Job 32: 1 – 22
Who Invited This Guy?
1 So these three men ceased answering Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes. 2 Then the wrath of Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, was aroused against Job; his wrath was aroused because he justified himself rather than God. 3 Also against his three friends his wrath was aroused, because they had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job. 4 Now because they were years older than he, Elihu had waited to speak to Job. 5 When Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouth of these three men, his wrath was aroused. 6 So Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, answered and said: “I am young in years, and you are very old; Therefore I was afraid, and dared not declare my opinion to you. 7 I said, ‘Age should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom.’ 8 But there is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty gives him understanding. 9 Great men are not always wise, nor do the aged always understand justice. 10 “Therefore I say, ‘Listen to me, I also will declare my opinion.’ 11 Indeed I waited for your words, I listened to your reasoning’s, while you searched out what to say. 12 I paid close attention to you; And surely not one of you convinced Job, or answered his words—13 Lest you say, ‘We have found wisdom’; God will vanquish him, not man. 14 Now he has not directed his words against me; So I will not answer him with your words. 15 “They are dismayed and answer no more; Words escape them. 16 And I have waited, because they did not speak, because they stood still and answered no more. 17 I also will answer my part, I too will declare my opinion. 18 For I am full of words; The spirit within me compels me. 19 Indeed my belly is like wine that has no vent; It is ready to burst like new wineskins. 20 I will speak, that I may find relief; I must open my lips and answer. 21 Let me not, I pray, show partiality to anyone; Nor let me flatter any man. 22 For I do not know how to flatter, else my Maker would soon take me away.
Have you ever been involved in ‘Hospitality’? You know - let someone come and stay at your house for awhile. Or how about on a holiday invite someone over for a meal that probably has nowhere to go to. It is something the bible points out that Christians should do?
I think one thing that keeps us away for being hospitable is receiving an ‘unwanted guest’ that you ultimately cannot get rid of. Whether you are a hospitable and friendly person or not, sometimes you feel uncomfortable with unwanted house guests, don’t you? They will make you annoyed or even stressful. Therefore, how to get rid of unwanted house guests politely? In order to do this successfully, you need to gain some certain skills and tactics. He are a few that I came up with;
. Where a phony hearing aid
. Sing or whistle loudly on a consistent basis
. Turn the TV up real loud all the time
. Assign them chores
. Get a guard dog or a bunch of dogs that like to bark
. Constantly cook food that smells bad.
. Ask for advice in composing emails that ask how you get rid of bed bugs or lice
Begin a significant home renovation which begins in the room where they are sleeping
. Hide all the remotes
Apparently Elihu had come with the other three men but was not mentioned. He just kept quiet until now. We get use to thinking that three guys were the total amount of visitors because of the dialogue that went back and forth between them. To give you an example we believe that 3 wise men visited our Lord Jesus when He was an infant. Why do we think this? It is because of the gifts that were given which were in three categories – gold, frankincense, and myrrh. It could have been more kings in the group who gave duplicate items of the three mentioned gifts.
1 So these three men ceased answering Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes. 2 Then the wrath of Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, was aroused against Job; his wrath was aroused because he justified himself rather than God. 3 Also against his three friends his wrath was aroused, because they had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job. 4 Now because they were years older than he, Elihu had waited to speak to Job. 5 When Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouth of these three men, his wrath was aroused.
We have here the reason why his three older men were now silent. They ceased to answer him, and let him have his saying, because they had come to the conclusion that he was righteous in his own eyes. This was the reason they gave why they said no more, because it was to no purpose to argue with a man that was so opinionative. But as we have learned they did not judge fairly concerning Job: for he was really righteous before God, and not righteous in his own eyes only; so that it was only to save their own credibility that they made this the reason of their silence, as disputants commonly do when they find themselves stumped and are not willing to look at themselves.
We now see Elihu, the fourth of Job’s visitors, give his comments. His name means ‘My God Is He’. They had all tried in vain to convince Job, but my God Is He that can and will do it - he only can open everyone’s understanding.
2 Then the wrath of Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, was aroused against Job; his wrath was aroused because he justified himself rather than God. 3 Also against his three friends his wrath was aroused, because they had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job. 4 Now because they were years older than he, Elihu had waited to speak to Job. 5 When Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouth of these three men, his wrath was aroused. 6 So Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, answered and said: “I am young in years, and you are very old; Therefore I was afraid, and dared not declare my opinion to you.
Elihu spoke because he was angry and thought he had good reasons to be so. When he had made his observations upon the back and forth debate he did not go away and slander the disputants, striking them secretly with a malicious censorious tongue, but what he had to say he would say before their faces, that they might vindicate themselves if they could.
He was angry at Job, because he thought he did not speak so reverently of God as he ought to have done; and that was too true. He felt that Job justified himself more than God, that is that Job took more care and pains to clear himself from the imputation of unrighteousness in being thus afflicted than to clear God from the imputation of unrighteousness in afflicting him, as if he were more concerned for his own honor than for God’s; whereas he should, in the first place, have justified God and cleared his glory, and then he might well enough have left his own reputation to be cleared for itself.
We need to take great heed to these words. Our God Is Great and Good in all things. In His love He provided a way for us to be allowed to come back to Him. A gracious heart is jealous for the honor of God.
