Scripture Daily

Context No. 415 of 4322 · Job

Context · Reflection

Job 35:1-16: in context

1Moreover Elihu answered, 2“Do you think this to be your right, or do you say, ‘My righteousness is more than God’s,’ 3that you ask, ‘What advantage will it be to you? What profit will I have, more than if I had sinned?’ 4I will answer you, and your companions with you. 5Look to the skies, and see. See the skies, which are higher than you. 6If you have sinned, what effect do you have against him? If your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to him? 7If you are righteous, what do you give him? Or what does he receive from your hand? 8Your wickedness may hurt a man as you are, and your righteousness may profit a son of man. 9“By reason of the multitude of oppressions they cry out. They cry for help by reason of the arm of the mighty. 10But no one says, ‘Where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night, 11who teaches us more than the animals of the earth, and makes us wiser than the birds of the sky?’ 12There they cry, but no one answers, because of the pride of evil men. 13Surely God will not hear an empty cry, neither will the Almighty regard it. 14How much less when you say you don’t see him. The cause is before him, and you wait for him! 15But now, because he has not visited in his anger, neither does he greatly regard arrogance, 16therefore Job opens his mouth with empty talk, and he multiplies words without knowledge.”

Elihu is the youngest of Job's counselors, and his speeches are a mixed bag; he says some sharp and unfair things to a suffering man. But buried in this chapter is one observation so beautiful it has outlived the argument it was part of. Elihu is making the point that God is so high above us that our sin cannot really damage him and our righteousness cannot really enrich him; if you sin, he asks, what do you actually do to him, and if you are righteous, what does he receive from your hand? Our conduct affects our fellow human beings far more than it affects the God who is beyond being harmed or improved by us.

Then he turns to how people behave in suffering, and here comes the line. People cry out, he says, under the weight of oppression; they cry for help against the arm of the mighty. But no one says, where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night? That is the observation to sit with. In their pain, people cry out, but what they cry for is relief, an end to the affliction, an exit from the dark. What almost no one asks for is God himself, the Maker who gives songs in the night. Elihu even calls the other kind an empty cry, a shout for rescue that is not actually a turning to God. And notice the phrase he uses for what God gives: not an escape from the night, but songs in the night, comfort and even praise inside the darkness, not only after it lifts.

Setting aside Elihu's harshness toward Job, the distinction he draws is a real one, and it searches me. When I am in a dark stretch, what am I actually crying for? Almost always it is for the darkness to end, for the circumstances to change, for the pain to stop. How rarely do I cry, instead, where is God my Maker, seeking him rather than only seeking a way out. Do I want the deliverance more than the deliverer, and am I missing the songs God gives in the night because I am only asking him to turn on the lights?

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