Job CCCVIII

 Job 34:1-9, “Elihu further answered and said: ‘Hear my words, you wise men; give ear to me, you who have knowledge. For the ear tests words as the palate tastes food. Let us choose justice for ourselves; let us know among ourselves what is good. For Job has said, ‘I am righteous, but God has taken away my justice; should I lie concerning my right? My wound is incurable, though I am without transgression.’ What man is like Job, who drinks scorn like water, who goes in company with the workers of iniquity, and walks with wicked men? For he has said, ‘It profits man nothing that he should delight in God.’”

The more Elihu speaks, the worse off he comes. There are a plethora of things to unpack in these nine verses, but in the hope of keeping the word count of this second volume under the benchmark of War and Peace, I will only focus on three.

First, Elihu continued to make it all about himself. It wasn’t about hearing the word of the Lord, but about hearing his words. It wasn’t about seeking an answer from outside of himself, but about those present giving ear to him. There’s a difference between being wise and being wise in one’s own eyes. The wisdom to which I am referring is not book knowledge, or the attaining of degrees and diplomas, but the wisdom that comes from God, which only He can give to whom He chooses, at a time He has appointed.

In reading the words Job spoke, and the depth of wisdom he possessed, it is undeniable that he wasn’t the source of his wisdom. He spoke of things he had no way of knowing, or discerning with human reason, and one could readily tell that it was of divine origin.

Young as he was, perhaps Elihu had some head knowledge; perhaps he’d read a parchment or two, he’d happened upon a dusty scroll and perused it, sat in the counsel of those older than him and gleaned some measure of understanding, but he wasn’t anywhere near as wise as he believed himself to be, yet that in no way kept him from declaring his wisdom to any who would hear.

Hear my words, and give ear to me is what Elihu declared to those present. There was no mention of the Lord, or hearing the voice of the Lord, or giving heed to His counsel. We’ve got it from here, and we will determine whether Job is guilty or innocent. Whatever the Lord’s input, whatever the Lord’s judgment, whatever He might have to say on the matter is now moot, for I, Elihu, have come to pass judgment.

Elihu’s second blunder was assuming he had the right or authority to determine what justice looked like, or that he had the wherewithal to know what is good based on the partial information he possessed regarding Job.

“Let us choose justice for ourselves; let us know among ourselves what is good.” And who exactly gave you the authority to do this? Who appointed you judge, jury, and executioner of a man God Himself deemed blameless and upright? If the Lord has spoken, if the Lord has sent, if the Lord has appointed, then by all means speak what the Lord has spoken and go where He has sent you, walk in His authority as you go about His work, but to claim and appropriate an office, a position, or an authority that He has not given you is a recipe for disaster on a grand scale.

The difference between walking in His authority and yours is the difference between victory and defeat. The difference between speaking His words and your own in His name is that one will be rewarded due to the obedience required to go and speak a difficult message to someone reticent to hear it, and the other punished for appropriating God’s authority and speaking in His name when He never spoke. Be absolutely certain that when you speak in His name, they are His words, for all men will be held to account for the words they speak and whose name they speak them in.

Every time I speak, whether on the radio or before an audience, I go out of my way to delineate between personal opinion and revelation, between the word of the Lord and my own words. Although asked to do so on multiple occasions by various individuals, I refuse to take a word from the Lord, a prophecy, or some revelatory insight, and interpret it, flesh it out, or give my opinion on what I think it means, because that’s not my place. I do not have the authority to do it.

If God gives a message, deliver it verbatim and be done with it. If you want to wax poetic on why you should include tofu in your diet for better gut biome health, do your worst, but never claim it was something the Lord commanded His children to do.

As an aside, if God gives you, personally, a specific instruction to either abstain from something or do something, it does not automatically become general doctrine for everyone else. When Samson’s head was shaved, he lost his strength. This does not mean that everyone with long hair will have Samson's strength. He neither went around demanding everyone grow out their hair, nor did he insist that the reason they did not have his strength was that their hair wasn’t long.

The third and most egregious thing Elihu did was that he put words in Job’s mouth that Job never uttered just to make his point and position more credible. Although Elihu claimed Job had said that it profits man nothing that he should delight in God, those words never passed his lips.

If you are so inclined, go back through the previous thirty-two chapters, and see for yourself. Job never said that! What he said was the opposite of what Elihu claimed he’d said, insisting that God was the only thing worth pursuing in this life, and whether prince or pauper, whether rich or poor, if the presence of God abided, it was more than enough and the only thing his heart desired.

Whether he’d misheard Job’s words, or he did so knowingly, Elihu lied. Given that his lie served to bolster his assessment of Job’s situation, I tend to lean toward him knowingly insisting Job had said something he never did just to get a win. If saving face, or keeping your pride intact, is worth besmirching and lying about what another has said, there is something very wrong in your heart that must be dealt with before any claim of wisdom, or being on a mission from God, can be made.         

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.