Think you this to be right, that you said, My righteousness is more than God's?
All Commentaries on Job 35:2 Go To Job 35
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
“Elihu therefore spoke these words again.” Everyone who says many things is always anxious to begin his speech once again, in order … to keep his hearers in suspense, so that they may be the more attentively silent, the more they expect, as it were, to hear some new thing. But Elihu, finishing one subject, begins another without delay, in order that his loquacity may be continued without limit by beginnings being constantly joined. It follows, “Does your thought seem right to you, that you said, I am more righteous than God?” Everyone observes, who reads the text of the history, that blessed Job did not say that he was more righteous than God. But he says, “Let him put forth equity against me, and my judgment shall come to victory.” Examining his life without knowing the reasons of his smiting, as has been often observed, Job believed that he was scourged for the sake of washing away his sins and not the increasing of his merits. He was therefore confident that his judgment would come to victory, because he found in himself no fault for which he deserved to be smitten. This indeed the Lord also said of him to the devil, “You have moved me against him, to afflict him without cause.” What had Job sinned then, by speaking in this way, who unknowingly agreed in these words with the divine and secret sentence on himself? Or what harm is there, if, in the judgment of people, our words differ on the surface from the exactness of truth, when, in that on which they turn in the heart, they are closely joined to and agree with it? The ears of people consider our words to be such as they sound outwardly, but the divine judgments hear them as they are uttered from our inmost heart.
