Chapter 35 is the continuation of the third speech of Elihu ben Berachel the Buzite. Elihu now comes to answer the great question that Iyov posed: There are great villains in the world, bandits in the desert and at sea, destroyers of civilization - why does the Holy One, Blessed be He, not destroy them, so that the human race can exist without suffering? True, if this were done openly, free will would be eliminated, for if all the wicked were to die and all the righteous were to live, with all the wicked suffering and all the righteous prospering, free choice would cease to exist. Yet Iyov was not asking for this to be done publicly: he asked that Hashem punish them in secret. After all, the wicked hide out in caves and secluded places - why does Hashem not destroy them secretly there, in a manner that would leave free will intact?
Here the question is especially profound. Regarding a righteous person who suffers, we have many answers: we can say that he has some minor sin for which he must atone, or that his spiritual level demands that he reach even higher attainments, and so on - reasons can be found. But why should a wicked person enjoy life and flourish? For this, it is difficult to find reasons and justifications.
From this general question of reward and punishment, Iyov arrived at his conclusion: everything depends on the celestial constellations, everything stems from the zodiac, and human actions are not chosen freely but are predetermined. If so, a person deserves neither reward nor punishment. Just as no one rewards an automobile for driving today - you put fuel into it and it drives, there is no fuel and it stands still; and would you punish it for failing to drive? It possesses no free choice to decide whether to drive or not. In this same way, Iyov argued, human beings do not possess the free choice to decide whether to be wicked or righteous.
Elihu arrives and says: You, Iyov, and your companions as well - Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuchite, and Zophar the Naamathite - all of you erred in this very same outlook. You all assumed that reward and punishment are separate from human deeds. This is like a king who commanded his servant to pave a road. First, the king benefits from the work - he issued the command for his own benefit. Second, for your labor you deserve a wage from the royal treasury, and this reward is separate from the labor itself: you paved the road, and separately you received payment. The reverse is also true: if you did not pave the road, you caused damage to the king, and for this you will be punished; and the punishment is likewise separate from the act - you will be thrown into prison or flogged.
Elihu says: Whoever views the Holy One, Blessed be He, in this manner is completely mistaken. The Holy One, Blessed be He, is not acted upon by human actions and is not influenced by them; no benefit accrues to Him if you serve Him, and no harm is caused to Him if you sin against Him. 'Acted upon' here means being the recipient of an action: I act upon an object, and the object is affected by me - I took the table and cut it in two, so the table was affected by my actions. The Holy One, Blessed be He, is never acted upon: no change occurs within Him as a result of human deeds. Were any change to occur within Him, it would mean that He is not perfect, for in a perfect being nothing ever changes. I am deficient - you added knowledge to me and completed what I did not know; but the Holy One, Blessed be He, knows all, and it is impossible to introduce anything new to Him.
For that same reason, it is likewise impossible to grant Him anything. If I gave you a hundred shekels, your situation has improved; you were affected by my deed. But the Holy One, Blessed be He - what can you give Him? 'Mine is the silver, and Mine is the gold' - whatever you bestow and whatever you give, you have caused no change in Him; for had you brought about a change in Him, it would mean that until now He was lacking, and deficiency cannot apply to Him at all.
If so, the parable of the king is not the appropriate analogy for the relationship between us and the Holy One, Blessed be He, for the king needs the road, and the servant who paved it fulfilled his deficiency and therefore deserves payment. The fitting analogy is that of a doctor and a patient. The doctor instructs the patient to take a particular medication. If you do not take it, does the doctor punish you? It is your own problem; and what will happen? You will remain ill. Were you punished or not? Certainly you were punished - but the punishment is an intrinsic part of yourself, not an external consequence like the prison cell of one who failed to pave the road.
The same applies to the other side: Does it matter to the doctor whether you recover? Will his life be better because of your recovery? You have effected nothing in him, and who gains? Only you. And when you followed the doctor's instructions, what is your reward? That you were healed. The healing is not separate from following the doctor's orders, and it is not an external reward like a road-paver receiving a direct deposit into his bank account. This is precisely how it is with the Holy One, Blessed be He: the good is not a detached reward, and the bad is not a detached punishment - the consequence is personal, and you yourself brought it upon yourself. When you fulfilled the command, you did not bestow good upon the Doctor; rather, you did good for yourself.
