Job · chapter 4 of 42
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Job 4 records the first speech of Eliphaz the Temanite. Gently he reminds Job that he has strengthened others and asks what innocent person has ever perished, convinced that those who sow trouble reap it. Then he relates a night vision in which a voice asks whether a mortal can be more righteous than God, to suggest that Job must have sinned.
After Job's lament in chapter 3, the first cycle of speeches begins, in which each friend speaks and Job answers. Eliphaz is first, probably the eldest or most respected, and his tone is the kindest. His argument sums up the traditional wisdom of the day: God is just, so whoever suffers must have done wrong. The reasoning sounds sensible, but the reader knows it is false in Job's case.
Eliphaz the Temanite asks permission to speak, though he says it will be hard to hold back. He reminds Job that he has instructed many, steadied those who stumbled and strengthened weak knees. Now that trouble touches him, he is dismayed. Should not his fear of God be his confidence and his integrity his hope?
Then he lays out his thesis: who that was innocent has ever perished? Where were the upright ever cut off? Eliphaz has seen that those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. At the breath of God they perish. He compares the wicked to fierce lions whose teeth are broken and whose cubs are scattered.
The rest of the chapter tells a vision. In the silence of the night, when deep sleep falls on people, a spirit glides past Eliphaz and his hair stands on end. A form he cannot make out stands still, and a voice whispers: can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can a man be purer than his Maker? If God does not trust even his servants or his angels, says the voice, how much less those who live in houses of clay and are crushed like a moth. They die without wisdom, between morning and evening.
References follow ESV book names and verse numbers. Read each verse in your Bible before the explanation.
Eliphaz recalls that Job instructed many and with his words raised up the one who was falling. He acknowledges Job's worth, but uses it to point out that now it is Job's turn to receive the comfort he gave.
Eliphaz asks what innocent person has perished and where the upright were ever destroyed. This is the principle of retribution: the good prosper and the wicked suffer. It sounds like wisdom, but applied to Job it becomes an unjust suspicion.
According to Eliphaz, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap it. This is a truth found in other biblical texts, but here it becomes a rigid rule that leaves no room for the suffering of the righteous.
The voice in the vision asks whether a mortal can be more righteous than God or purer than his Maker. The question is true in itself, but Eliphaz uses it to hint that Job must have a hidden sin.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: Eliphaz the Temanite. — Job 4:1
Answer: That he instructed many and strengthened weak hands and stumbling knees. — Job 4:3-4
Answer: Who that was innocent has ever perished, and where the upright were destroyed. — Job 4:7
Answer: The same trouble and injury they sowed. — Job 4:8
Answer: At night, when deep sleep falls on people. — Job 4:13
Answer: Whether a mortal can be more righteous than God or a man purer than his Maker. — Job 4:17
Eliphaz's speech is an example of well-meant advice that wounds. It has courtesy, a general truth and even a spiritual experience behind it, yet it applies a simple rule to a suffering he does not understand. Whoever teaches Sunday school will do well to remember that not every misfortune is the result of personal sin; Jesus himself taught this on other occasions.
The chapter also warns us about the authorities we invoke. Eliphaz rests his argument on a vision and on his experience, and the Bible does not approve of him for that. When we walk with someone who suffers, let us ask first and speak later, and measure what we say against the whole of Scripture and not only against what we think we have seen.
Job 4 leaves Job listening to a polite but cruel argument: if you suffer, you must have done something. In Job 5 Eliphaz will continue with his appeal, urging Job to seek God and to receive his correction with hope, and then Job will answer bluntly.
Partly. Many of his statements about God are true, and the apostle Paul later quotes something Eliphaz said. But at the end of the book the Lord says that the three friends did not speak rightly about him, so their error lies in applying to Job an explanation that does not fit.
It says that no human being is pure before God, and that not even the angels are entirely trustworthy before his holiness. The idea is true in a general sense, but Eliphaz uses it to suggest that Job is guilty, although the book has said that Job was blameless.
The text does not say, but he speaks first in each cycle of speeches and is the most careful in tone. That suggests he held some standing among them. Even so, none of the three escapes the Lord's final rebuke.