Job 4:1

CHAPTER IV

Eliphaz answers; and accuses Job of impatience, and of

despondence in the time of adversity, 1-6;

asserts that no innocent man ever perished, and that the wicked

are afflicted for their sins, 7-11;

relates a vision that he had, 12-16,

and what was said to him on the occasion, 17-21.

NOTES ON CHAP. IV

Verse Job 4:1. Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered] For seven days this person and his two friends had observed a profound silence, being awed and confounded at the sight of Job's unprecedented affliction. Having now sufficiently contemplated his afflicted state, and heard his bitter complaint, forgetting that he came as a comforter, and not as a reprover, he loses the feeling of the friend in the haughtiness of the censor, endeavouring to strip him of his only consolation, - the testimony of his conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, he had his conversation among men, - by insinuating that if his ways had been upright, he would not have been abandoned to such distress and affliction; and if his heart possessed that righteousness of which he boasted, he would not have been so suddenly cast down by adversity.