And so it is with human actions. Take, for example, the desires of this world: one who pursues them endlessly and aimlessly destroys his own body, as the Rambam writes - one who immerses himself in promiscuity and other harmful habits brings old age and physical debility upon himself, as it is written, 'Give not your strength to women.' One who indulges in decadent foods without limit harms himself, and one who consumes forbidden foods causes damage to his own soul. The Holy One, Blessed be He, says: Do not imagine that by eating a mouse, a mole, a donkey, or a pig you harmed Me - you did not harm Me at all; you harmed yourself, you caused spiritual insensitivity in your own heart, and you inflicted damage upon yourself.
From here it follows that man has no grievance against the Holy One, blessed be He. The Rambam writes similarly: most of human suffering stems from people's own actions; they bring harm upon themselves. It is like a person who walks out into the blazing sun, suffers heatstroke, and comes to complain before the Holy One, blessed be He. Sit in the shade and you will not get heatstroke; stay out of the scorching sun and you will have no reason to complain. "The foolishness of a man perverts his way, and his heart frets against Hashem" (Mishlei 19:3) - your own foolishness causes you to subvert your path, and then you come and complain, "Why do I deserve this?" You chose to step into a minefield, and then you wonder why you were blown up. Walk on the paved road and you will not get blown up.
From here Elihu continues: when there are wicked people in the world, who suffers the harm? Mankind as a whole. And what are there more of in the world - decent people or corrupt ones? Most people are decent. I am not speaking right now about whether they serve God or not, but strictly in terms of basic conduct, honesty, justice, and decency - most people are not bandits of the night. Yet you, Iyov, argue that there are wicked people who make human life miserable and cause endless trouble. Elihu says to him: Does this disturb the Holy One, blessed be He? Does any harm come to Him from these wicked people? Whether you do good or do evil, He is unaffected. Who suffers from it? You do, mankind does.
If so, what do you want? The Holy One, blessed be He, granted humanity the power to subdue the wrongdoers among them and hold them accountable for their deeds. Decent people are the majority - band together, establish a police force, build an army, ensure that the perpetrators of injustice and wickedness do not make life miserable for everyone else. Do you expect the Holy One, blessed be He, to do this in your place? There is injustice in the world - it is placed in human hands to rectify it. It is like someone coming with a complaint to the doctor: "Why am I sick?" Sir, there is medicine; I told you what it is, take it and you will be healthy. I, the doctor, did not cause your illness and I am unaffected by it; you insist on refusing the medicine, and then complain that he has not cured you. Had we properly maintained law, order, and justice, we would never have reached a state of rampant injustice.
There is also a personal hint here directed at Iyov himself. Iyov, how did you lose all your possessions? To bandits - to the Shebans and the Chaldeans. And you were no ordinary man, no minor figure; you were the greatest of all the people of the East, a prominent and respected leader whose word was accepted by everyone. Why, then, did you not see to it to build an army back then? Why did you not establish a police force? Had you set up orderly institutions to judge the wicked and punish them for their deeds, you would not have ended up in a situation where bands of raiders come by night, rob, murder, burn, and leave you stripped of everything. Whom do you have to blame? Only yourself: why did you not take action then to steer people away from evil and punish wrongdoers and evildoers? Had you done so, they would never have held sway over you or harmed you.
(א) וַיַּעַן אֱלִיהוּ וַיֹּאמַר׃ (ב) הֲזֹאת חָשַׁבְתָּ לְמִשְׁפָּט אָמַרְתָּ צִדְקִי מֵאֵל׃ (ג) כִּי תֹאמַר מַה יִּסְכָּן לָךְ מָה אֹעִיל מֵחַטָּאתִי׃ - (1) Elihu answered and said: (2) Do you think this is justice, that you said, "My righteousness is from God"? (3) For you say, "What benefit will it be to You? What do I gain more than if I had sinned?"
After Elihu refuted the claim that world governance was surrendered to the celestial order - for if governance were in the hands of the celestial sphere, it would mean that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not exercise providence at all, and events would not unfold according to human deeds, since the stars and constellations make no distinction between the righteous and the wicked, and a person would receive nothing according to his good or bad deeds, but purely "by luck" - he now addresses another of Iyov's arguments: even if that were so, there is no injustice in it. Why? Because there is no room at all to reward or punish man for his deeds, since there is no free will. If there is no free will, no one can claim, "Why did I not receive reward? After all, I did good" - for did you freely choose to do so? You were simply programmed to do good.
