Commentary - Job 5:8-16

Bird's-eye view

In this portion of Eliphaz the Temanite's first speech to Job, we are presented with a mixture of profound theological truth and disastrous pastoral application. Eliphaz, one of Job's three friends, is operating on a faulty premise: that severe suffering is always a direct and immediate consequence of specific, grievous sin. And so, while the words he speaks about God are, in themselves, largely magnificent and orthodox, the context in which he speaks them turns them into a bludgeon. He is essentially telling Job, "If you would just repent, this majestic and sovereign God, who does all these wonderful things, would restore you."

The passage extols God as the sovereign ruler of creation, whose actions are beyond human comprehension. He is the one who controls the natural world, giving rain and life. More than that, He is the great governor of human affairs, orchestrating a great reversal: He lifts up the humble and casts down the proud. He is the one who unravels the intricate plots of the crafty and ensnares the worldly-wise in their own cleverness. The result of this divine administration is that the poor and needy find hope, and injustice is silenced. The irony, of course, is that Eliphaz is misapplying this entire glorious reality to Job's situation. Job is the lowly one, the mourning one, whom God will indeed lift up, but not because of the formulaic repentance Eliphaz is prescribing. This section serves as a crucial reminder that right theology, when divorced from wisdom and applied with a club, becomes a tool of the accuser.

Outline

Context In Job

This passage is part of the first of three cycles of speeches between Job and his friends. Job has just delivered his bitter lament in chapter 3, cursing the day of his birth and wishing for death. Eliphaz, the first friend to speak, begins his reply in chapter 4. His approach is to gently, at first, suggest that Job's suffering must be the result of some hidden sin. He reasons from a rigid principle of retributive justice: the righteous prosper and the wicked suffer. Since Job is suffering immensely, the conclusion, for Eliphaz, is inescapable. Our text, Job 5:8-16, is the heart of Eliphaz's "gospel." It is his prescription for Job's restoration. He lays out this beautiful picture of God's power and justice as the basis for his appeal to Job. "This is who God is," he argues, "so get right with Him, and all will be well." The tragedy is that while his description of God is largely accurate, his diagnosis of Job is entirely wrong, a fact God Himself will confirm at the end of the book (Job 42:7).

Key Issues

True Words, False Comfort

One of the central lessons of the book of Job is that it is entirely possible to say true things about God and yet be profoundly wrong. Eliphaz is a master of this. If you were to take these verses (8-16) and print them on a decorative plaque, every Christian in the world would nod in agreement. God does do great and unsearchable things. He does lift up the lowly. He does frustrate the plans of the wicked. The apostle Paul even quotes verse 13 in his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 3:19).

So what's the problem? The problem is application. Eliphaz is like a doctor who correctly describes the properties of a powerful medicine but administers it to a patient who has the wrong disease. He sees Job's suffering and immediately files it under the category of "divine punishment for secret sin." He has no category for the kind of trial Job is actually enduring, a trial designed not for punishment but for the glory of God and the testing of faith. His counsel, therefore, however orthodox it sounds, is not a comfort but an affliction. He is using the truth as a weapon, pressuring Job to confess a sin he has not committed. This is a sober warning for all who would counsel the suffering: before you apply the balm of theology, make sure you have the right diagnosis.

Verse by Verse Commentary

8 “But as for me, I would seek God, And I would set my cause before God,

Eliphaz begins his advice with a personal, "if I were you" approach. On the surface, this is good counsel. In times of trouble, where else should we turn but to God? To seek Him and lay our case before Him is the essence of prayer. The Psalmist does this repeatedly. However, in Eliphaz's mouth, this is not a humble encouragement to prayer; it is a veiled accusation. The implication is, "Job, you are not doing this. You are cursing your life and complaining, but you are not properly entreating God." Furthermore, "set my cause before God" carries the subtle assumption that Job's cause is a bad one, and that setting it before God means confessing his sin and pleading for mercy. Job will later make it clear that he desperately wants to set his cause before God, but as an innocent man seeking vindication, not as a guilty man seeking a plea bargain.

9 Who does great and unsearchable things, Wonders without number.

Here begins Eliphaz's magnificent description of God's character, the foundation for his counsel. He rightly identifies God as the one whose works are beyond human scale and comprehension. The word unsearchable means we cannot get to the bottom of them. We cannot trace His ways or fully understand His purposes. This is high, orthodox theology. God's power and wisdom are infinite. He does not operate according to simple, predictable formulas that we can master. The irony is thick here. Eliphaz proclaims that God's ways are unsearchable, and then he immediately proceeds to act as though he has searched them out completely, reducing God's complex providence to a simplistic tit-for-tat system of reward and punishment.

10 He gives rain on the earth And sends water on the fields outside,

From the general statement about God's wonders, Eliphaz moves to a specific example: God's sovereignty over the natural world. The giving of rain was, in the ancient world, the most potent symbol of divine blessing and provision. Without it, there was no life, no food, no prosperity. This is not a random act; God directs the rain. He sends it. This demonstrates His benevolent care for His creation. This is a truth that Jesus Himself would later echo, saying God "sends rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matt. 5:45). For Eliphaz, this is part of his argument: the God who can make the barren fields fruitful can also restore Job's fortunes, if only Job would cooperate.

