Job 4 & 5

Oh, Eliphaz…so pious! You speak from your place of health and comfort into the misery and sorrow of your dear friend. Could you not sit silently just a few more days?

“If one ventures a word with you, will you be impatient? Yet who can keep from speaking?”

Job 4:2

Eliphaz summarizes Job’s situation, condensing Job’s sorrow into one narrow thought: You must have done something sinful to deserve God’s punishment like this. What did you do? You were always the one we came to – everyone came to you – for advice and wisdom and comfort and strength. Now you are the one who is in the wrong.

“Behold, you have instructed many, and you have strengthened the weak hands, your words have upheld him who was stumbling, and you have made firm the feeble knees. But now it has come to you, and you are impatient; it touches you, and you are dismayed.”

Job 4:3-5

Sadly, aren’t most guilty of this line of thinking? That when the wise or wealthy or strong suffer it is God’s judgment on them? Finally! It’s their turn now. They have offered counsel; let them take their own advice. We are all so pious in our own sight.

Eliphaz points his words at Job’s heart, settling his attention on the sin he imagines must be responsible for all of this disaster in Job’s life. He places his focus, like a finger against the imagined stain and presses, expecting Job’s cry of guilt.

“As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of his anger they are consumed.”

Job 4:8-9

He isn’t wrong. Sin does lead to death. James outlines the progression:

“But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”

James 1:14-15

But that isn’t what’s happening here in Job’s situation. The reader knows this. A behind-the-scenes look shows God at work to glorify Himself through Job’s suffering, not to punish Job for sin. Is a Job a sinner? For certain, as we all are from birth. Is his current suffering a result of his sin? Not this time, friends. Gratefully, God knows Job’s heart, and will point directly to his sin before the end of the book. The takeaway lesson here: Don’t assume that suffering in the life of another is due to their sin. We don’t know the half of any of it. Also, when God points out sin in our hearts, He is very clear. There isn’t any guessing about what we have done that goes against His righteousness. It isn’t a game of hide-and-seek with the Almighty.

Eliphaz shares his nightmare with Job. Maybe he had this nightmare while sitting on the ground in silence for those seven days. This nightmarish vision has the feel of a Dickens novel – goose flesh and apparitions, voices in the dark, whispering.

“Amid thoughts from visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, dread came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. A spirit glided past my face; the hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance. A form was before my eyes; there was silence, then I heard a voice:

‘Can mortal man be in the right before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker?'”

Job 4:13-17

There is a glorious answer to this question that Eliphaz has posed. Yes, in Christ alone, a believer stands righteous before his Maker, made perfect and complete because of Christ’s finished work on the cross; alive in Christ, because He rose from the grave, victorious over death. This is the truth of the Gospel. Job and Eliphaz were standing on their tiptoes, peering over the edge of a time to see the answer. The reader can skip ahead to the Gospel accounts, Romans, the Epistles, Revelation to find this answer for herself. Sometimes, its a good thing to read the last page of the book first.

“…there was silence, then I heard a voice: ‘Can mortal man be in the right before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker? Even in his servants he puts no trust, and his angels he charges with error; how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed like the moth. Between morning and evening they are beaten to pieces; they perish forever without anyone regarding it. Is not their tent-cord plucked up within them, do they not die, and that without wisdom?'”

Job 4: 16b-21

There are some holes in Eliphaz’s philosophy of life, his worldview. He doesn’t have the whole story. He doesn’t know all of the information. But, I do love his poetry and imagery. He describes the fragility of human life so well…“houses of clay” describe our bodies, and “foundations are in the dust” refer to our humble origins. But the phrase that keeps pulling me back: “Is not their tent-cord plucked up within them…” This is a powerful word picture.

My husband and I both grew up in camping families. We have many collected experiences in the woods, hiking, sleeping in tents, swimming in lakes, fishing, cooking over an open fire. We do our best to get our own family out in the woods each summer for at least one camping trip. I remember one childhood camping trip when the tent-cords and stakes were pulled up on one side of the tent my sister and I shared. A tornado came through the area at night. I woke up to the confusion of howling wind, driving rain, and a tent roof falling down on us. We were able to make a dash through the storm to my parents’ tent, soon joined by my older brother whose pup-tent had also collapsed. Those tent-cords keep the shelter anchored to the earth, much like our bodies keep our souls anchored to earth. When the body dies, the tent-cord is “plucked up within” us, the house of clay crumbles, and the body returns to its foundation of dust. Beautiful words from Eliphaz the Temanite, but his philosophy is off the mark. Consider II Corinthians 5:1-10 for more on our body as a tent, temporary and burdensome.

“For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.”

II Corinthians 5:1-5