Komentarz do Hioba 36:35

Then Elihu continued I saw in the reasons of Rabbi Moshe Hadarshan (the preacher), that he delivered three addresses corresponding to Job’s three companions, and this is the fourth one. Therefore it is called an addition.

Wait awhile for me and I will tell you This is completely Aramaic: Wait for me a little and I will tell you. [The word] כַּתַּר is an expression of waiting, as Jonathan rendered (Isa. 42:4): “and for his instruction, islands shall long (יכתרון).”

Thus far, the tone of Elihu’s oration has been polemical, as he refuted the arguments Job had presented against the existence of individual Providence. It now changes as he turns to answer the original question raised by Job, namely, what had been the true reason for the series of catastrophes that had befallen him? The answer to this question has of course been known to the readers of the book from its very beginning. They know that it was a trial, initiated by Satan and agreed to by God, designed to test whether Job would be as steadfast in his faith under conditions of deprivation as he had been when God was good and gracious to him. Elihu now reveals this to Job and his three companions. He had not arrived at this intelligence from the evidence of sense-perceptions or by means of conjectures linked to space and time but, as he explains, by virtue of the Forms or Ideas planted in man’s soul by God. And since Forms are of Divine origin, intelligence gained through them must surely be true.

God has Those representing Him have.

you have perfect knowledge Behold, I will now begin to speak with you since you think that your knowledge is perfect.

Behold God is great in wisdom and in mercy.

Elihu now lists the Forms concerning the nature of God that are to be found in the human soul:

and will not despise the poor man.

He is great in strength of heart to take revenge. Therefore, He will not allow a wicked man to live.

God is not jealous of or threatened by human will and intellect. Man who seeks to imitate God is loved by Him.

This follows from the Idea embedded in the soul that God is the source of good and so He must hate evil. Consequently, the wicked cannot possibly expect any sustenance or support from Him.

This follows from the Idea embedded in the soul that His Statute, which is the ultimate of perfection, is without fault. To assert that that He does not give justice to the poor is to impute an iniquity in His Statute and that would be a fault on His part, for it is unthinkable that God would do evil or the Almighty act iniquitously.

He does not withdraw His eyes from the righteous until He seats him with kings.

The sixth Form, and for Elihu’s purposes the most relevant one, is that Providence is ever attendant upon the righteous, not turning from him even for a moment. Moreover, Providence is drawn by the deed and so the more the person perseveres in his righteousness and devotion to God, the more closely Providence marks him and everything he does. God watches over the righteous as a father does over an only beloved son, tempering him with tests and trials, that he might fulfill his true potential. This program of examination may involve his elevation to the greatest heights, even kingship, or his reduction to the very lowest depths. The righteous person’s true mettle will be revealed by the way he reacts to the fortune or misfortune that befalls him.

And if you see righteous men who are bound with chains of suffering and ailments, or caught with ropes of poverty. In an expression of lots or ropes, they are called חבלים, in an expression of worry, they are called חֶבְלֵי יוֹלֵדָה, pangs of a childbearing woman. with ropes of poverty Heb. בחבלי cordes in French. It is only because they sinned before Him, and He comes to requite them for their own good, to cleanse them and to admonish them to return to Him.

He tells them their deed With these sufferings, He lets them know that they sinned before Him. All the words of Elihu were complete consolations and not chidings; i.e., do not worry about the sufferings if you are righteous, because they are for your good,

and He says that with sufferings, they will repent of iniquity.

If they understand and worship Him.

But the wicked of heart who are wicked—they bring about wrath; when suffering comes upon them, they curse and blaspheme,

The insincerity of those who are not truly righteous might not show up during times of fortune; when they are well off they can afford the luxury of virtue. But as soon as misfortune strikes them, their hypocrisy comes to light.

and they do not beg mercy with supplication

when He binds them with sufferings; therefore He does not heal them.

shall die by strangulation Their soul [shall die] by the strangulation that is upon them, but the poor man, who makes himself poor in the matter of supplications...He extricates from Gehinnom because of his poverty, which He brought upon him.

and opens their ear through oppression Through the oppression that He brought upon him, He opens his ear to say, “Return to Me.”

Moreover This is yet another great benefit that He did for you with these sufferings: He allured you and enticed you out of Gehinnom, whose mouth is narrow and whose base is wide.

