Job 33 · a question people ask
"If there is beside him an angel, an interpreter, one among a thousand" (33:23). Who is this, and what is the ransom?
The chapter doesn't say. Here is what it does say. Elihu is speaking, and since 33:14 he has been speaking of man. "If there is beside him an angel, an interpreter, one among a thousand, to show to man what is right for him" (33:23), "then God is gracious to him, and says, ‘Deliver him from going down to the pit, I have found a ransom.’" (33:24). In Hebrew angel is mal'akh, the word of "a messenger came to Job" (1:14) as well as of angels, and interpreter is melits, the word of the "interpreter" between Joseph and his brothers (Genesis 42:23) (tap angel, interpreter). In the WEB it is God who is gracious and speaks; in Hebrew 33:24 has no word for God, only verbs that say he. Elihu doesn't say who the angel is, whose words "I have found a ransom" are, or what the ransom is (tap ransom). Job doesn't answer him; after Elihu's last words the next heading is "Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind" (38:1). No New Testament verse quotes these verses. These notes don't name the angel or the ransom, and don't make Elihu's words about anyone the chapter doesn't name.
The verses
“For God speaks once, yes twice, though man pays no attention.”
““If there is beside him an angel, an interpreter, one among a thousand, to show to man what is right for him, then God is gracious to him, and says, ‘Deliver him from going down to the pit, I have found a ransom.’”
“that a messenger came to Job, and said, “The oxen were plowing, and the donkeys feeding beside them,”
“They didn’t know that Joseph understood them; for there was an interpreter between them.”