The Happy Man and the Half-Truth Text: Job 5:17-27
Introduction: The Danger of Right Answers
We live in a therapeutic age, an age that has mistaken comfort for godliness and has concluded that any form of suffering must be an unmitigated evil. Our entire culture is a massive, frantic, and ultimately futile attempt to insulate ourselves from all pain, all risk, and all discomfort. When affliction does inevitably break through our padded walls, as it always does, the modern response is to seek a therapist, a pill, or a political program. The one thing we will not do is ask what God might be doing in it.
Into this squishy and sentimentalist fog, the words of Eliphaz the Temanite in our text today land with a bracing and almost offensive force. He speaks of reproof, discipline, pain, and wounds. And yet, he calls the man who receives these things "blessed." This is a profoundly biblical sentiment, but it is one that our generation has almost entirely forgotten. The writer to the Hebrews tells us that the Lord chastens every son whom He loves. Discipline is a mark of sonship, not of rejection.
But here we must be very careful. The book of Job is a masterclass in dramatic irony. We, the readers, have been given a backstage pass to the throne room of heaven. We know about the accuser, Satan. We know about God's sovereign permission. We know that Job's suffering is not a direct result of some particular sin he has committed. Job's friends, however, do not know this. They are operating on a fixed system, a rigid and wooden application of a theological truth. Their central dogma is that God is just, and therefore, extreme suffering must be the result of extreme sin. They are not entirely wrong; they are just wrong here, with Job. They have the right answer to the wrong question.
And this is where the profound danger lies. A half-truth, misapplied, can be more destructive than an outright lie. Eliphaz is about to preach a magnificent sermon on the goodness of God's fatherly discipline. Almost everything he says, taken in isolation, is true. You could find parallels to his statements throughout the Psalms and Proverbs. But in this context, directed at this man, it is an instrument of torture. It is salt in a gaping wound. He is a doctor prescribing the right medicine for the wrong disease. And so, as we walk through this text, we must do two things at once. We must appreciate the theological truths Eliphaz articulates, for they are God's truths. But we must also see the colossal failure of pastoral wisdom in his application of them. This is a lesson not only in theology, but in how to speak God's truth to those who are drowning in affliction.
The Text
“Behold, how blessed is the man whom God reproves,
So do not reject the discipline of the Almighty.
For He inflicts pain and gives relief;
He wounds, and His hands also heal.
From six distresses He will deliver you,
Even in seven evil will not touch you.
In famine He will redeem you from death,
And in war from hands with swords.
You will be hidden from the scourge of the tongue,
And you will not be afraid of devastation when it comes.
You will laugh at devastation and starvation,
And you will not be afraid of the beasts of the earth.
For your covenant will be with the stones of the field,
And the beasts of the field will be at peace with you.
You will know that your tent is at peace,
For you will visit your abode and fear no loss.
You will know also that your seed will be many,
And your offspring as the vegetation of the land.
You will come to the grave in full vigor,
Like the stacking of grain in its season.
Behold this; we have investigated it, and so it is.
Hear it, and know for yourself.”
(Job 5:17-27 LSB)
The Hard Blessing (v. 17-18)
Eliphaz begins with a statement that is both profoundly true and, in this moment, profoundly cruel.
"Behold, how blessed is the man whom God reproves, So do not reject the discipline of the Almighty. For He inflicts pain and gives relief; He wounds, and His hands also heal." (Job 5:17-18)
The word for blessed here is the same one that begins the Psalms: "How blessed is the man..." Eliphaz is saying that the truly happy man, the man to be envied, is the one under God's corrective hand. This runs completely contrary to our modern instincts, which equate happiness with the absence of all friction. But Scripture is clear: "For whom the Lord loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives" (Hebrews 12:6). God's discipline is not punitive, but formative. It is the work of a master sculptor chipping away the excess stone to reveal the image of His Son. It is the work of a loving Father who would rather see His children holy than have them be comfortable in their sin.
Eliphaz is correct. To reject the discipline of the Almighty, Shaddai, the all-powerful one, is the height of folly. It is to declare that you know better than God how to run your own life. It is to prefer the cancer over the surgeon's knife.
And notice the beautiful balance in verse 18. God is not a cosmic sadist. He inflicts pain, but He also gives relief. He wounds, but His hands also heal. This is the rhythm of grace. The same hand that strikes is the hand that binds up. The law wounds, the gospel heals. Conviction of sin is a painful wounding, but it is a necessary wound that drives us to Christ, the great physician. The problem is that Eliphaz assumes Job's wounds are the direct result of a specific, unconfessed sin. He sees the wound and incorrectly diagnoses the cause. He is preaching a true sermon to the wrong man, turning a word of potential comfort into an accusation.
The Covenant Keeper's Security (v. 19-23)
From the principle of discipline, Eliphaz moves to the promised results of accepting it. He lays out a series of blessings that sound like they are taken directly from the covenant promises in Deuteronomy.
"From six distresses He will deliver you, Even in seven evil will not touch you. In famine He will redeem you from death, And in war from hands with swords. You will be hidden from the scourge of the tongue, And you will not be afraid of devastation when it comes. You will laugh at devastation and starvation, And you will not be afraid of the beasts of the earth. For your covenant will be with the stones of the field, And the beasts of the field will be at peace with you." (Job 5:19-23 LSB)
The progression from "six" to "seven" is a common Hebrew poetic device for completeness. The point is that God's deliverance is total. Whatever trouble comes your way, God is able to deliver you from it. Famine, war, slander ("the scourge of the tongue"), natural disaster, wild animals, you name it. The man who is right with God can laugh at calamity. Not because he is a stoic, but because he knows that nothing can touch him apart from the will of his loving, sovereign Father.
