Owning Your Utterances

“For he hath said, It profiteth a man nothing that he should delight himself with God.” (Job 34:9 AV)

If we are going to utter all that is on our hearts in times of deep duress, we have to be prepared, at some point, to own the words that we say.  The above statement was Elihu, the youngest of Job’s counselors, recalling two statements that Job had uttered.  To give Job the benefit of the doubt, the first was in comparison to the wicked.  If the wicked and the just both suffer the same, then what profit is there in serving and fearing the LORD.  The second statement was in the context of what he had lost.  If he feared and served the LORD, he would never regain what he had lost.  His family was gone forever.  Job was not making a statement of totality that serving the LORD or delighting himself in the LORD brings no blessings at all.  However, he did say it.  And for saying it, Elihu was justified in clearing up the simplest meaning of what Job was believed to have suggested.

We all say things under duress that are oversimplified representations of a truth.  We utter things that are not completely thought out and articulated in the best way possible.  We know what we meant.  Stress had led us to say it in such a way that it was misrepresented and had the potential of being misunderstood.  We have all been there.  We have even gone so far as to utter things about the LORD that may not have been completely correct.  We were simply venting off stress built up by severe trial and expressing more how we felt that what we truly think.  If we could, we would take it back.  Venting is part of the process.  If we cannot vent and release the emotion tied to our situation, then we cannot begin the process of thinking clearly.  We must remember, however, the statements which we make while venting may indeed come back to us and need correcting, explanation, or down right rebuke.

Elihu was correct in making an observation about these two statements Job made.  He misunderstood the emotions behind them and missed the obscure context in which they were uttered, but he was correct is righting the misconception that delighting in God has no profit.  Elihu may have been full of himself.  But what he was attempting to do was to further expound on the statements of Job to put them in the better light of God’s sovereignty.  Elihu brought the discussion down from high emotional utterances to perhaps trying to think more theologically.  God never rebukes Elihu.  Not because Elihu was totally right in everything that was said.  Because he clearly was not.  Rather, perhaps he got a pass because he was trying to calm the emotions down as refocus on God rather than on Job.