Job -- The Suffering Prophet (8): Job's Argument with Eliphaz About Suffering

Reflections Upon the Book of Job (8)

The Pain Inflicted by Friends Trying to Help

There is a much greater pain than his sores, sleeplessness, and loss of all his children and possessions–the knowledge that Job’s friends think he has committed some secret sin, that he is guilty before God, is lying when he denies he’s sinned, and has therefore brought about his terrible ordeal.

From the perspective of Job’s friends (Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar), the reason why Job lost all of his possessions, his children and his health is very simple. God is holy, therefore he must punish all sin. In this they are correct. Since it is obvious that Job is being punished by God (to their way of thinking), there can only be one explanation. Either Job, or his children, have committed some horrible sin which has kindled the wrath of God.

But Job knows he is innocent of such a sin. His heart is broken because he has no idea why God is subjecting him to such terrible suffering. Even as he cries out to God, lamenting his sad state and asking “why?” Job knows that his friends have no clue as to why he is suffering. Although arising from a sense of loyal friendship, Job knows their attempts to “comfort him” are actually cruel, self-righteous diatribes which have no basis in fact.

As Job becomes increasingly defiant with his friends, they become increasingly frustrated and angry with Job, who, in their estimation, could easily remedy his situation, if only he’d listen to their counsel, see the light, and then repent of his sin(s). The dialogue between friends found in Job 4-14 (which we have skipped), now becomes a full-blown argument in Job 15-21, which leads to Job’s profound confession of faith in chapter 19. We will look at chapters 15-21 in two parts: first, Job’s argument with Eilphaz (in verses 15:1-16:14) and, second (next time), Job’s argument with Bildad, which is followed by Job’s wonderful profession of faith in a coming redeemer.

What the Reader Knows Which Job and His Friends Do Not (Redux)

When we consider the second cycle of speeches (in chapters 15-16), we ought to keep in mind three key facts which tell the reader why the increasingly heated argument between Job and Eilphaz, and Job and Bildad (which follows) goes so badly off the rails.

First, the reader knows what neither Job nor his friends know–that Job’s trial by ordeal does not stem from some secret sin in Job’s life, but comes about because God called Satan’s attention to this man Job, who is the apple of God’s eye. Ever-scheming, Satan sees a chance to undercut the foundation of the gospel when he challenges God to remove Job’s prosperity and destroy his family. Satan is convinced that Job is not a righteous man, but a self-centered opportunist who fears God and shuns evil only because God provides Job with all kinds of material blessings. Take them away, Satan contends, and Job will curse God to his face.

Yet when Job’s possessions are taken away and his children are killed, instead, Job praises God. And so Satan tries again. This time Satan dares God to take away Job’s health and predicts that Job will curse God to his face. Once afflicted with a horrible skin disease, Job does not curse God. Again, Job praises God and Satan’s scheme comes to naught. But as time goes on, Job is not only a physical wreck (sick and miserable), deprived of sleep and rest, an outcast forced to live on the town dunghill, but Job’s emotional state deteriorates to the point that what had been unrestrained praise for God, becomes a plaintive cry, “why?” and a demand for vindication. Job is heart-broken at the loss of his children. He is sick. He is an outcast. It is Job who ends the silence, pouring out his heart, speaking at times either directly to his friends, while at other times speaking directly to God.

A second thing we need to keep in mind is that Job acknowledges that he is a sinner. Job also believes God’s promise to provide a redeemer who will save him from his sins, which is why Job made burnt offerings on behalf of himself and his children. He knows that his sins are covered. His blameless and upright life is the fruit of his faith in God’s promise to deliver him. This is why Job is so perplexed when these horrible things come to pass. While Job does not disagree with the substance of his friends’ arguments to the effect that God is holy and that he must punish all sin, Job knows that this is not his situation. Job knows that he has done nothing to provoke the kind of divine wrath to bring about the loss of all of his possessions, his children and his health. As his angst increases, Job senses that what is needed is a mediator between the holy God and sinful people. As Job wrestles with those questions associated with the suffering of the righteous, ever so slowly he begins to direct us to the doing and dying of Jesus Christ, that redeemer, who, one day, Job believes, will stand upon the earth.

Third, what probably hurts Job the most is the loss of his good name and reputation. He knows that everyone from his wife, to his three friends (seen in their speeches to Job up to this point), to the citizens of Uz, were all thinking the same thing. “What sin did Job commit which brought all of this to pass?” “What did Job do to bring about such punishment from God?” He knew they were thinking, “Job, just admit your sin and repent already!” But Job knows there is no such sin. He cries out for a trial before God even though he knows God’s greatness is too much for him.

