Commentary - Job 4:1-6

Bird's-eye view

In this opening speech from Job's friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, likely the eldest and most esteemed, breaks the seven-day silence. His approach is a master class in how to begin a conversation with a suffering man and still get everything disastrously wrong. He starts with a veneer of politeness and even acknowledges Job's history of wisdom and faithfulness. But this is all a setup for the central, devastating point he wants to make. The speech pivots from acknowledging Job's past strength to highlighting his present weakness, subtly accusing him of impatience and hypocrisy. The core of his argument, introduced in verse 6, is the bedrock of his and the other friends' theology: the retribution principle. This is the idea that the righteous always prosper and the wicked always suffer in a direct, observable, cause-and-effect relationship. Eliphaz's entire worldview is built on this tidy system, and because Job is suffering so intensely, Eliphaz's system requires that Job must have some secret, unconfessed sin. This is the beginning of the long assault of the miserable comforters.

What we are witnessing is the first volley in a battle between a rigid, man-made theological system and the messy, painful reality of a fallen world under the sovereign hand of God. Eliphaz is not intentionally cruel; he genuinely believes he is speaking divine truth. But his truth is a half-truth, which in the context of pastoral care for a man on a dung heap, functions as a complete and total lie. He represents the kind of counselor who comes with a flowchart instead of a heart, with answers instead of empathy, and who ultimately defends his system at the expense of the person he claims to be helping.

Outline

Context In Job

This passage immediately follows Job's raw and agonizing lament in chapter 3, where he cursed the day of his birth. For seven days and nights, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar had sat with Job in silent mourning, a commendable act of friendship. But Job's outburst, his refusal to suffer quietly and piously, has shattered the silence and provoked a response. Eliphaz, as the first speaker, sets the tone and theological framework for all the friends' subsequent speeches. He cannot reconcile the Job he knew, the righteous man, with the Job he sees, the suffering blasphemer. His tidy theological world cannot contain a man like Job. Therefore, one of them must be wrong, and Eliphaz is not about to question his theology. This speech kicks off the first of three cycles of debate, where the friends will try to force Job into a confession and Job will defend his integrity while wrestling with God Himself.

Key Issues

The Counsel of a Karmic Christian

Before we dive into the text, we need to understand what is really going on here. Eliphaz is the first and perhaps the most sophisticated of Job's friends, and he is about to lay down the theological system that will animate all of their arguments. It is a very simple and attractive system, and it is one that is alive and well in the church today. We could call it the retribution principle, or we could just call it karma with a baptistic font. It is the belief that God runs the world like a cosmic vending machine. You insert coins of righteousness, piety, and integrity, and out comes the candy bar of prosperity, health, and blessing. If, on the other hand, you find yourself with your hand stuck in the machine, it is because you used a slug. The equation is simple: righteousness leads to blessing, and sin leads to suffering. Therefore, if you are suffering, you must be sinning.

This system has the benefit of being tidy, predictable, and controllable. It makes sense of the world. The only problem is that it is not biblical. While the Bible certainly teaches that sin has consequences and righteousness is generally blessed, it utterly rejects a simplistic one-to-one correlation in this life. The book of Job is the great biblical sledgehammer designed to smash this very idol. Eliphaz is the high priest of this false religion, and his first sermon is about to begin.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1-2 Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said, “If one tries a word with you, will you become weary? But who can hold back from speaking?

Eliphaz begins with a show of delicate deference. He's walking on eggshells, or so he wants Job to believe. "I know you are in a bad way, and the last thing I want to do is add to your burden. Will you be impatient with me if I try to speak?" But the second clause reveals his true position. "But who can hold back from speaking?" This is not a real question. It is a justification. He is saying that the situation is so dire, and Job's lament in chapter 3 was so close to the bone, that he has a moral obligation to speak. He is framing his coming rebuke as a painful necessity. This is a common tactic of the graceless counselor. He presents his own compulsion to correct as a form of righteous duty, when it is often just an itch to fix a problem that makes him uncomfortable.

