Job
Summary
Job Chapter 35 is Elihu's third speech, focusing on the transcendence and independence of God. He challenges Job's claim that his righteousness is greater than God's and asks what profit it is to God whether a man sins or is righteous. Elihu argues that God is too high and too great for human actions to affect Him directly: rather, our righteousness or wickedness affects other people. He suggests that God does not always answer the cries of the oppressed because those cries are "empty" and lacked a true search for "God our Maker." Elihu concludes that Job is speaking "in vain" and multiplying words without knowledge.
Then Elihu said:
"Do you think this is just? You say, 'I am in the right before God.'"
"Yet you ask him, 'What profit is it to me, and what do I gain by not sinning?'"
"I would like to reply to you and to your friends with you."
"Look up at the heavens and see; gaze at the clouds so high above you."
"If you sin, how does that affect him? If your sins are many, what does that do to him?"
"If you are righteous, what do you give to him, or what does he receive from your hand?"
"Your wickedness only affects humans like yourself, and your righteousness only other mortals."
"People cry out under a load of oppression; they plead for relief from the arm of the powerful."
"But no one says, 'Where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night,"
"who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth and makes us wiser than the birds in the sky?'"
"He does not answer when people cry out because of the arrogance of the wicked."
"Indeed, God does not listen to their empty plea; the Almighty pays no attention to it."
"How much less, then, when you say that you do not see him, that your case is before him and you must wait for him,"
"and further, that his anger never punishes and he does not take note of wickedness."
"So Job opens his mouth with empty talk; without knowledge he multiplies words."