This is why Job demands that God vindicate his good name. Apart from such vindication, it seems to Job that God is his enemy and that the armies of heaven are arrayed against him. Job would rather die than go on feeling like God has turned against him and is punishing him when he has done nothing wrong. Yet throughout this entire ordeal, Job refuses to curse God as Satan predicted he would. Job successfully passes his ordeal, frustrating the schemes of Satan, and introducing the principle into the redemptive drama that a greater Job (Jesus Christ) will one day triumph over Satan through his own perfect obedience.

Eliphaz’s Diatribe Against Job

This brings us to Eliphaz’s second speech in Job 15. Given the fact that Job’s friends are orthodox in their theology (God is holy and must punish sin), and given the fact that Job will not admit the obvious (he is being punished, therefore he must have sinned), coupled with the fact that Job is increasingly defiant towards his friends, Eliphaz now gives up all pretense of his genteel manner of his first speech to his miserable friend. Throughout his second speech, Eliphaz boldly sets out his own wisdom as vastly superior to that of Job’s [1]. Eliphaz accuses Job of both folly and impiety.[2] His frustration with Job is now clearly obvious.

Smarting because of Job’s complete dismissal of his prior words of wisdom, in Job 15:2-3, Eliphaz gets personal with Job. The gloves are off. Eliphaz asks Job, “Should a wise man answer with windy knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind? Should he argue in unprofitable talk, or in words with which he can do no good?” Eliphaz casts himself as the wise man, referring to Job as a “hot wind” (a “belly wind”).[3] As Eliphaz sees it, Job has shown himself not only to be foolish, but according to verse 4, Job’s words are down-right dangerous. “But you [Job] are doing away with the fear of God and hindering meditation before God.” If people get wind of what Job is saying and act in the same way Job is, this will lead them to question God’s will and wisdom. Not a good thing from a man like Job who had been an example to so many.

Up to this point, Job’s friends could only make vague accusations that Job had committed some secret sin. But as we read in verses 5-6, Eliphaz now thinks he has something more specific to pin on Job–his defiant speech, which, in Eliphaz’s mind, proves his point that Job is not the righteous man everyone assumes him to be. Says Eliphaz, “For your iniquity teaches your mouth, and you choose the tongue of the crafty. Your own mouth condemns you, and not I; your own lips testify against you.” Yet, Eliphaz’s assessment of Job’s sin really does not matter, since God has already declared of Job in Job 1:22, “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.” For Eliphaz, the only possible explanation is the retributive justice–God is punishing Job because he has sinned. But Eliphaz has never once even entertained the possibility that Job’s ordeal might stem from some other reason, that God may have a purpose in this which is not based upon retributive justice. Ironically, it is Eliphaz who limits God. Job has not brought this to pass through some personal sin. But Eliphaz will not consider any other explanation.

In verses 7-10, Eliphaz belittles Job by asking several humiliating questions which stem from Eliphaz’s assumption that he has the superior knowledge. “Are you the first man who was born? Or were you brought forth before the hills? Have you listened in the council of God? And do you limit wisdom to yourself? What do you know that we do not know? What do you understand that is not clear to us? Both the gray-haired and the aged are among us, older than your father.” The gray-haired and aged man is probably a description of Eliphaz, who goes on in verses 11-17, to speak of himself as the one offering God’s consolation. He asks Job, “

Are the comforts of God too small for you, or the word that deals gently with you? Why does your heart carry you away, and why do your eyes flash, that you turn your spirit against God and bring such words out of your mouth? What is man, that he can be pure? Or he who is born of a woman, that he can be righteous? Behold, God puts no trust in his holy ones, and the heavens are not pure in his sight; how much less one who is abominable and corrupt, a man who drinks injustice like water! “I will show you; hear me, and what I have seen I will declare.”

In his first speech (Job 5:26), Eliphaz described a good man’s death as follows: “You shall come to your grave in ripe old age, like a sheaf gathered up in its season.” Job took issue with this, replying to Eliphaz in Job 7:9-10. “As the cloud fades and vanishes, so he who goes down to Sheol does not come up; he returns no more to his house, nor does his place know him anymore.” Overhearing Job’s response to Eliphaz, Bildad also comments on the fate of the wicked in his speech (Job 8:22). “Those who hate you will be clothed with shame, and the tent of the wicked will be no more.” Job’s response (12:6) to him was: “the tents of robbers are at peace, and those who provoke God are secure, who bring their god in their hand.” Eliphaz cannot let this go and the central issue now becomes the fate of the wicked.

