Job 34:1

ELIHU’S SECOND DISCOURSE.

1. Elihu spake Literally, answered. (See note on Job 3:2.) Elihu waits for Job to respond. The chapter is devoted to establishing the justice of God. Elihu does not argue so much from instances of divine providence as from the necessity of the divine nature, and from the fact that God founded, upholds, and continues to govern, the world. His reasoning is not inductive, but rather through the intuitions of the moral sense. Man feels that God must do right a like argument to that which Goethe employs in proof of the divine existence. His government is comprehensive and impartial. The high and the low are punished with equal severity. That government is founded in wisdom: certainly man can not improve upon it. (Job 34:33.) The language is more severe than we should have expected from the opening remarks of Elihu; yet it is marked by a deference which was wanting on the part of the friends. He who speaks under the divine impulse must at times utter unwelcome truths.