Elihu's Fourth Speech: God Is Mighty and Does Not Despise Any

Log in to take the quiz and save your progress.

1. Observe

   How does Elihu say God treats the righteous when they are bound in fetters and cords of affliction (vv. 7-11)?

   • He does not withdraw his eyes from them, shows them their work, opens their ear to instruction, commands them to return from iniquity, and promises that if they listen and serve him they shall spend their days in prosperity
   • He abandons them to their fate
   • He turns them over to the wicked
   • He sends only judgment with no instruction

2. Observe

   What natural phenomena does Elihu describe in vv. 27-33 to illustrate God's power?

   • Only earthquakes
   • The drawing up of water drops that distill as rain from vapor, the spreading of clouds, the thunderings of God's pavilion, his light spread around him, his covering of the bottom of the sea, and his lightning that he commands to strike the mark
   • Only the sun and moon
   • Only the seas

3. Interpret

   What is the paradox in Elihu's statement that \"He delivers the afflicted by their affliction\" (v. 15)?

   • That suffering is always good in itself
   • That God always causes suffering
   • That deliverance is impossible
   • That the very instrument of suffering becomes the means of liberation — the chains themselves open the ear, the oppression itself produces the hearing — suggesting that God's grace works through and not merely despite the hardest things, a pattern fulfilled supremely in the cross of Christ

4. Interpret

   How does the acknowledgment that \"God is great and we don't know him\" (v. 26) function alongside Elihu's confident claims about how God works?

   • It cancels out everything Elihu has said
   • It is a contradiction Elihu cannot resolve
   • It holds creaturely confession of divine mystery alongside genuine partial knowledge — there are things rightly known about God's character and ways from his self-revelation, and there are depths that remain unsearchable; the tension calls for both confident worship and humble silence, both speaking truly and refusing to claim full comprehension
   • It means we know nothing about God

5. Apply

   What kinds of pressures or temptations are most likely to lead toward resentment or moral compromise when under suffering?

   • The desire for revenge or restitution that hardens into bitterness, the longing for an easy escape that tempts toward shortcuts or compromised choices, the seduction of wealth or status as substitutes for trust, and the willingness to long for darkness rather than face the affliction patiently — pressures Elihu names precisely
   • Only physical pressures matter
   • No spiritual temptations arise in suffering
   • Suffering removes all temptation automatically

6. Apply

   How does the pattern that hardship can form us deeply shape how we receive present difficulty?

   • It eliminates the need to lament present pain
   • It enables us to receive present difficulty without the panic that demands immediate relief, holding the hope that God may be at work even in what feels destructive, while still being honest about the pain and refusing to glorify suffering for its own sake — a confident waiting rather than either despair or denial
   • It makes hardship pleasant in itself
   • It means avoiding all difficult experiences

Your journal

Write your own answers — they save automatically, and only you can see them.

Log in to write and save journal answers.