In verses 17 through the end of the chapter, Eliphaz speaks in direct rebuttal of Job, doing his best to make the case that not only do the wicked have a miserable death, but that they die before their time. This is the practical outworking of Eliphaz’s understanding of the principle of retributive justice. If God must punish all sin, not only will sinners have a miserable life, they will die prematurely. According to Eliphaz, “I will show you; hear me, and what I have seen I will declare (what wise men have told, without hiding it from their fathers, to whom alone the land was given, and no stranger passed among them).” Notice, that Eliphaz is limited to his own observation, and his own wisdom (which he argued was confirmed by a dream).

The wicked man writhes in pain all his days, through all the years that are laid up for the ruthless. Dreadful sounds are in his ears; in prosperity the destroyer will come upon him. He does not believe that he will return out of darkness, and he is marked for the sword. He wanders abroad for bread, saying, “Where is it?” He knows that a day of darkness is ready at his hand; distress and anguish terrify him; they prevail against him, like a king ready for battle. Because he has stretched out his hand against God and defies the Almighty, running stubbornly against him with a thickly bossed shield; because he has covered his face with his fat and gathered fat upon his waist and has lived in desolate cities, in houses that none should inhabit, which were ready to become heaps of ruins; he will not be rich, and his wealth will not endure, nor will his possessions spread over the earth; he will not depart from darkness; the flame will dry up his shoots, and by the breath of his mouth he will depart. Let him not trust in emptiness, deceiving himself, for emptiness will be his payment. It will be paid in full before his time, and his branch will not be green.

As one commentator points out, it is ironic that Eliphaz calls Job a “belly wind” and yet ends his speech with a series of restatements of the same old argument (“you reap what you sow”).[4] This sets the tone for the entire second cycle of speeches.[5] What Eliphaz cannot handle is the self-evident fact that there are wicked people who prosper and righteous people who suffer. Eliphaz does not appreciate the finer points of eschatology–the “reaping” part may not be fully realized in this life, but will certainly be realized on the day of judgment.

The implication from Eliphaz’s speech is not lost upon Job. If Job was really the righteous and upright man he claimed to be, then he would not be suffering. Furthermore, if Job does not admit that Eliphaz is right, then Job is a hypocrite as well.[6] Job is indignant and stands his ground and makes two points in rebuttal. Job is not guilty of some horrible sin and God can do as he pleases, even if that does not jibe with the wisdom of his grey-haired, aged friend.

Job Has Had Enough

As Job sees it, Eliphaz is speaking for all of his friends. In Job 16:1-5, he dismisses their comments with a fair bit of contempt. “Then Job answered and said: `I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are you all. Shall windy words have an end? Or what provokes you that you answer? I also could speak as you do, if you were in my place; I could join words together against you and shake my head at you. I could strengthen you with my mouth, and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.” In verse 6, Job makes clear that their many words or his own silence bring him no relief. “If I speak, my pain is not assuaged, and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me?” Job feels like he is being assailed by his friends and by God. “Surely now God has worn me out; he has made desolate all my company. And he has shriveled me up, which is a witness against me, and my leanness has risen up against me; it testifies to my face.”

He admits in verse 9-14, that Job feels like God has turned against him.

He has torn me in his wrath and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me. Men have gaped at me with their mouth; they have struck me insolently on the cheek; they mass themselves together against me. God gives me up to the ungodly and casts me into the hands of the wicked. I was at ease, and he broke me apart; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces; he set me up as his target; his archers surround me. He slashes open my kidneys and does not spare; he pours out my gall on the ground. He breaks me with breach upon breach; he runs upon me like a warrior.

While this is not the case–we know this to be true from the heavenly scene in the prologue (Job 1 and 2)–we can understand why Job feels the way he does. He’s lost everything. He is sick and miserable. He is an outcast. His friends are now accusing him of something he did not do. This must hurt in a profound way far more than the sores which cover his body

Next time, Job confesses his faith in a coming redeemer.

To read the next in the series: Job: I Know My Redeemer Lives (9)

To read the first in this series: Job: The Suffering Prophet (1)

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[1] Kline, Job, 474.

[2] Andersen, Job, 174.

[3] Andersen, Job, 175.

[4] Andersen, Job, 179.

[5] Kline, Job, 474.

[6] Andersen, Job, 179.