11 So that He sets on high those who are lowly, And those who mourn are lifted to salvation.

Now Eliphaz applies God's sovereignty to the social and spiritual realm. God's purpose in His governance of the world is to enact a great reversal. This is a theme that runs throughout Scripture, from Hannah's song (1 Sam. 2:7-8) to the Magnificat of Mary (Luke 1:52). God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. He sees those who are lowly, cast down, and grieving, and He acts to lift them up. The word for salvation here means deliverance or safety. Again, this is a glorious truth. The gospel is all about God reaching down to the lowly and lifting them to salvation. The problem is that Eliphaz sees Job as being in the "lowly" category because of his sin, and he presents this "lifting" as a conditional offer based on repentance, rather than as a sovereign work of God's grace.

12 He frustrates the thoughts of the crafty, So that their hands cannot attain success of sound wisdom.

This is the other side of the great reversal. While God lifts up the humble, He brings down the proud and arrogant. Here they are described as crafty. These are the schemers, the manipulators, the men who rely on their own cleverness to get ahead. God actively works against them. He throws a wrench in their plans, unravels their plots, and ensures that their projects fail. Their hands cannot achieve what they set out to do. The world is full of men who think they are masters of their own destiny, but God in heaven laughs at their pretensions (Psalm 2:4). He is the master chess player who is always ten moves ahead.

13 He catches the wise by their own craftiness, And the counsel of the twisted is quickly thwarted.

Eliphaz elaborates on how God deals with the arrogant. He does not simply overpower them; He uses their own strength against them. He turns their wisdom into a snare. This is the verse the Apostle Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 3:19 to show the foolishness of worldly wisdom compared to the wisdom of God. The proud man sets a trap for others, and God ensures that he is the one who steps in it. Their clever counsel, their twisted and perverse advice, is shown to be worthless and is brought to a swift end. The cross of Christ is the ultimate example of this. The wisest men of the world, both Jewish and Roman, conspired to eliminate Jesus, and in their very act of "success," they accomplished God's eternal plan of salvation and sealed their own doom.

14 By day they meet with darkness And grope at noon as in the night.

The result of God's judgment on the crafty is a profound confusion and disorientation. In the middle of the day, when everything should be clear and plain, they are plunged into darkness. They stumble around like blind men, unable to make sense of their circumstances. This is a picture of judicial blindness. When men reject the light of God's truth, He gives them over to the darkness of their own minds. Their vaunted wisdom leads them into a state of utter bewilderment. They cannot find their way because God has confounded their path.

15 But He saves from the sword of their mouth, And the needy from the hand of the strong.

In stark contrast to the fate of the crafty, God acts as a savior for the vulnerable. He delivers them from two primary threats. First, "the sword of their mouth," which refers to the slander, false accusations, and oppressive decrees of the powerful. Words can be weapons, and God protects His people from them. Second, He saves the needy "from the hand of the strong," from physical and economic oppression. God is the defender of the defenseless, the champion of the poor and the weak against their powerful adversaries.

16 So the poor has hope, And unrighteousness must shut its mouth.

This is the grand conclusion of God's righteous governance of the world. Because God is who He is and does what He does, two things result. First, the poor have hope. Their hope is not in their own strength or in the kindness of men, but in the character of God Himself. They know that the present state of affairs, where the wicked often prosper, is not the final word. God will intervene. Second, unrighteousness, or injustice, is ultimately silenced. In the face of God's final judgment, all the proud boasts, clever arguments, and blasphemies of the wicked will be stopped. Every mouth will be shut (Rom. 3:19). There will be no more arguments. God's justice will have the last word.

Application

The first and most obvious application is a warning to all of us who would offer comfort to the suffering. We must be exceptionally careful not to become one of Job's counselors. It is not enough to have correct theological propositions. We must have wisdom, humility, and love in applying them. Before we speak, we must listen. We must recognize that God's ways are indeed unsearchable, and we should be very slow to claim we have figured them all out. Sometimes the most pastoral thing we can do is sit in silence with a sufferer, as the friends did at first, and weep with those who weep.

Second, despite Eliphaz's misapplication, the truths he speaks here are a profound source of comfort for the believer. Our God is the sovereign Lord who does wonders without number. He is the one who orchestrates the great reversal. If you are lowly, if you are mourning, if you are oppressed by the crafty and the strong, your hope is not in vain. God is on your side. The entire story of the gospel is this story in miniature: God sent His Son into the world in lowliness, to be crushed by the crafty and the wise of this age. But God frustrated their plans, caught them in their own craftiness, and on the third day, He set His Son on high, lifting Him to the ultimate place of salvation and power. Because of this, we who are poor in spirit have a sure and certain hope, and a day is coming when all unrighteousness will be forced to shut its mouth for good.