The East Wind of Pious Folly
Introduction: The Comfort of a Sledgehammer
We come now to the second round of speeches between Job and his friends. The first round was characterized by a certain level of decorum, but now the gloves are coming off. Job has refused to accept their neat and tidy theological system, a system which says that immense suffering is always and everywhere the direct result of some immense and hidden sin. Job, knowing his own integrity before God, has pushed back, and in so doing, he has threatened the very foundation of their worldview. And when a man's worldview is threatened, he does not typically become more gracious. He doubles down.
Eliphaz the Temanite speaks first, as he did before. He is the elder statesman, the one who appeals to experience and tradition. But his patience has worn thin. He sees Job's persistent claims of innocence not as the cries of a wounded man, but as an arrogant assault on the justice of God Himself. Eliphaz and his friends are not godless liberals. They are pious, orthodox men. They believe in God's sovereignty, His justice, and His holiness. Their problem is not their formal theology, but its application. They have taken a general truth, that God judges sin, and have turned it into a rigid, mechanical, and merciless formula that they wield like a sledgehammer. They love their system more than they love their suffering friend.
This is a profound danger for all of us who take the Bible seriously. It is possible to be right on paper and dead wrong in spirit. It is possible to use true principles as a club to beat the wounded. Eliphaz is about to demonstrate for us how a man can be filled with what he thinks is righteous zeal, but what is actually just the hot, dry, and destructive east wind of his own pride. He accuses Job of speaking empty words, but as we shall see, it is Eliphaz who is the master of pious-sounding nonsense. This is a lesson in how not to counsel, how not to comfort, and how not to defend the honor of God.
The Text
Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said,
"Should a wise man answer with windy knowledge
And fill his belly with the east wind?
Should he argue with a word that cannot be used,
Or with speech which is not profitable?
Indeed, you annul reverent fear
And cut off musing before God.
For your iniquity teaches your mouth,
And you choose the tongue of the crafty.
Your own mouth condemns you, and not I;
And your own lips answer against you."
(Job 15:1-6 LSB)
Answering with the East Wind (v. 1-3)
Eliphaz begins his attack by dismissing Job's entire defense as worthless and damaging.
"Should a wise man answer with windy knowledge and fill his belly with the east wind? Should he argue with a word that cannot be used, or with speech which is not profitable?" (Job 15:2-3)
The charge is that Job, who claims to be wise, is speaking nothing but hot air. "Windy knowledge" is knowledge without substance, without weight. It is theological bloviating. And it is not just empty; it is destructive. The "east wind" in that part of the world was the sirocco, a hot, dry, scorching wind from the desert that withered crops and made life miserable. Eliphaz is saying, "Job, your words are not just useless; they are poisonous. You are filling yourself with destruction and breathing it out on others."
He accuses Job of using words that "cannot be used" and speech that is "not profitable." In other words, Job's arguments do not advance the cause of truth or godliness. They are, in Eliphaz's view, a dead end. Of course, the great irony here is that Eliphaz is the one guilty of this very thing. At the end of the book, God will rebuke these friends precisely because their speech was not right, while Job's was (Job 42:7). This is a classic tactic of the accuser: accuse your opponent of the very sins you yourself are committing. Eliphaz is so confident in his theological grid that any speech that does not fit within it is automatically dismissed as unprofitable wind.
This is a warning for us. How often in theological debate do we dismiss an opponent's argument as "unprofitable" simply because it makes us uncomfortable or challenges our categories? Eliphaz cannot imagine a world where God's justice operates in ways that he cannot neatly chart. He has mistaken his little map for the whole territory, and so he condemns the explorer who reports back from beyond the edges of his chart.
The Charge of Impiety (v. 4)
From worthlessness, Eliphaz moves to a more serious charge: Job's words are actively undermining faith.
"Indeed, you annul reverent fear and cut off musing before God." (Job 15:4 LSB)
This is a low blow. Eliphaz is saying, "Job, your kind of talk, your questioning of God, your refusal to just confess your sin, is going to destroy piety. If people listen to you, they will stop fearing God." The man on the ash heap, covered in sores, who has lost everything and still says, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him," is being accused of annulling the fear of God.
Eliphaz believes that "reverent fear" means silent, unquestioning submission to his particular theological formula. He wants to "cut off musing before God." He wants to shut down the conversation. For him, piety is quiet acceptance. But the Bible gives us a much more robust picture of what it means to fear God. The psalmists cry out, they complain, they argue, they bring their rawest emotions before God. They "muse" before Him in ways that would make a man like Eliphaz deeply uncomfortable.
