Job 4:1-11

Eliphaz is provoked to reply, in spite of his unwillingness, by the tone of Job's speech, which seems to him altogether irreverent. He wonders that Job, who had comforted so many others in trouble, should fall into such despair, when trouble has come to himself. Eliphaz assumes that Job is a righteous man; Job 6 is not meant as sarcasm. Eliphaz would suggest simply that Job's trouble has caused him to leave the standing-ground of religion. His complaint (ch. 3) was unsuitable. Eliphaz does not see that Job had been occupied with the problem of God's behaviour to him, a problem which is quite outside the circle of the ideas in which Eliphaz, like the rest of the friends, moves. For them religion has no concern with God's behaviour to man, but only with man's behaviour to God. Eliphaz, therefore recalls Job to the fear of God, whence he has fallen by his unsuitable complaints. He should know (Job 4:7 that the righteous never perish, as do the wicked (Job 4:8). If God sends trouble to the righteous, then its function can be disciplinary only. This is the explanation of Job's trouble which Eliphaz suggests. The friends at first assume that Job is not a wilful sinner such as God punishes, but one whom God chastens to purify from unintentional sin, and who by humbling himself before God, can be restored again to prosperity. The fundamental opposition between the friends and Job is that they invariably find the cause of misfortune in man, while Job, at least as concerns himself, finds it in God. In fact the one cause of suffering is for them in sin: suffering is either chastisement or punishment, according as it is visited upon the righteous or the unrighteous. The friends begin by making the more charitable supposition in Job's case. In Job 4:7 f. Eliphaz guilelessly states his accepted theory as a fact of experience (cf. Acts 28:4). The figure of the lion in Job 4:10 f. suggests both the strength and the violence of the wicked.