Commentary - Job 5:1-7

Bird's-eye view

In this section of Job, Eliphaz the Temanite continues his first response to Job's lament. Having begun with a gentle, almost pastoral tone, he now shifts into the role of a theological prosecutor. His argument is a classic expression of what we might call a tidy, mechanistic view of divine justice. He lays out a case that suffering is the direct and inevitable consequence of personal sin. He challenges Job to find any heavenly advocate, diagnoses his suffering as the result of foolish vexation, and offers anecdotal evidence of how he has seen fools prosper for a moment before their inevitable collapse. The core of his argument is that trouble is not a random occurrence; it is the natural harvest of human sinfulness, as certain as sparks flying upward from a fire. While containing elements of truth about the fallen world, Eliphaz's counsel is a profound and cruel misapplication of that truth to a righteous sufferer, demonstrating the danger of a theology that has no room for mystery or the sovereign, inscrutable purposes of God.

This is the beginning of the error of the comforters. They are not entirely wrong in their general statements. Sin does indeed lead to ruin. But they are disastrously wrong in their specific application. They take a general truth and use it as a blunt instrument to beat a man who is already down. They operate on the assumption that they can read the providence of God like a balance sheet, and in so doing, they slander both Job and the God they claim to defend.

Outline

Context In Job

This passage is part of the first cycle of speeches between Job and his three friends. The book opens with Job's righteousness and his subsequent, catastrophic losses, followed by his initial, faithful response. In chapter 3, however, Job's fortitude breaks, and he unleashes a bitter lament, cursing the day of his birth. Eliphaz, the eldest and likely most respected of the friends, speaks first in chapter 4, attempting to correct what he perceives as Job's loss of faith. He begins by recounting a mystical vision that emphasized the sinfulness of all mortals before God. Chapter 5 is the continuation and application of that principle. Eliphaz moves from a general theological statement to a direct, though still veiled, accusation against Job. He is essentially saying, "Job, the principles I laid out in chapter 4 must apply to you. Your suffering is proof of your sin." This sets the stage for the central debate of the book: the nature of suffering, justice, and the character of God.

Key Issues

Sparks and Stupidity

Eliphaz is a man with a system. He has a neat theological grid, and everything he sees must be made to fit that grid. The problem is that Job is a data point that breaks the whole system. When a man's theology clashes with reality, he has two choices: he can either adjust his theology or try to bend reality to fit it. Eliphaz chooses the latter. He is determined to make Job fit the category of "ignorant fool," because the alternative, that a righteous man is suffering terribly under the hand of a sovereign God, is too terrifying for his tidy worldview to handle. His counsel, therefore, is not true comfort. It is an attempt to defend his own theological security at Job's expense. He is a spiritual diagnostician who has already decided on the disease before he has even examined the patient.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1 “Call now, is there anyone who will answer you? And to which of the holy ones will you turn?

Eliphaz begins this section with a rhetorical challenge that is dripping with condescension. He is essentially telling Job, "Go ahead, pray. See if anyone answers. Appeal your case. To which of the angels will you make your plea?" The implied answer is that no one will listen because Job's case has no merit. Eliphaz is cutting Job off from any hope of heavenly appeal. In his mind, the court of heaven has already ruled, and the suffering Job endures is the sentence being carried out. This is a tactic designed to induce despair. Before offering his own counsel, he first seeks to demolish any other source of hope. He wants Job to feel utterly isolated, not just from his friends on earth, but from any advocate in heaven. The irony, of course, is that the entire premise of the book is that Job does have a heavenly advocate, and the one bringing the accusations is Satan, whose arguments sound remarkably like those of Eliphaz.

2 For vexation kills the ignorant fool, And jealousy puts to death the simple.

Here is the diagnosis. Eliphaz looks at Job's raw, honest lament in chapter 3 and re-labels it as sinful vexation and jealousy. He reduces Job's profound grief to a petty, foolish temper tantrum. A "fool" in Scripture is not someone with a low IQ, but rather a moral and spiritual category. The fool is the one who has said in his heart there is no God, or who lives as though there is no God. By classifying Job this way, Eliphaz is accusing him of a fundamental rebellion against the divine order. He is saying that Job's suffering is not the cause of his outburst; rather, his inner foolishness is the cause of both his outburst and his suffering. It is a classic case of blaming the victim. The engine of destruction, according to Eliphaz, is internal. It is Job's own sinful attitude that is killing him.

