp jab, aimed squarely at Job and his friends, and at all of us. "He does not regard any who are wise of heart." This is better translated as "wise in their own hearts" or "wise in their own conceit." God is not impressed with our intellectual prowess, our theological systems, our self-assured wisdom. He looks right past the proud man who thinks he has it all figured out. The truly wise man is the one who fears God. The man who thinks he is wise in his own heart is, in God's economy, a fool. This is a call to intellectual humility. It is a call to abandon our pretensions and to simply fall down in worship before the God who is God, and whom we are not.

Application

The message of this passage is a bracing tonic for our self-obsessed age. We are constantly encouraged to "find ourselves," to "speak our truth," and to believe that our feelings are ultimate. Elihu brings us up short. The universe does not revolve around us, our comfort, or our ability to understand everything. It revolves around the fearsome, majestic, and righteous God.

First, we must recover a right sense of God’s transcendence. We cannot tame God. We cannot fit Him into our neat little boxes of systematic theology, no matter how good they are. He is the Almighty, and we cannot find Him out. This should lead us not to despair, but to worship. It is a liberating truth. We are not responsible for figuring everything out. We are responsible for trusting the One who has everything in hand.

Second, this passage teaches us that true wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord. The world tells us that wisdom is found in data, in degrees, in self-esteem. The Bible tells us that wisdom begins when we rightly size ourselves up against God and are filled with reverent awe. This fear is not the enemy of joy; it is the foundation of it. Fearing God means we don't have to fear anything else, not suffering, not man, not the future. When we fear God, everything else falls into its proper, smaller place.

Finally, we must learn to trust God's justice even when we cannot see it. Job’s whole trial was a test of this. Elihu’s conclusion is that God, in His exalted power, will never, ever pervert justice or righteousness. When we are in the midst of our own trials, and things don't make sense, this is the anchor for our souls. Our suffering is not meaningless, and the Judge of all the earth will do right. The ultimate demonstration of this is the cross, where God’s perfect justice and abundant righteousness met in the person of Christ. There, God did not spare His own Son, showing the fearsome reality of His justice against sin, and at the same time providing the golden splendor of His grace to all who would believe.