Job 4

Eliphaz

1 Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:

2 "If someone ventures a word with you, will you be impatient?
But who can keep from speaking?

3 Think how you have instructed many,
how you have strengthened feeble hands.

4 Your words have supported those who stumbled;
you have strengthened faltering knees.

5 But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged;
it strikes you, and you are dismayed.

6 Should not your piety be your confidence
and your blameless ways your hope?

7 "Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished?
Where were the upright ever destroyed?

8 As I have observed, those who plow evil
and those who sow trouble reap it.

9 At the breath of God they are destroyed;
at the blast of his anger they perish.

10 The lions may roar and growl,
yet the teeth of the great lions are broken.

11 The lion perishes for lack of prey,
and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.

12 "A word was secretly brought to me,
my ears caught a whisper of it.

13 Amid disquieting dreams in the night,
when deep sleep falls on men,

14 fear and trembling seized me
and made all my bones shake.

15 A spirit glided past my face,
and the hair on my body stood on end.

16 It stopped,
but I could not tell what it was.
A form stood before my eyes,
and I heard a hushed voice:

17 'Can a mortal be more righteous than God?
Can a man be more pure than his Maker?

18 If God places no trust in his servants,
if he charges his angels with error,

19 how much more those who live in houses of clay,
whose foundations are in the dust,
who are crushed more readily than a moth!

20 Between dawn and dusk they are broken to pieces;
unnoticed, they perish forever.

21 Are not the cords of their tent pulled up,
so that they die without wisdom?'

Side Notes:

One thing my Bible cautions about is that this is Eliphaz speaking and not God so we must be careful about building our knowledge on Eliphaz's opinions. His argument is that suffering is a direct result from sin and if Job would only confess his sin (or sins) then his suffering would end. In Job's case this was not true but there are cases where it is (Gal. 6:7, 8). Eliphaz made many good and true comments, but he also made three wrong assumptions: a.) a good and innocent person never suffers; b.) those who are suffering are being punished for their past sins; c.) Job, because he was suffering, had done something wrong in God's eyes.

vs.7 & 8 Part of what Eliphaz said was true, and part of it was false. It is true that those who promote sin and trouble will eventually be punished (and not necessarily here on Earth); but it is false to assume that the good and innocent will never suffer.

All the material recorded and quoted in the Bible is there by God's choice. Some is a record of what people said and did but is not an example to follow. The sins, the defeats, the evil thoughts and misconceptions about God are all part of God's divinely inspired Word, but we should not follow those wrong examples just because they are in the Bible. The Bible gives us teachings and examples of what we should do as well as what we should not do. Eliphaz's comments are an example of what we should try to avoid - making false assumptions about others based on our own experiences.