Here we are introduced to a young man named Elihu. He had waited patiently before speaking up and he had been listening to all that transpired. He thought it polite to let the older men speak first but here he became impatient and angry. He was angry at Job’s three friends because they had found no answer even though they had declared Job to be in the wrong (32:2-3). He was also angry with Job for justifying himself before God. Notice that Elihu claimed that wisdom is present in man as a gift from God and that one need not wait for the tempering of time before it can be called wisdom (32:8). This is true and Job did say it, perhaps in a better way (28:28). However, Elihu demonstrated inflated self-confidence and his speeches did not subsequently justify his claim that wisdom is a gift of God. However, age and experience cannot be written off as simply as Elihu claimed. Age and experience do in fact contribute to the nurturing of wisdom in many cases.

The gist of Elihu’s contribution was that God sends suffering for man’s discipline and correction (33:14-30; 37:13). Eliphaz had briefly referred to this and Elihu elaborated on it. He saw suffering as God’s purpose to prevent man from destroying himself (33:17-28, 30; 36:16). Suffering, to Elihu, can help keep man from sin rather than being punishment for his sin. Elihu still subscribed to the retribution principle but he reconfigured it with an anticipatory role. So he could agree that Job may not have committed any great sin in the past but Job’s sufferings anticipated and demonstrated an obvious character flaw, which became evident as his problems unfolded. From the prologue, we know that God did not send sufferings to Job to unveil a flaw in his character. In fact, God declared Job as righteous and blameless.

What is interesting is that Elihu declared that Job’s three friends, who were older, and generally recognised as wise men, were not wise in the way they interacted with Job. In his retorts to Job, although he did mention true characteristics of God, his conclusions about Job as being rebellious, proud and unwise were not accurate. Elihu put himself above Job in his claim to having true wisdom; yet, in reality, true wisdom does not belong to the old or to the young among men. In the case of Job, all present could not fully understand why Job suffered. Although Job himself possessed much wisdom, he could not comprehend fully why he had to suffer to such a degree.

The Bible as a whole gives many different reasons for suffering. We might suffer because of our sin. We might also suffer because someone else sinned. We might suffer because the world is broken because of the fall of man. We might suffer like the man born blind so that God might be glorified (John 9:1-3). We might suffer because God’s creation of the new heaven and earth is not yet complete. In this present age creation and man long for release from bondage to this current situation. At times, we cannot fully understand and know why we suffer just like Job. But we do need to trust God and His perfect wisdom. For He alone is wise enough to rule the world, and He wants us to trust Him fully rather than try to understand in detail how He orders the running of the the universe. This we shall see in the following chapters of Job.

So many chapters were recorded in the three cycles of dialogue between Job and his three friends and also several chapters were given to the speeches of Elihu. Many questions are raised.  Why is there suffering and evil? What can we say about suffering of the righteous?  The answers do not arise simplistically. Perhaps, suffering tells us that something is wrong. If there were no suffering, how many of us would be concerned either with God or with the welfare of others? The intensity and breadth of suffering indicate the magnitude of the wrongness in this world and the enormous problem of sin in the human race.

In one sense, the question “Why is there suffering?” assumes that God exists and that suffering has meaning. When something has meaning, it serves to point to something else. If suffering has meaning, we must look beyond the suffering to a personal One who gives it meaning.

Without God, the question “Why is there suffering” is pointless because there can be no “why” to suffering or any other evil. Humans instinctively ask “why” because they instinctively know that the sovereign God is supposed to be good. When we stop asking why, our humanity dies. If there is no sovereign God, then our existence and deeds are all simply the product of chance. There can be no such thing as morality, or good and evil.

Only those with an extremely powerful imagination or indifference can succeed in denying that there is evil in the world. We can claim that pain is amoral, but as soon as one says that the Holocaust was wrong or genocide is wrong, the universe is assumed to be moral and a moral creator has tacitly been assumed. Those who deny such a creator claim that there is no absolute wrong or right since nothing governs the whole universe. But when we ask the question, “Was Hitler’s ‘final solution’ absolutely wrong?”, we need to admit in the depths of our guts that certain things are wrong and certain things are right. This consciousness of right and wrong cannot possibly be in our system by chance.