Elihu asks rhetorically who gave God authority over the earth, suggesting that all authority derives from God and none can hold him accountable. This verse grounds divine justice in absolute power, implying that because God is the sole source of all authority and governance, he cannot be judged by any external standard or accountable to anyone. The rhetorical question functions to establish God's sovereignty as the ultimate justification for whatever he does, a position that moves the argument from justice as an abstract principle to justice as whatever God decrees. This approach will later be echoed in God's speeches from the whirlwind, which emphasize divine power and knowledge as transcending human comprehension rather than conforming to abstract notions of fairness. Elihu's reasoning here, while containing an important truth about divine sovereignty, threatens to collapse the distinction between justice and mere power, a distinction that seems crucial if Job's suffering is to be meaningful rather than arbitrary.

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