Year 2, Day 128: Job 34

Finding Fault with Job

Chapter 34 is a chapter designed to argue the claim that Job has hinted at throughout his speeches: God is unjust for allowing Job to be punished in a way in which he is undeserving.  Job has made this claim, but he has tried to make this claim in such a way as to still remain faithful and believing in God.  That is a very difficult position to take, and most of Elihu’s speech in this chapter is designed to confront that position.

God is Just

One of the first points that Elihu makes is that God cannot be unjust.  Period.  God is by definition just.  You cannot have a square triangle or a spherical prism; you cannot have an unjust God.  This is one of the fundamental differences between the true worship of the Hebrew God and the worship of the false gods of the rest of the ancient (and modern!) cultures.  Most ancient cultures attempted to appease their gods out of fear of punishment because their gods could be spiteful and unjust.  The God of the Hebrew people – the one we call the true God – is not spiteful.  He is just.  When He does something, it is by definition just. 

Therefore, what Elihu argues in this chapter is that although Job has tried to not really put God on trial – he actually has ended up putting God on trial.  Every time Job claims that what is happening to him is not justifiable and God should be doing something else, Job is subtly claiming that God is not God.  If by definition God is just, then to claim that God does something unjust is also by definition claiming that God is not God.

Okay, this is all pretty deep.  But I think it is a worthwhile understanding to try and work our way through.  The point is this: we must be absolutely sure that we place our entire faith upon God before we claim to take Him as our God.  If we claim Him to be God and then draw His actions into question, by definition we are challenging his status as God.  And that’s a pretty serious challenge.  We may not be trying to challenge God.  But if we question Him we are by definition challenging His status as God of our life.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I don’t want to present the case that God is responsible for everything that happens in this world.  That is certainly not the case.  God has given mankind free will.  We have the ability to obey God’s ways or to disobey them.  When we choose to disobey God’s ways, then we also choose to live in the consequences of that sin.  For the record, we also choose to potentially force the people around us to live in the consequences of that sin, too.  We need to be careful that we do not lay the consequences of our sin at God’s feet and hold Him responsible.  In the paragraphs above I am claiming that all of God’s actions are just.  I am not claiming that everything that happens in this world is just.  Only those things that God ordains are justified because He is God.

So we realize that we must not only be faithful but also discerning.  When we claim to follow God, we must necessarily be prepared to believe that everything God does and asks of us is just.  By definition the things of God are just.  But we must also be willing to discern those things that are from God and those things that are the consequences of our free will applied in a sinful direction.

Finding the Human Error

This gets us back to Job, his friends, and Elihu.  Job claimed he was righteous and thus God was acting unjustly in punishing an innocent man.  Job’s friends claimed that God was just in punishing Job and therefore Job must not be righteous.  Both of these points are wrong because of their short-sightedness.  God has another agenda that is unknown to these people.  God is just in what happens to Job and Job is righteous and experiencing these things for reasons other than unrighteousness.  It is possible for God to be just, Job to be declared righteous, and for Job to still experience strife.

The point of all of this?  If we are going to claim to follow God we must be open to finding out the motivation behind God’s ways rather than simply declaring God unjust when we don’t understand.  We must be dedicated to upholding the righteousness and justness of God.  Of course, He doesn’t need us to do so; He is God and we should want to!  If we find ourselves thinking that God is unjust because of what is happening to us, we need to step back and be cautious about proceeding down that train of thought.

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