With this, Iyov attempted to heal the breach superficially: here, people suffer even though they are righteous, yet this is not injustice, because the righteous person is not righteous by his own choice, and the wicked person is not wicked by his own choice. Just as a donkey is born with uncloven hooves and an ox is born with split hooves, as we have learned, so too the Holy One, blessed be He, created the wicked and created the righteous - is there any reason to punish the wicked or reward the righteous? This is the meaning of "Do you consider this to be justice?": did you think to justify the ways of Hashem with this, by saying "My righteousness is from God" - meaning, my righteousness does not stem from my own power, but is a predetermined decree from God; He decreed that I would be righteous, and therefore I am not entitled to reward.
And you brought proof from what happened to you: "For you say, 'What benefit will it be to You? What do I gain more than from my sin?'" - Look, I, Iyov, was profoundly righteous, yet what did I gain from being righteous more than if I had sinned? As a righteous man, I was punished with horrific, dreadful afflictions; and even had I sinned, what worse could have been done to me? The word yiskan denotes benefit or utility, as in "and let her be a companion (sochenet) to him" (I Melachim 1:2) - one who manages his household and from whom he derives benefit; and like "one who chops wood is warmed/benefits from it (yisachen bahem)" (Kohelet 10:9) - that he gains benefit from the wood he chopped. Some also interpret it as warmth: sochenet means warming, and the woodchopper benefits by warming himself with the wood.
(ד) אֲנִי אֲשִׁיבְךָ מִלִּין וְאֶת רֵעֶיךָ עִמָּךְ׃ - (4) I will answer you with words, and your companions with you.
I will answer your claims, and I will also prove to your companions that they are mistaken and that their approach is incorrect. Your words would be correct if divine service were for the benefit and need of God, as Eliphaz said, "Can a mortal be more righteous than God?" - meaning that man is obligated to serve Hashem because He made him, as if there were an obligation stemming from Hashem commanding it because He derives benefit from it. According to this, when I commit a minor sin I am punished because I diminished from Hashem's service, because my service is incomplete. And then, indeed, the claim would be justified: why was I not paid a reward, seeing that I served with perfection? And from this you concluded that man is coerced in his actions and therefore does not deserve reward - just as one does not pay a wage to a millstone for grinding, nor to the water that turns the mill wheel; they operate on their own out of necessity and receive no reward. Elihu tells him: your outlook is fundamentally flawed.
(ה) הַבֵּט שָׁמַיִם וּרְאֵה וְשׁוּר שְׁחָקִים גָּבְהוּ מִמֶּךָּ׃ - Look to the heavens and see, and gaze at the skies, which are higher than you.
Look at the heavens that are higher than you, and all the more so at the skies that are higher still. From this you will see two things: First, it is impossible that these distant and lofty realms are affected by your deeds - what have you given to the Holy One, blessed be He, and what influence have you exerted all the way to heaven? And second, it is also impossible to say that they compel your actions: how could they influence you from there to steal now, or conversely, to pray?
(ו) אִם חָטָאתָ מַה תִּפְעָל בּוֹ וְרַבּוּ פְשָׁעֶיךָ מַה תַּעֲשֶׂה לּוֹ׃ - If you have sinned, what do you accomplish against Him? And if your transgressions multiply, what do you do to Him?
You do not effect any change in the Holy One, blessed be He, through your deeds. And if you say: but we find that Hashem is angry, His wrath flares, and "He was grieved in His heart" regarding the generation of the Flood - meaning He is affected, I caused a change in Him, until now He was joyful and now sad, until now pleased and now angry! Know this: everything spoken of regarding change in Him, blessed be He - anger, wrath, love, compassion, and mercy - is entirely relative to the recipients, according to our understanding and perception; as the Rambam phrases it, "to make it intelligible to the human ear." And just as the literal hand of Hashem, feet of Hashem, and eyes of Hashem do not apply, so too anger, love, hatred, and wrath do not apply to Him, but are described only according to what you are capable of grasping.
To delve deeper into this, let us briefly review what we explained previously. When speaking about the Holy One, blessed be He, one speaks in two ways: there is discussion of the Master of the Will, and there is discussion of the unfolding of the worlds. The Holy One, blessed be He, willed to create the world, and prior to that there was nothing - one cannot say "in the world," for there was no world; there was only the Holy One, blessed be He. And in order to create, He constricted His light and formed a vacant space (chalal panui), and within this void everything would be created. Afterwards, He drew down a thin ray of light from the Ein Sof, and this ray entered the vacant space, and upon it the Sefirot were clothed - the world of Adam Kadmon, which is an exceedingly sublime realm, followed by Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, all of which are spiritual worlds, down to the physical world of Asiyah in which we exist.