This is a picture of true postmillennial confidence. It is the security of Psalm 91. The righteous man dwells in the secret place of the Most High. He is not naive about the dangers of the world, but he is confident in the God who rules the world. He can laugh at devastation because he knows that God is working all things together for his good.
Verse 23 is particularly striking: "For your covenant will be with the stones of the field, And the beasts of the field will be at peace with you." This is a picture of restored dominion. In the fall, Adam's rebellion brought chaos not only to his relationship with God, but to the created order itself. The ground was cursed, and the animals became hostile. Eliphaz is pointing to a reversal of this curse for the righteous man. Creation itself is brought back into harmony with the one who is in harmony with the Creator. The stones of the field will not trip him up, and the beasts will not threaten him. This is a foretaste of the new heavens and the new earth, where the lion will lie down with the lamb. The problem, of course, is that Job is currently experiencing the exact opposite of this. The creation is not at peace with him; it has turned on him. His body, his livestock, even the heavens have become instruments of his affliction. Eliphaz's words, meant to entice Job to repentance, only highlight the chasm between the promise and Job's reality.
The Patriarch's Reward (v. 24-26)
The blessings then become deeply personal and familial, touching on the central desires of a Hebrew patriarch.
"You will know that your tent is at peace, For you will visit your abode and fear no loss. You will know also that your seed will be many, And your offspring as the vegetation of the land. You will come to the grave in full vigor, Like the stacking of grain in its season." (Job 5:24-26 LSB)
Peace in the home, security for your possessions, and a guarantee against loss. This is the picture of shalom. It is a comprehensive well-being that touches every area of life. For Job, whose tent has been the scene of unparalleled tragedy and whose possessions have been wiped out, these words must have been like daggers.
Then comes the promise of legacy. "Your seed will be many." In the Old Covenant, a large family was a primary sign of God's blessing. Children were a heritage from the Lord. To be "as the vegetation of the land" is to be fruitful beyond measure. This promise echoes God's covenant with Abraham. Again, for Job, the man whose ten children were just crushed under a collapsed roof, this is almost unspeakably cruel. Eliphaz is dangling the very things God has taken from Job as bait for repentance.
Finally, the promise of a good death. A long life, dying in "full vigor," not wasting away from some debilitating disease. The image is beautiful: like a shock of grain harvested at the perfect moment, full and ripe, brought into the barn. It is a picture of a life well-lived and a work completed. This is the crown of a righteous life under the Old Covenant. It is a glorious promise. But it is a promise that, from Job's perspective on the ash heap, seems like a distant and impossible dream.
The Arrogance of Investigation (v. 27)
Eliphaz concludes with a statement of absolute, and ultimately arrogant, certainty.
"Behold this; we have investigated it, and so it is. Hear it, and know for yourself." (Job 5:27 LSB)
"We have investigated it." Eliphaz and his friends have put their heads together. They have consulted their traditions, their experiences, their theological systems, and they have come to a firm conclusion. "So it is." There is no room for doubt, no mystery, no possibility that they have missed something. They have the world figured out. God's operating system is neat and tidy, and they have the manual.
This is the fatal flaw of all rationalism, even religious rationalism. It seeks to put God in a box, to reduce the infinite complexities of His providence to a simple, predictable formula. If you do A, God will do B. If you are experiencing X, it must be because you did Y. But God is not a cosmic vending machine. He is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts.
Eliphaz's final command to Job is "Hear it, and know for yourself." In other words, "Stop your protesting, Job. Accept our diagnosis. Apply this truth to your own life and confess your secret sin." He is calling Job to exchange his actual experience of God's mysterious providence for their neat and tidy theological grid. He wants Job to trust the system instead of trusting God.
Conclusion: Trusting the Healer, Not the Formula
So what are we to do with this passage? We must affirm the truths that Eliphaz speaks. God does discipline His sons. Repentance does lead to blessing. Righteousness does lead to security and peace. These are fixed principles in God's moral universe. The covenant promises are real. God wounds, and He does heal.
But the book of Job teaches us that these principles are not applied with the mechanical, wooden predictability that Eliphaz assumes. There is a deeper game afoot. There is a heavenly conflict we cannot see. There is a sovereign God who is glorified not only in the prosperity of His saints, but also in their steadfast, suffering faith.
The ultimate answer to Job's suffering, and to ours, is not a formula but a person. Eliphaz speaks of a God who wounds and heals. We know the God who was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. We know the God whose hands were pierced so that they might heal us eternally. Jesus Christ endured the ultimate, unjust suffering. He was the truly righteous man who experienced the full force of God's curse, not for His own sin, but for ours.
Therefore, when we are in the midst of affliction, we must not listen to the voices of the Eliphazes of this world who would tell us to simply "fix our sin" to make the pain go away. We should certainly examine our hearts, for we are always sinners in need of repentance. But our ultimate hope is not in our ability to crack the code of our circumstances. Our hope is in the Redeemer who entered into our suffering. The hands that heal are nail-scarred hands. And because He was faithful through the ultimate trial, we can trust Him in ours, whether we understand what He is doing or not. We don't need to investigate it and figure it all out. We just need to hear Him, and know Him for ourselves.