Job 35King James Version
Elihu argues that God is too great to be injured by human sin or flattered by human righteousness. If thou sinnest, what doest thou against him? If thou be righteous, what givest thou him? Addressing Job's cries of silence.
Elihu challenges Job: what advantage does your righteousness give God? Your sin or righteousness affects other humans, not God's infinite being. He then addresses Job's complaint that God does not answer: God does not answer because people cry out from oppression without genuine seeking after God. They cry but do not ask where God is. Job's words are empty, vain, multiplied without knowledge.
Elihu argues that Job's complaint has an inflated sense of its own importance. God's transcendence means Job's suffering does not move God in the way Job assumes.
16: "Therefore doth Job open his mouth in vain; he multiplieth words without knowledge." Elihu ends this chapter with the same verdict the friends pronounced. He has been more articulate than them and reached the same destination.
Elihu's image of the night songs given to beasts and birds as gifts of God suggests that divine generosity is visible everywhere in creation, and therefore Job's ingratitude is inexcusable. This is a fair observation in a theology of abundance. In a theology of extreme suffering, it sounds disconnected from the actual problem.
Elihu continues addressing Job. He introduces a comparison between people who cry to God from affliction and people who truly seek God. Job, in his reading, is in the first category, not the second.
The argument that righteousness and sin do not affect God's essential being, they affect other humans, is a legitimate philosophical point about divine transcendence. In this context it becomes another version of: your complaint doesn't matter. The theological insight outstrips its pastoral usefulness.
When someone tells you your cries for help are empty because you are not seeking God properly, the effect is not motivation to seek more genuinely. It is discouragement from seeking at all.
1Elihu spake moreover, and said,
2Thinkest thou this to be right, that thou saidst, My righteousness is more than God's?
3For thou saidst, What advantage will it be unto thee? and, What profit shall I have, if I be cleansed from my sin?
4I will answer thee, and thy companions with thee.
5Look unto the heavens, and see; and behold the clouds which are higher than thou.
6If thou sinnest, what doest thou against him? or if thy transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto him?
7If thou be righteous, what givest thou him? or what receiveth he of thine hand?
8Thy wickedness may hurt a man as thou art; and thy righteousness may profit the son of man.
9By reason of the multitude of oppressions they make the oppressed to cry: they cry out by reason of the arm of the mighty.
10But none saith, Where is God my maker, who giveth songs in the night;
11Who teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, and maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven?
12There they cry, but none giveth answer, because of the pride of evil men.
13Surely God will not hear vanity, neither will the Almighty regard it.
14Although thou sayest thou shalt not see him, yet judgment is before him; therefore trust thou in him.
15But now, because it is not so, he hath visited in his anger; yet he knoweth it not in great extremity:
16Therefore doth Job open his mouth in vain; he multiplieth words without knowledge.