3-4 I have seen the ignorant fool taking root, And I cursed his abode suddenly. His sons are far from salvation, They are even crushed in the gate, And there is no deliverer.

Eliphaz now bolsters his argument from his own personal experience. "I've seen this movie before," he says. He speaks as a wise, detached observer of the moral universe. He has seen a wicked man prosper, seeming to "take root" like a healthy tree. But Eliphaz, with his superior spiritual insight, was not fooled. He knew it was a sham, and he pronounced a curse on the man's home, a curse that he implies came to pass "suddenly." Then he gets terrifyingly specific. He describes the fate of this fool's sons: they are unsafe, they find no justice in the public square ("crushed in the gate"), and no one comes to their aid. One cannot read this without seeing it as a cruel, back-handed reference to the death of Job's own children. Eliphaz is constructing a parable where Job is the villain, and he is doing it right in front of the grieving father. It is theology wielded as a weapon.

5 His harvest the hungry devour And take it to a place of thorns, And the schemer pants after their wealth.

The description of the fool's downfall continues, again mirroring Job's recent experience. The wealth of the fool is insecure. His crops are eaten by others. His possessions are carried off and entangled in thorns, suggesting they are lost and irrecoverable. Thirsty schemers, or traps, ensnare his wealth. Every detail is calculated to remind Job of the Sabeans and Chaldeans who raided his livestock and the fire that consumed his sheep. Eliphaz is not just making a general theological point; he is building a one-to-one correspondence between the "fool" of his story and the man sitting before him on the ash heap.

6-7 For wickedness does not come out from the dust, Nor does trouble sprout from the ground, For man is born for trouble, As sparks fly upward.

Here Eliphaz lays down his foundational premise, and it is a masterpiece of misapplied truth. He is right that affliction and trouble are not random, chaotic events. They do not just spring out of the ground like weeds. There is a moral order to the universe; causality is real. And he is also right that man is born for trouble. This is the biblical doctrine of the fall. Since Adam's sin, humanity has been born into a world of futility, corruption, and suffering. Trouble is our native environment. The comparison to sparks flying upward is brilliant; it speaks of a natural, fixed, inevitable law. Just as sparks obey a law of physics, man, because of his nature, experiences trouble. Where Eliphaz goes wrong is in the direct, unbroken line he draws from this general principle to Job's specific circumstance. He assumes that because man is born to trouble as a result of sin, every instance of trouble must be a direct punishment for a specific, personal sin. He turns a profound statement about the human condition into a simplistic and brutal mathematical formula.

Application

The words of Eliphaz are a standing warning to all who would seek to counsel the suffering. It is very easy to fall into the trap of being a tidy theologian. We like systems that explain everything, that remove mystery and give us a sense of control. We want God to operate according to a set of rules that we can understand and predict. But the God of the Bible is not a cosmic vending machine where we insert righteousness and get out prosperity. He is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts.

When we encounter a brother or sister in the midst of deep affliction, our first job is not to be a detective, looking for the "reason why." Our first job is to weep with those who weep, to be present, to be silent, and to offer the comfort of fellowship, not the cold comfort of a formula. The truth that "man is born for trouble" should produce humility in us, not arrogance. It should remind us that we all stand on the same fallen ground, utterly dependent on the grace of God.

Ultimately, the only true answer to the problem Eliphaz raises is the one he cannot see. There is a Man who was born to trouble, not for His own sin, but for ours. Jesus Christ is the truly righteous sufferer. He was crushed in the gate, with no deliverer. He called out, and there was no one to answer Him. He did this so that when we are in our trouble, we can call upon Him and find an advocate, a high priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses. Eliphaz tells Job to look inward to find the cause of his trouble. The gospel tells us to look outward, to the cross, to find the cure for it.