Job 34 Summary - 5 Minute Bible Study

Job 34 Short Summary:

Job 34 contains the “wise” words of Elihu as he tried to educate Job on the nature of God. After promising to reveal wisdom to Job and his 3 friends, Elihu essentially just repeated what had already been discussed with only a few small differences. Elihu believed similar to Job’s 3 friends, that Job was being punished for secret unconfessed sin.

Job 34 Bible Study

SHORT OUTLINE OF THE BOOK OF JOB

• Job 1-2 – Job is Persecuted by Satan

• Job 3-37 – Job and His Friends Discuss the Reason He is Experiencing Persecution

• Job 38-41 – God Speaks with Job and Reveals His Greatness to Him.

• Job 42 – God Restores What Job Lost

WHEN:

• The date of the writing of Job is unknown and still debated. Some believe it was written during the time of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) or even earlier, while others suspect it was written during the time of Judah’s Babylonian captivity (607-537 B.C.).

• I take the earlier date. The description of Job as the “greatest of all the people of the east” (1:3) and an absence of references to Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple suggests to me that this book was written early.

KEY CHARACTERS:

• Job – A blameless and upright man who Satan persecuted in an attempt to turn his heart away from God.

• Elihu – Elihu had been listening to the conversation between Job and his friends. He speaks and shares his opinions in chapters 32-37. He was the youngest of the group. His father was Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram (32:2).

WHERE:

• Job lived in the land of Uz. Most scholars surmise the land of Uz was in northern Saudi Arabia, either immediately south of the Dead Sea, I the land that would become known as Edom, or immediately east of the Dead Sea, which is today the country of Jordan.

OUTLINE:

• ELIHU MISCHARACTERIZES JOB (34:1-9):

  • Elihu said that he had tasted Job’s words and found them an offense to his palate.

  • He declared that Job was a scoffer and a man who kept company with evildoers (34:8).

  • Elihu misrepresented Job in his summary of his argument, saying, “For he [Job] has said, ‘It profits a man nothing that he should take delight in God’” (34:9). This was hardly a fair representation of Job’s position.

• ELIHU POSITIONS HIMSELF AS THE DEFENDER OF GOD’S RIGHTEOUSNESS (34:10-37):

  • According to Elihu, Job was accusing God of wickedness, and Elihu put himself forth as the defender of God’s righteousness.

  • He said, “Of a truth, God will not do wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice” (34:12).

  • He repeated the oversimplified view of God that had previously been championed by Job’s friends, that God repays men according to their actions and their fates are always based on their works.

  • In verses 13-15, Elihu reemphasized God’s awesome power and authority over nature, a point that had already been mutually agreed upon several times in the previous conversation.

  • He spoke about God’s impartiality and fair distribution of justice.

  • He repeated the established fact that God knows everything and nothing is hidden from Him.

  • According to Elihu, instead of arrogantly resisting guilt, Job should have embraced God’s discipline as a sign of his guilt and asked God to teach him his error.

  • Elihu concludes this chapter with a string of accusations. He told Job he spoke without knowledge, he answered like a wicked man, and he was guilty of multiplying words of rebellion against God.

APPLICATION

• Be cautious about people who introduce themselves as the possessors of wisdom.

• Wisdom should be judged by words and actions, not by claims and credentials.

• Elihu prefaced all his words with the promise that he was going to enlighten the group with wisdom.

• So far, we haven’t seen him present hardly anything of value, and he has said some provably erroneous things.

• Just because a person presents themselves as wise doesn’t mean they know anything.

• I see this happen most often when somebody leads into a conversation by stating their credentials, their education, or their life experiences.

• Some Bible teachers want you to believe them just because they went to seminary. Some people want you to unquestionably accept their presentation of “science” just because they have a Ph.D. in Biology. Some people think having a bunch of subscribers on YouTube makes them credible.

• When someone leads with their credentials and the expectation that you should accept whatever they say as beyond scrutiny because they are the “expert,” immediately begin scrutinizing what that person just said!

• Claims of wisdom stand or fall on the validity of the ideas presented, not on the credentials of the speaker.

• I’ve heard some Ph.D.s say verifiably wrong things, I’ve heard some Bible “scholars” butcher the biblical text, and I’ve heard so called “wise” men try to explain the behavior of God from an elementary perspective.