He was angry at his friends because he thought they had not conducted themselves so charitably towards Job as they ought to have done. They had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job. They had adjudged him to be a hypocrite, a wicked man, and would not recede from that sentence concerning him; and yet they could not prove him so, nor disprove the evidences he produced of his integrity. They could not make good the premises, and yet held fast the conclusion. They had no reply to make to his arguments, and yet they would not yield, but, right or wrong, would run him down; and this was not fair.
Seldom is a quarrel begun, and more seldom is a quarrel carried on to the length that this was, in which there is not a fault on both sides.
Elihu spoke because he thought that it was time to speak, and that now, at length, it had come to his turn. He had waited on Job’s speeches, had patiently heard him out, until the words of Job were ended. He had waited on his friends’ silence, so that, as he would not interrupt him, so he would not prevent them, not because they were wiser than he, but because they were older than he, and therefore it was expected by the way in which people conducted themselves that they should speak first
7 I said, ‘Age should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom.’ 8 But there is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty gives him understanding. 9 Great men are not always wise, nor do the aged always understand justice. 10 “Therefore I say, ‘Listen to me, I also will declare my opinion.’ 11 Indeed I waited for your words, I listened to your reasoning’s, while you searched out what to say. 12 I paid close attention to you; And surely not one of you convinced Job, or answered his words—13 Lest you say, ‘We have found wisdom’; God will vanquish him, not man. 14 Now he has not directed his words against me; So I will not answer him with your words.
A thing that separates us from all other living things is that man is a rational creature, and therefore every man has for himself a judgment of discretion in different matters. Age and experience give a man great advantage in judging things, which is a good reason why older people should take pains both to learn themselves and to teach others (else the advantages of their age are a reproach to them). Even young men can obtain proper understanding of things. One man has understanding as well as another, and no man can pretend to have the monopoly of reason
The soul is a spirit, neither material itself nor dependent upon matter, but capable of conversing with things spiritual, which are not the objects of sense. It is an understanding spirit. It is able to discover and receive truth, to discourse and reason upon it, and to direct and rule accordingly. This understanding spirit is in every man. It is the inspiration of the Almighty that gives us this understanding spirit; for He is The Father of spirits and fountain of understanding.
Look at today’s news and you can see the truth of verse 9. It does not follow that great men are always wise. The aged do not always understand judgment; even they may be mistaken, and therefore they must not take it as an affront to be contradicted, but rather take it as a kindness to be instructed, by their younger and more wise individuals
We must be willing to hear reason from those that are every way different than us, and to yield to it. He that has a good eye can see further upon. We see this wisdom spelled out by our Precious Holy Spirit in the book of Ecclesiastes chapter 4 verse 13, “better is a poor and wise child then an old and foolish king.’
Elihu waited for his three associate comments to be completed. He gave his full attention to their reasons, that he might ponder their meaning, and fully understand what the drift of their thoughts and the force of their arguments were. Although none of them answered Job’s words nor said what was proper to convince him, yet he was attentive to them, in hopes they would bring it to some head at last. Though he had so much respect to his friends as not to interrupt them with his speaking, yet he had so much regard to truth and justice, He boldly speaks up.
15 “They are dismayed and answer no more; Words escape them. 16 And I have waited, because they did not speak, because they stood still and answered no more. 17 I also will answer my part, I too will declare my opinion. 18 For I am full of words; The spirit within me compels me. 19 Indeed my belly is like wine that has no vent; It is ready to burst like new wineskins. 20 I will speak, that I may find relief; I must open my lips and answer. 21 Let me not, I pray, show partiality to anyone; Nor let me flatter any man. 22 For I do not know how to flatter, else my Maker would soon take me away.
The scripture brings out things that cause Elihu now to respond. First of all it was now the right time. At this point they were all silent and did not know what else to say. It is possible here to see that Elihu here reveals himself to be the penman of this book, and that he here writes as an historian, relating the matter of fact, of the way the other men acted -15 “They are dismayed and answer no more; Words escape them. 16 And I have waited, because they did not speak, because they stood still and answered no more. The others had nothing more to say while he, on the other hand, had a great deal to say
In all truth I have experienced the same condition the Elihu went through. In counseling I have run into some people when they come up to you and ask if you have a minute, it converts in reality to over an hour. God forbid if they ask you if you have a couple of minutes you might as well cancel all you appointments for the entire day because that is how long the person will keep talking without any breaks for comments from you as the counselor.
I knew this one guy whom I nicknamed ‘Killer Karl’ felt that he needed to go to confession in order to clear his conscience. He went into the confessional and said, ‘Bless me father for I have sinned. It has been 13 years since my last confession.’ He then went on for a few hours retelling the priest all the transpired in his life for those amount of years. I think he was up to about the 8th year of the 13 when the priest interrupted and told him to say a couple of hundred ‘Hail Mary’s’ and a hundred ‘Our Father’s’. Killer told the priest he wasn’t finished yet. The priest just before he slammed the confessional door shut told him, ‘Oh, yes you are!’ The poor priests ears must have been bleeding.
Here Elihu was batting at the bit in wanting to say something. To his credit he waited till it was a proper time to spill all that was in his thoughts.