Turning to Job, Elihu now reveals the truth, that which we the readers have known from the beginning. That it was a trial and though Job had appeared virtuous when blessed with prosperity, he had failed the test of suffering. Whereas he had blithely accepted God’s bounty without raising questions about the workings of Providence, the moment his prosperity ceased he began questioning the very fundamentals of faith. In retrospect, this placed the sincerity of his virtue when he had prospered in doubt: Satan had been proved right. God had permitted the trial to test Job, to temper him and to teach him the vanity of earthly happenings. As events proved, He was justified in doing so.

not cramped so that its smoke should be gathered into its midst, and furthermore, that you should merit the world to come; and the bedecking of your table shall be full of fatness.

And if you have had your fill of the sentence of the wicked And if you have had your fill of the sufferings of the wicked, the judgment and the sentence—which are [represented by] the sufferings—will support you in the future from Gehinnom, and you must accept them lovingly.

For wrath [There] shall be great [wrath].

lest it entice you [Lest] your evil inclination [entice you to speak] words.

to multiply Heb. בשפק, lit. with multiplicity; [i.e., with] which you multiply and increase your words toward God; and after you have raised His wrath, much ransom, [i.e.,] much money will not turn you away [rescue you] from it.

Will you set up your prayer so that no trouble Have you come to set up a cry that no trouble befall you, or any forces of strength to rob you? If so, with what will He collect His debt?

Do not yearn for the night That is to say that you should not choose other sufferings. Do not yearn for, or desire the night that came to Amraphel, to Egypt, and to Sennacherib, to take away peoples from the world when they are in their place in tranquility, for they perished both from this world and from the world to come.

Elihu is referring to Job's demand (Chapter 24) that God should annihilate the evil-doers who cause havoc to the world and who live far away from civilised people. God could wipe them out in the darkness of their dwelling-places by means of those elements that are not subject to the rule of the Cosmos without prejudicing free-will

are taken away Heb. לעלות, like (Ps. 102:25), “do not take me away (תעלני) in the midst of my days.”

Beware, do not turn to iniquity to contend and to say, “He should have judged me with the sufferings of poverty.”

for...this These sufferings are to be chosen above poverty. A man to whom people behaved with respect and who has been accustomed to wealth all his life, will now stand and bargain, and having no money [to pay with], will be embarrassed and return home in disappointment. Now if you say that Job was a poor man in addition to his sufferings, we do not find that he lost anything except his livestock, but not silver or gold. And even if he lost his cattle with silver and gold, it is better for him to be a poor sick man than to be healthy and go in the marketplaces empty-handed [and be embarrassed as well]. In this manner, it is explained in the midrash of Rabbi Tanchuma (Mishpatim 11) from this verse, that Job’s sufferings are preferable to the sufferings of poverty, and so in the Aggadoth of the Talmud (Baba Bathra 116a).

Behold God deals loftily in His power Because His power is great, and one cannot be saved from before Him. Therefore...who is a teacher like Him? When He teaches a sinner to return to Him, He warns Him before the plague because He knows that he cannot beware of His plague, as He would warn Pharaoh concerning each plague (Ex. 8:17), “I shall let loose the beasts of the wilderness upon you etc.”; (ibid. 10:4), “I will bring locusts...tomorrow,” and so all of them. [In contrast,] when a mortal king wishes to wreak vengeance upon his enemies, he comes upon him suddenly, for, if he warns him, he will repent and be saved from him.

God seeks to strengthen man and to raise him through trial to a higher spiritual level, where the good things in the earthly world become equivalent in his eyes with the bad: prosperity with poverty, physical health with human pain, birth with bereavement. When this happens, he will have risen over the material matters to one that which is above the nature of the flesh: a godly matter in which those who truly walk with Him are tested.

Who charged Him with His way [Who] commanded Him from time immemorial, “You shall follow this way”?

Mention His ways, and when you mention [them], you will automatically magnify the praise of the works of His attributes.

From this point on, Elihu’s oration is essentially a summing-up of the whole debate. As regards Job’s speculations about the essence of the soul and its perpetuity, its reward and remuneration, God’s Omniscience and free-will, etc., he asks why he insists on challenging God and investigating metaphysical matters that are clouded in mist. First see if you can understand the workings of Nature, those that you can see with your eyes and perceive with your senses at all times, and then attempt to climb the mountain to investigate the metaphysical. But I will show that you do not even comprehend the visible and mechanical workings of Nature, so how can you presume to discuss the wonders hidden from Nature.

which men have seen Heb. שררו, which men have seen, like (Num. 24:17), “I behold it (אשורנו), but it is not near.”

have seen it His work.

from afar from the Creation or the world until now.

the number of His years is unfathomable Therefore man must look from afar to ask what happened to the first people, and he will learn from them.