3-4 Behold, you have disciplined many, And you have strengthened limp hands. Your words have helped the stumbling to stand, And you have encouraged feeble knees.

Here, Eliphaz butters Job up before he carves him up. And everything he says here is true. Job had been a rock in his community. He was the man people went to for counsel. He instructed, he strengthened, he supported, he encouraged. He was a model of pastoral wisdom. Eliphaz is establishing Job's credentials as a man who knew the right answers and knew how to apply them to the lives of others. In a true comforter, this would be a prelude to saying, "And now you need us to do the same for you." But for Eliphaz, it is the prelude to an accusation. He is establishing the standard by which he is about to judge Job and find him wanting.

5 But now it has come to you, and you are impatient; It touches you, and you are dismayed.

Here is the pivot, the "but" that changes everything. The shoe is on the other foot now. The counselor is now the one in crisis. And how is he doing? According to Eliphaz, he is failing miserably. The man who taught others how to endure is himself impatient. The man who strengthened others is himself dismayed, terrified, and undone. Eliphaz is essentially calling Job a hypocrite. He is saying, "You can dish it out, but you can't take it." He sees Job's raw, honest lament not as a cry of faith in the midst of darkness, but as a failure of faith. He mistakes Job's wrestling with God for a rejection of God. This is a profound failure of pastoral perception. He cannot distinguish between the cry of a drowning man and the defiance of a rebellious man.

6 Is not your fear of God your confidence, And the integrity of your ways your hope?

This is the heart of the matter, the theological foundation for his entire critique. Eliphaz asks a rhetorical question, and he fully expects the answer to be "Yes, of course!" He is saying, "Job, think about it. Your confidence should come from your piety, your fear of God. Your hope should be rooted in your personal integrity." On the surface, this sounds right. It sounds pious. But it is the essence of works-righteousness. Eliphaz is telling Job to find his assurance in his own performance. Your confidence is in what you do for God. Your hope is in your track record.

But what happens when your track record is, from all outward appearances, getting you nothing but pain? What happens when your piety is met with boils and bankruptcy? Eliphaz's system has no answer, except to conclude that the piety must have been a sham. A true, gospel confidence is not in our integrity, but in Christ's integrity. Our hope is not in the fear of God that we have managed to muster up, but in the Son of God who was perfectly righteous for us and took our curse upon Himself. Eliphaz is directing Job to look inward at his own resume for hope. The gospel directs us to look outward to Christ and His finished work. Eliphaz's counsel is to trust in your own goodness. The Bible's counsel is to trust in God's goodness, even, and especially, when it makes no sense at all.

Application

Eliphaz provides us with a perfect roadmap of how not to minister to the afflicted. First, we must beware of coming to a suffering person with a neat and tidy theological system that has no room for mystery. God is sovereign, but His ways are often inscrutable to us. To demand that God's providence fit into our man-made boxes is a form of arrogance. When someone is in agony, they do not need a lecture; they need a friend. They need someone to sit in the ashes with them, as the friends did for seven days, before they opened their foolish mouths.

Second, this passage is a powerful warning against the religion of karma. It is a constant temptation to believe that our good behavior puts God in our debt, and that we can control Him with our piety. This is the religion of the Pharisee, not the publican. Our hope cannot be in our own integrity. On our best day, our integrity is a filthy rag. Our only hope, our only confidence, is in the perfect integrity of Jesus Christ, credited to our account. He was the truly innocent one who suffered, and He did so in our place. Our confidence in the midst of trials is not that we have been good enough to deserve better, but that He is good enough to carry us through, and that He is working all things, even the inexplicable and agonizing things, for our ultimate good and His glory.

Finally, we must learn to distinguish between a cry of pain and a cry of rebellion. Job's lament was not a sign of his apostasy; it was a sign of his humanity and his honest relationship with God. He was not afraid to bring his confusion and his anguish before the Lord. A friend who tries to shut that down with pious platitudes is not a friend at all. True friendship makes room for the mess and points the sufferer not to his own failed integrity, but to the unfailing grace of God found in Christ Jesus.