Job 34 Bible study: Far be it from God

Every word of this chapter after its heading is Elihu's: "Moreover Elihu answered" (34:1), and the next heading is "Moreover Elihu answered" again (35:1). In chapter 33 he spoke to Job by name: "However, Job, please hear my speech" (33:1). Now he calls on others: "Hear my words, you wise men. Give ear to me, you who have knowledge" (34:2), and he speaks of Job by name: "What man is like Job, who drinks scorn like water" (34:7). Then he takes up a saying Job had used: "For the ear tries words, as the palate tastes food" (34:3). Job had asked, "Doesn’t the ear try words, even as the palate tastes its food?" (12:11). Then Elihu reports Job's words. He says Job has said, "I am righteous, God has taken away my right" (34:5) (tap right). In Hebrew God has taken away my right is the same three words as in Job's oath, "As God lives, who has taken away my right" (27:2) (in 34:5 with and in front), and I am righteous is the very form of Job's "Though I were righteous" (9:15). He goes on, "Notwithstanding my right I am considered a liar. My wound is incurable, though I am without disobedience" (34:6). In Hebrew wound is the word of "For the arrows of the Almighty are within me" (6:4) (tap wound). And he says Job has said, "It profits a man nothing that he should delight himself with God" (34:9) (tap profits). The book doesn't say which of Job's words Elihu has in view.

Job 34:21→leads toJohn 2:24-25

Elihu says of God, "For his eyes are on the ways of a man. He sees all his goings" (34:21). Job had said the like of God: "Doesn’t he see my ways, and count all my steps?" (31:4). John writes of Jesus at the Passover in Jerusalem, "But Jesus didn’t entrust himself to them, because he knew everyone" (John 2:24), "and because he didn’t need for anyone to testify concerning man; for he himself knew what was in man" (John 2:25). John doesn't name Job or Elihu, and no link between the Hebrew and Greek words is claimed, so setting the two side by side is a reading. It rests on a shared subject, every person fully known, which Job and Elihu both say of God. Some read the two together: what Job and Elihu say of God's eyes on the ways of every man, John says of Jesus, who knew what was in man. Others read each in its own setting: Elihu goes on, "There is no darkness, nor thick gloom, where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves" (34:22), and later speaks of Job (34:35-37); John speaks of those who "believed in his name, observing his signs" (John 2:23). Neither reading says whether Elihu is right about Job, or makes anyone in Job a picture of Jesus.

חָלִילָהchalilahsay kha-lee-LAH

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "used as exclam.", "far be it". Strong's: "far be it!". "far be it from God, that he should do wickedness" (34:10). In the Hebrew of Job it comes twice: here, and in Job's own oath, "Far be it from me that I should justify you" (27:5). Abraham used it twice in one verse to the LORD: "May it be far from you to do things like that … May that be far from you" (Genesis 18:25).