Thursday, May 29, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Job 34-36
- Secondary Reading: Psalms 62
Key Verse
Job 35:7 — “If thou be righteous, what givest thou him? or what receiveth he of thine hand?”
Devotional Thought
Elihu has been waiting his turn. The three older friends—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar—have exhausted their arguments against Job, and now this younger man speaks, and he speaks at length. In Job 34–36 he turns his attention squarely on Job, and his charge is pointed: Job has claimed, “I am righteous: and God hath taken away my judgment” (34:5). Elihu cannot let that stand. If God is just, he reasons, then no man can be more right than God. He presses the case through three chapters: God “will not lay upon man more than right” (34:23), God hears the cry of the poor and the afflicted (34:28), God is “mighty in strength and wisdom” (36:5), and His ways are past finding out. Even His rain and clouds and thunder declare it—”God is great, and we know him not” (36:26). Elihu is not entirely wrong, and he is not entirely kind. He assumes Job’s suffering proves Job’s sin, an assumption God Himself will later rebuke.
Yet there is gold in these chapters, and it glitters most brightly in a single verse: “But none saith, Where is God my maker, who giveth songs in the night” (35:10). Songs in the night. That is not an argument; that is a mercy. Elihu’s logic may be too tidy for the mystery of Job’s grief, but here he touches something true about how God meets His people—not with explanations, but with songs in the dark.
Turn to Psalm 62, and you find David doing exactly what Job could not yet do: waiting. “Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation” (62:1). Twice David says he shall not be moved, because God alone is his rock and defence. He warns against trusting in oppression or riches, and he lands where Elihu landed: “power belongeth unto God” and “unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy” (62:11–12). Power and mercy, together, in the same God.
It is late May now—the evenings are warm and long, and most of us are not sitting on an ash heap scraping our sores. But we know what it is to lie awake at night with a question no friend can answer. Perhaps the word for us this week is not an explanation but a posture: wait. Pour out your heart before Him. He is a refuge. And He is the God who gives songs in the night—not because the night ends quickly, but because He is in it with us.
Reflection
- Elihu insisted that God always repays a man according to his ways (34:11), yet God later says Job’s friends did not speak rightly of Him (42:7). Where might you be quietly assuming that someone’s suffering proves their sin—or that your own ease proves your righteousness?
- Psalm 62 says, “My soul, wait thou only upon God” (62:5). What would it look like for you to wait on God this week rather than demand an answer from Him?
Prayer
O God, my Maker, who givest songs in the night, we come to You weary of our own arguments. Forgive us for the tidy judgments we pass on others and the self-defense we raise for ourselves. Teach us to wait upon You alone, for You only are our rock and our salvation. When we cannot see Your hand, help us to trust Your heart. You have spoken once, and twice we have heard: power belongs to You, and mercy belongs to You. Pour out Your song over our darkness, and let our souls rest quietly in You, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Psalm Verse
Psalms 62:1 — “Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation.”