Job CCCXVIII

 Job 36:13-21, “But the hypocrites in heart store up wrath; they do not cry for help when He binds them. They die in youth, and their life ends among the perverted persons. He delivers the poor in their affliction, and opens their ears in oppression. Indeed He would have brought you out of dire distress, into a broad place where there is no restraint; and what is set on your table would be full of richness. But you are filled with the judgment due the wicked; judgment and justice take hold of you. Because there is wrath, beware lest He take you away with one blow; for a large ransom would not help you avoid it. Will your riches, or all the mighty forces, keep you from distress? Do not desire the night, when people are cut off in their place. Take heed, do not turn to iniquity, for you have chosen this rather than affliction.”

If Job had never cried out for help, Elihu may have had a point. It’s not that Job hadn’t cried out; it’s not that Job hadn’t pleaded with God for an answer, or asked to be shown his wickedness if there was any to be found. It’s that God had remained silent, and this, above all else, eclipsed what he’d been through and was a torment for his soul. It was the absence of God’s presence and voice that Job found most unbearable even though he’d been reduced to scratching at his festering boils with a potsherd.

It’s not that there was any evidence of Job’s guilt that compelled Elihu to conclude that he was filled with judgment due the wicked; Elihu needed Job to be guilty of wickedness to support his conclusion. It was an attempt to justify his judgment despite there being no evidence of wrongdoing because, above all else, Elihu needed to be right.

During the height of the Communist scourge, one of Joseph Stalin’s most infamous henchmen was an individual named Lavrentiy Beria. He served as the head of the secret police for some twelve years, and his famous quote was as chilling as it was succinct: “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” To him, guilt or innocence were irrelevant, as was the notion of fairness or justice. To him, the rule of law wasn’t something to be equally applied, but rather something to be used as a cudgel, a tool to get his way, and whether a man had done something worthy of punishment or death was irrelevant. As long as that man stood in the way of Stalin’s stated goal, he would find something to pin on him, even make it up out of whole cloth if need be, because his guiding principle was winning at any cost rather than discovering the truth of a thing. You presume the man guilty, then fill in the blanks at your leisure.

Elihu did not start out with a presumption of innocence when it came to Job. He’d already made up his mind. As far as he was concerned, the case had been adjudicated in the court of public opinion, and Job’s guilt was certain. Now all he had to do was backfill the narrative with incriminating tidbits, lean on causation to do the heavy lifting, and insist that he knew the mind of God when it came to Job. And so the entire thing could be wrapped up in a shiny bow, and he would be the man who’d proven what Job’s three friends could not.

This was Elihu’s version of “it is written” that would take place far into the future, as Satan unsuccessfully attempted to tempt Jesus into turning stones into bread, then later to throw Himself from the pinnacle of the temple, by misusing and abusing what was, in fact, written, but not in the spirit in which it was intended.

Jesus already knew who He was. Satan likewise knew who Jesus was, and any attempt at proving it was tantamount to tempting God. If you know who you are in Christ, you have no need to prove it to anyone, especially to someone who demands you do so in bad faith. Oh, you’re saved and redeemed? Prove it! Even if you decide to go through every detail of how Jesus transformed you, how you were born again, how you no longer pursue the things you once did but Him alone, it won’t suffice, it won’t be enough, because those asking for proof aren’t doing it out of a sincere desire to know, but in the hope that you come to doubt your place in God’s Kingdom.

Elihu was not well meaning, he wasn’t well intentioned, he wasn’t trying to get Job to repent of something he’d done, but rather to sow seeds of doubt regarding his relationship with God by repeatedly pointing to those who came before, who had rightly been judged for their wickedness, and insisting that Job was just like them, and he too had committed evil in the sight of God.

The sad reality is that Satan knows Scripture better than most believers, and if he thinks he can use it to sow doubt, he will not hesitate to attempt to pervert the truth of it toward his own ends. There is one surefire way to combat such schemes, and that is to know Scripture for yourself, consume it daily, and allow it to take root in your heart, so that when one of the devil’s minions comes calling insisting that it is written, you can likewise point to it and say, it is also written, and what you have stated as the basis of your argument is invalidated by Scripture itself, not parsed out, mutilated, twisted, and reimagined, but in context as it should be.

All things being equal, any one of us today would have a far easier time rebuffing the claims of Elihu because we have the written Word to fall back on, we have the Bible to which we can go and glean wisdom and understanding, while Job had none of those graces. What Job did have was unwavering faith in the God he served. He knew himself to be innocent of the things being said about him, and that was enough for him to weather the barrage of accusations and insinuations leveled against him.

If the day ever comes, let Scripture defend you if you know yourself to be a son or daughter of the Almighty, walking humbly in the way he has set before you. It’s the only effective defense, and the only surefire way to quench the fiery darts of the wicked one.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Posted on 7 July 2026 | 11:33 am