For He increases Heb. יגרע, for He increases, like (above 15:4), “and increase (ותגרע) speech.” Others interpret: He withdraws them from the heavens to bring them down to earth.

The mystery of the workings of Nature is illustrated by the example of the weather and rainfall. Though we are familiar with these everyday phenomena, our understanding of them is limited and specific predictions about them are quite beyond us.⁴¹It has been recognized in recent years that the behavior of large physical systems can be unpredictable even though they are subject to deterministic laws. This occurs when the system is sensitive to minuscule changes in their initial conditions or are affected by an excessive number of variables. An example of this 'deterministic chaos' is the so-called Butterfly Effect. It is suggested that meteorological dynamics are so sensitive that the flap of a butterfly's wings at one place may result in violent changes in the weather thousands of miles away.
It has been suggested that the vagaries of individual fate could also be accounted for in terms of deterministic chaos. Though the rules by which fate is determined are in principle deterministic, e.g., good is always rewarded and evil always punished, the mechanism is so sensitive to changes in initial conditions and is affected by so many variables that it defies analysis and prediction becomes impossible.

they pour The firmaments [pour] the rain.

into His cloud Heb. לְאֵדוֹ, into His cloud.

Or will one understand Or will man understand what is in the spreadings of the clouds? This is a question.

It is known from the nature of rainfall that when the air is clear the vapors retain within them the heat and the fiery matter they contain, which is the electric matter. And this heat scatters the vapors and they are spread out and dispersed in the air. As a result, the sky is clear and the clouds are invisible for the heat scatters the particles, which still remain in the air.
If the earth's atmosphere was absolutely homogeneous, the sky would appear black to observers looking up from its surface even during the day.⁴³ Some 50 years after the Malbim's time, the English physicist Lord Raleigh (1842-1919) showed that the blue of the sky and the appearance of clouds are both the consequence of the presence of water in the atmosphere. The blue sky results from the scattering of sunlight by minute particles of water-vapor in the atmosphere; clouds appear when the particles coalesce into discrete drops.

the darkness Heb. תשאות, an expression of the thick darkness of His pavilion.

Behold He spread (on the cloud His rain) and covered the roots of the sea therewith.

For...therewith With the clouds He judges peoples and chastises them by withholding rain, causing famine, as well as all sorts of plagues. When the Generation of the Flood sinned (Gen. 7:11), “and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.” As for the people of Sodom (Deut. 29:22), “Sulfur and salt, all the soil is burned up.” As for Sisera (Jud. 5:20), “From heaven they fought...against Sisera.”

He gives food to one who has many From there comes sustenance (Ex. 16:4): “See, I am about to have bread rain down from heaven for you.” This is to be compared to a baker who is standing before the oven. If an enemy comes in, he rakes coals and casts them at him; if his friend comes in, he takes out hot bread and gives it to him.

to the one who has many to the one whose children are many and numerous; to one who increases children and requires food.

Over the clouds Heb. כפים, over the clouds. Similarly (Lam. 3:41), “Let us lift our heart to the clouds (כפים),” based on (I Kings 18:44), “...a cloud as small as a man’s palm (ככף).” But our Rabbis said (Taanith 7b): Because of the sin of (the robbery of) the hands He covers the rain The rain is withheld.

and He commands it to come through one who entreats with prayer. (The beloved one of the generation, and the great man and sage thereof will relate to Him—before the Holy One, blessed be He—the straits of the generation and their necessities].

Their beloved one preaches to them He preaches to them to search their deeds for themselves and to return to Him.

the acquisition This is the acquisition whereby the rain is acquired.

it also ascends on high Heb. על. It also [ascends] higher and higher [in this manner], like (Hosea 7: 16), “They will return, but not to the Most High (על)” or (II Sam. 23:1), “raised on high (על).” [See Comm. Dig. to Hosea 7:16.] Our Sages, however, interpret it (Taanith 8a) as the acquisition of anger and wrath upon one who becomes haughty [after his prayers have been answered], but the vowelization, viz. that מִקְנֶה is vowelized with a “pattah” [meaning a “seggol”], does not substantiate [the theory] that it is connected to אַף, for were it connected to אַף, it would be vowelized with a “kamatz” [meaning a “tzeireh”], and it would not be punctuated by a cantillation sign that denotes a pause, viz. a revi’i.