Now, when we receive divine abundance, from where does it descend and cascade? From the Sefirot; and the source of everything is that same thin ray of light descending from Him, blessed be He. When we utter the Tetragrammaton, Elokim, Shaddai, Master of All - all the divine names - it all refers to the stage after the emanation of the Sefirot: Keter, Chochmah, Binah, Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut, which clothe one another, and in each world there are ten that multiply tenfold.
And now notice: when a person acts here below, he impacts the upper worlds - the world of Asiyah, of Yetzirah, of Beriah, and very slightly on Atzilut; he influences the Sefirot. The performance of mitzvot raises Mayin Nukvin (feminine waters), a positive influence that ascends from here and opens the channels of divine flow to bestow goodness upon us. If so, since the upper worlds are indeed affected by the deeds of human beings, how can it be said, "If you are righteous, what do you give Him?"
True, but all of this is only after the Holy One, blessed be He, created worlds and Sefirot. When we come to speak of the Master of the Will, of Him Who is, as it were, beyond the Tzimtzum (constriction), of Hashem, blessed be He, in His very Essence - there, neither a name nor an attribute is applicable, and therefore we do not designate Him at all. Even "Ein Sof" (Infinite) He cannot truly be called, as the Arizal explains. And take note: why do we not say "Ein Techilah" (Without Beginning)? After all, something without an end also has no beginning. Rather, when we say "Ein Sof," the meaning is not merely that He has no end, but that there is no end to grasping Him. I can investigate this cup completely and know every detail about it - what it is made of and its shape; but with the Holy One, blessed be He, you will never reach the end of comprehension. And we do not say "Without Beginning" because He did grant us a beginning of comprehension, once He created the worlds and the Sefirot. Yet regarding His Essence, regarding the Master of the Will, there is not even a beginning - and about this we say, "No thought can grasp Him at all": not only can you not speak, but you cannot even grasp or comprehend the Essence.
And this is the meaning of "If you have sinned, what do you affect in Him?": when speaking of the Holy One, blessed be He, in His Essence - you have effected nothing at all. And as for what you say, that you indeed effected something and bounty increased in the upper worlds, this is not in His Essence, but rather in that fine ray of light that clothed itself within all the worlds. Similarly, when we say "Ascribe power to God," meaning that a person who engages in Torah and fulfills mitzvot lends strength to the Heavenly Entourage - let no one say: "Behold, I have affected Him." That is sheer folly. You have not affected Him in His Essence, but rather the sefirot emanated from Him, may He be blessed, within the lights and divine flows - yet in His Essence, you have affected nothing whatsoever.
"And if your transgressions multiply, what do you do to Him?" - even if you multiply sins, there is no flaw or detraction in His honor. Imagine that you were appointed rulers over a colony of ants, and all day long they pray to you, honor you, and constantly speak in your praise among themselves. Would that make you feel good about yourself? Does it make any difference to you, or give you any sense of importance? A person walks by, steps on them and kills a hundred of them, and no one is affected by it. And we are far closer to an ant than we are to the Holy One, blessed be He - the proportion between us and an ant is incomparably closer than the relation between us and the Creator. If so, how could He possibly be affected if you honor Him? What have you given Him, what honor have you bestowed upon Him?
Elihu responds to Iyov and his companions alike: they all erred in assuming that the Holy One, blessed be He, is affected by human deeds, and that reward and punishment are separate from the action itself, like a king who benefits from the labor of his servant and pays or punishes him accordingly. The truth is like the parable of the physician: the Creator is not harmed by your sin and does not profit from your righteousness; rather, reward and punishment are a natural consequence of the act itself - one who fulfills the directive heals himself, and one who violates it harms himself. Therefore, most of man's sufferings stem from his own deeds, and even the injustice caused by the wicked in the world was placed in the hands of mankind to rectify through law, order, and justice - including Iyov himself, who was the greatest of all the people of the East yet failed to act in this regard. And from the heavens that are higher than him, man should learn that he effects nothing in the Creator's Essence: whatever is attributed to Him of anger and love is solely relative to the recipients, and the entire influence of our actions exists only within the sefirot and the lights emanated from Him - "If you have sinned, what do you affect in Him? And if your transgressions multiply, what do you do to Him?"