Lent With Job and Saint Thomas Aquinas: Chapter Thirty-Three

Elihu attacks the temerity of Job in seeking to dispute with God over his misfortune:

Eliud has already proposed those things which he intended to dispute with Job. Since Job, before he had spoken the words Eliud cited (vv.10,11) had said, “I desire to dispute with God,” it seems unfitting to recall someone who desires eagerly to take up the dispute with someone higher to dispute with an inferior. Before Eliud begins to argue with Job about these things, he reproaches him with the very fact that he desired to argue with God. First, it is a mark of great presumption to challenge someone superior to debate. So he says, “I will answer you,” your desire according to which you wish to dispute with God, “that God is greater than man,” and so it is presumptuous for man to wish to debate with God. In this he would justly accuse Job if Job wanted to dispute with God to contradict him as if he were an equal. Job however wished to dispute with God to learn as a student does with a master. So he said in Chapter Twenty Three, “I will fill my mouth with rebukes to learn how he answers me.” (v.4) Yet Eliud interpreted this as though Job spoke contentiously against God, complaining that he was not answering him, and so he then says, “You contend against him because he will not answer all your arguments.” He wanted to take this from these preceding works of Job, and from what he said in Chapter Nineteen, “Behold, I will shout out violently in my suffering and no one will hear. I will cry out and there was no one to judge.” (v.27) Job did not say these words and others like them in a contentious manner, but because he desired to know the reasoning of divine wisdom.

To refute the preceding words of Job which Eliud interpreted as having been spoken contentiously, Eliud shows that God does not necessarily have to answer every single word posed to him by man, but he speaks sufficiently to each one for his instruction, and so he then says, “God speaks once,” sufficiently for the instruction of man. So then he does not have to answer each of the man’s questions in turn, and therefore he says, “and he does not repeat the same thing a second time,” since to repent what he did sufficiently would be superfluous. He shows how God speaks to man then saying, “in a dream, in a vision of the night.” There can also be another meaning, so that when he says, “God speaks only once,” to man, it refers to the instruction of the mind which is by the light of natural reason, as Psalm Four, “Many say: ‘Who shows good things to us?’” and as if to respond: “The light of your face shines upon us, O Lord.” (vv. 6 and 7), in this light one discerns good from evil. Since natural reason remains unchangeable in men, and as a result it is not necessary to renew it, he therefore says, “and he does not repeat the same thing a second time.” Then he shows another way by which God speaks to man, which is the imaginary vision in the apparitions of dreams, and so he says, “in a dream, in the visions of the night.” This can be referred to prophetic revelation, according to Numbers, “If anyone will be a prophet of the Lord among you, I will speak to him either in dream or in vision,” (12:6) or this can be referred to ordinary dreams which Eliud believed come from God.

Go here to read the rest.  Elihu notes that God is in constant communication with us if we but have the wit to understand what He is telling us.