True reverence is not pretending you don't have questions. True reverence is bringing your questions and your pain to the only one who can handle them: God Himself. Job is not cutting off musing before God; he is engaged in the most intense musing imaginable. Eliphaz, on the other hand, wants to replace that honest, messy, and real relationship with a tidy, predictable, and sterile religious observance. He is defending a god of the flow chart, not the God of the whirlwind.
The Mouth Taught by Iniquity (v. 5)
Now Eliphaz gets to the root of what he believes is Job's problem.
"For your iniquity teaches your mouth, and you choose the tongue of the crafty." (Job 15:5 LSB)
Here again, Eliphaz states a profound biblical truth but misapplies it disastrously. It is absolutely true that our iniquity teaches our mouths. Jesus says the same thing: "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Matthew 12:34). Our words are the overflow of our souls. What is inside will inevitably come out.
Eliphaz has heard Job's words of anguish and protest, and he has run them through his theological calculator. The answer it spits out is "hidden iniquity." He reasons backward: Job's words sound wrong to me, therefore his heart must be filled with sin, because sin is what teaches the mouth to speak this way. He accuses Job of choosing the "tongue of the crafty," implying that Job is being deliberately deceptive, putting on a show of righteousness while hiding his great sin.
This is the essence of merciless judgment. It is to assume the worst possible motives for another person's words or actions. Eliphaz cannot see a suffering saint; he can only see a crafty sinner. He is so certain of his diagnosis that he is completely blind to the reality of the man in front of him. He is judging by outward appearance, by the sound of things, and not with righteous judgment. And in doing so, his own mouth is being taught by his own pride and self-righteousness.
Self-Condemnation (v. 6)
Eliphaz concludes his opening salvo by positioning himself as a neutral observer, simply stating the obvious.
"Your own mouth condemns you, and not I; and your own lips answer against you." (Job 15:6 LSB)
This is a classic bit of rhetorical jujitsu. "Don't blame me for this conclusion, Job. I'm not the one condemning you. Your own words are. I am just the objective messenger." This allows Eliphaz to maintain a posture of pious concern while driving the knife in deeper. He is the prosecutor pretending to be a court reporter.
And once more, the principle is true. Our Lord warns us, "For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned" (Matthew 12:37). Words have weight. They have eternal consequences. We will all give an account for every careless word we speak. Eliphaz is not wrong about the principle that a man's words can and do condemn him.
His error is in setting himself up as the judge who gets to interpret the evidence and pronounce the verdict. He has heard Job's words, but he has not heard them correctly. He has listened for evidence to confirm his pre-existing conclusion, and he has found it in abundance. He is a hanging judge. He is so busy listening to Job's lips that he has failed to listen to Job's heart, and more importantly, he has failed to humble himself before a God who is infinitely more complex and glorious than his tidy system allowed.
Conclusion: The Gospel for Miserable Comforters
It is easy for us to sit back and condemn Eliphaz. But we are all natural-born Pharisees. We are all tempted to become miserable comforters. We like answers. We like systems. We are uncomfortable with mystery, and we are profoundly uncomfortable with suffering that doesn't seem to have a neat and tidy cause.
When we encounter a brother or sister in the midst of a fiery trial, our temptation is to do exactly what Eliphaz did: to start talking, to offer explanations, to fill the air with the east wind of our own theological pronouncements. We do this because their suffering threatens us. It reveals the terrifying possibility that the same thing could happen to us, and we want to assure ourselves that there is a formula we can follow to avoid it.
The book of Job is a rebuke to all such foolishness. The answer to suffering is not a better formula. The answer is a Person. The answer is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the truly wise one, whose words give life. He is the one who endured the ultimate suffering, not for any sin of His own, but for ours. On the cross, the neatest retribution principle in the universe, that the soul who sins shall die, was turned on its head. The only innocent man in history was condemned by the crafty tongues of sinful men and suffered the wrath of God that we deserved.
Christ's mouth did not condemn him; He was condemned for us. And because of this, our mouths do not have to condemn us. When we are confronted with suffering, our own or another's, the first move is not to explain it, but to run to the cross. We must learn to shut our mouths, as Job's friends should have done, and simply sit with the sufferer. We must learn to weep with those who weep. And when we do speak, it must not be with the scorching east wind of our own wisdom, but with the gentle and life-giving news of a Savior who entered our suffering and defeated it, and who will one day wipe every tear from our eyes.