Eliphaz: a Voice in the Night
1 Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered, 2 “If someone ventures to talk with you, will you be grieved? But who can withhold himself from speaking? 3 Behold, you have instructed many, you have strengthened the weak hands. 4 Your words have supported him who was falling, you have made the feeble knees firm. 5 But now it has come to you, and you faint. It touches you, and you are troubled. 6 Isn’t your piety your confidence? Isn’t the integrity of your ways your hope? 7 “Remember, now, who ever perished, being innocent? Or where were the upright cut off? 8 According to what I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble, reap the same. 9 By the breath of God they perish. By the blast of his anger are they consumed. 10 The roaring of the lion, and the voice of the fierce lion, the teeth of the young lions, are broken. 11 The old lion perishes for lack of prey. The cubs of the lioness are scattered abroad. 12 “Now a thing was secretly brought to me. My ear received a whisper of it. 13 In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, 14 fear came on me, and trembling, which made all my bones shake. 15 Then a spirit passed before my face. The hair of my flesh stood up. 16 It stood still, but I couldn’t discern its appearance. A form was before my eyes. Silence, then I heard a voice, saying, 17 ‘Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his Maker? 18 Behold, he puts no trust in his servants. He charges his angels with error. 19 How much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before the moth! 20 Between morning and evening they are destroyed. They perish forever without any regarding it. 21 Isn’t their tent cord plucked up within them? They die, and that without wisdom.’
The gentlest of the friends states the rule the whole debate will run on, and grounds it in something he saw in the dark.
Eliphaz begins with an apology for beginning. If someone ventures to talk with you, will you be grieved? But who can withhold himself from speaking? Job 4:2. He knows the silence was better and cannot keep it.
His opening is generous and accurate. Job has instructed many and strengthened the weak hands; his words have held up men who were falling Job 4:3–4. This is not a hostile witness, and what he says about Job's past is true.
Then the turn, in one verse: but now it has come to you, and you faint Job 4:5. The counselor cannot take his own counsel. It is a fair observation and a cruel one, and it sets the tone for everything the friends will do — noticing something real and using it as a weapon.
The rule arrives next, and the whole book is an argument with it. Who ever perished, being innocent? Or where were the upright cut off? Job 4:7. Those who plow iniquity reap it Job 4:8.
It should be said plainly that this is not nonsense. Scripture says things like it often, and the epilogue of this very book ends in a restoration. What Eliphaz does is convert a general truth into an instrument of diagnosis, and then run it backward: the man is suffering, therefore the man sowed. Applied forward it is a warning. Applied backward it is a verdict, and there is a suffering man in front of him.
The evidence he offers for it is the strangest thing in the chapter. A word came to him secretly, at night, in a whisper Job 4:12. There was trembling, and hair standing on end, and a spirit passed before my face which he could not identify — I couldn't discern its appearance Job 4:15–16.
He reports it as authority, and the details he supplies do not support that. He does not know what he saw. What is heard in the silence afterward is a question — shall mortal man be more just than God? — and a claim that God trusts none of his servants and charges his angels with error Job 4:17–18.
The question is unanswerable and true. Nobody in the book, least of all Job, has claimed to be more just than God. It is aimed at a position no one holds, which is the characteristic weakness of every speech the friends make.
And the conclusion drawn from it is that human beings, living in houses of clay, are crushed before the moth and die without wisdom Job 4:19–21. A man on an ash heap who has lost ten children is being told that human life is fragile and brief. He had noticed.
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