Albert Barnes Commentary Job 33:17

"That he may withdraw man [from his] purpose, And hide pride from man;" — Job 33:17 (ASV)

That he may withdraw man from his purpose - Margin, “work.” The sense is plain. God designs to warn him of the consequences of executing a plan of iniquity. He alarms him by showing him that his course will lead to punishment, and by representing to him in the night visions, the dreadful woes of the future world into which he is about to plunge. The object is to deter him from committing the deed of guilt which he had contemplated, and to turn him to the paths of righteousness.

Is it unreasonable to suppose that the same thing may occur now, and that God may have a purpose in the dreams which often visit the man who has formed a plan of iniquity, or who is living a life of sin? It cannot be doubted that such people often have alarming dreams, that these dreams are such as are fitted to deter them from the commission of their contemplated wickedness, and that in fact they often do it.

What hinders us from supposing that God intends that the workings of the mind, when the senses are locked in sleep, shall be the means of alarming the guilty and leading them to reflection? Why should not the mind in this way be its own admonisher, and be made the instrument of restraining the guilty then, as really as by its sober reasonings and reflections when awake? Many a wicked man has been checked in a career of wickedness by a frightful dream; and many have been brought to a degree of reflection that has resulted in sound conversion by the alarm caused on the mind by having the consequences of a career of wickedness traced out in the visions of the night. The case of Colonel Gardiner cannot be forgotten—though in that instance it was rather a vision of the night than a dream.

He was meditating an act of wickedness and was alone in his room, awaiting the appointed hour. In the silence of the night, and in the solitude of his room, he seemed to see the Savior on the cross. This view, regardless of how it may be accounted for, restrained him from the contemplated act of wickedness, and he became an eminently pious man (see Doddridge’s Life of Col. Gardiner).

The mind, with all its faculties, is under the control of God, and no one can demonstrate that He does not make its workings, even in the wanderings of a dream, the designed means of checking the sinner and of saving the soul.

And hide pride from man - Probably the particular thing that Elihu referred to here was pride and arrogance toward God, or an insolent bearing toward Him, and a reliance on one’s own merits. This was the particular thing in Job that Elihu seems to have thought required correction, and he probably meant to intimate that all people receive such communications from God by dreams as to save them from such arrogance.