Job 33:1-16: a reflection

1“However, Job, please hear my speech, and listen to all my words. 2See now, I have opened my mouth. My tongue has spoken in my mouth. 3My words will utter the uprightness of my heart. That which my lips know they will speak sincerely. 4The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life. 5If you can, answer me. Set your words in order before me, and stand up. 6Behold, I am toward God even as you are. I am also formed out of the clay. 7Behold, my terror will not make you afraid, neither will my pressure be heavy on you. 8“Surely you have spoken in my hearing, I have heard the voice of your words, saying, 9‘I am clean, without disobedience. I am innocent, neither is there iniquity in me. 10Behold, he finds occasions against me. He counts me for his enemy. 11He puts my feet in the stocks. He marks all my paths.’ 12“Behold, I will answer you. In this you are not just, for God is greater than man. 13Why do you strive against him, because he doesn’t give account of any of his matters? 14For God speaks once, yes twice, though man pays no attention. 15In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, in slumbering on the bed, 16then he opens the ears of men, and seals their instruction,

Elihu, one of Job's younger companions, makes a claim worth lifting out of his long speech: God speaks in one way, and in two, though man does not perceive it. God speaks, Elihu says, in a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people, opening their ears. The point is arresting: God is speaking more often than we register, and much of our sense of his silence is really our failure to perceive.

Notice the gentle accusation in it. We often complain that God does not speak, that heaven is quiet, that we get no word. Elihu suggests the trouble may lie on our end. God speaks once, even twice, in ways we sleep through or hurry past or do not recognize as his voice, and we come away saying he said nothing.

That is worth taking to heart. Before concluding that God is silent, it is worth asking whether he has been speaking in ways you have not been attending to, in Scripture read too fast, in the quiet you never make space for, in the counsel of others, in the night. God speaks in one way, and in two. The invitation is to become the kind of person who perceives it, to slow down and listen, so that his voice, already speaking, is finally heard.

Lord, you speak more often than I perceive, and I mistake my inattention for your silence. Open my ears. Make me slow enough and quiet enough to hear the ways you are already speaking, and give me a listening heart.