This passage is often misread as God being apathetic or lenient toward arrogance and sin because He withholds immediate punishment, leading to views that divine justice is absent or arbitrary; in reality, Elihu highlights God's measured forbearance as purposeful restraint, not approval or neglect, warning against presuming on mercy while ignoring the certainty of eventual accountability.
Job 35:15
King James Version (1769)
15 But now, because it is not so, he hath visited in his anger; yet he knoweth it not in great extremity:
Elihu asserts in this verse that God's delay in unleashing anger against iniquity does not mean He overlooks or excessively fixates on human arrogance; rather, it reveals divine patience and sovereignty, allowing time for repentance amid suffering without implying injustice or indifference, underscoring that God's responses to sin operate on an eternal scale beyond immediate human expectations.