MESSENGER AND INTERPRETER

Three of Job’s friends have tried to help him, but they had no understanding of his need. Now his younger friend Elihu has been provoked to speak. In this passage, he tells Job how God speaks to people for their good, to save them from death and bring them to a penitent state before Him.

First, he says in verses 15-18, God speaks to people in dreams which cause fear. This fear may cause them to turn back from wrong courses and pride, thus saving them from death.

Then, secondly, in verses 19-22, he explains that God may resort to making them fall sick. They cannot eat and they become emaciated and may become critically ill.

But Elihu places his main stress on a third way in which God speaks. This is through the agency of a rarely available person who is God’s messenger and interpreter; he is one in a thousand, able ‘to show unto man what is right for him’, as the Revised Version renders the end of verse 23. He speaks in grace to God, pleading that the person to whom he is sent should be spared on the basis of a ransom which he, the messenger, has found. Elihu may have thought of this role being fulfilled by himself, but ultimately only our Lord Jesus Christ can be such a mediating messenger to sinners.

The result of this mediating ministry of the messenger is that the person who hears him is transformed. He changes from fear and despondency to joy and health. He prays to God and enters into God’s favour. He testifies to others of the grace he has found. Probably the best translation of the last clause in verse 26 is, ‘He recounts to men his salvation’, RSV

The person’s repentance is detailed in verses 27-28. He confesses, ‘I have sinned, and perverted that which was right’. The next clause probably means, ‘I did not get what I deserved’, NIV. Verse 28 continues his confession of God’s grace to such an unworthy person: ‘He hath redeemed my soul from going into the pit, and my life shall behold the light’, RV. The full sense of this passage can only be realised in the ministry of Christ. We notice that Job, so full of words when attacked, is silent under this message of God’s grace.