The Atheism of the Pious: Text: Job 22:12-14
Introduction: Right Dogma, Wrong Target
We come now to the third and final speech of Eliphaz, and the gloves are entirely off. What began as pastoral counsel from concerned friends has descended into baseless, cruel, and slanderous accusation. Job's friends are trapped in a rigid theological system: God is just, therefore the righteous prosper and the wicked suffer. Since Job is suffering monumentally, it must be because he is sinning monumentally. Their syllogism is neat, tidy, and utterly merciless. It has no room for the mystery of God's providence, and no room for a righteous man on an ash heap.
So Eliphaz, having failed to coax a confession out of Job, now decides to invent sins for him. He accuses Job of gross injustice, cruelty to the poor, and oppression (Job 22:6-9). But he doesn't stop there. He goes on to diagnose the root theological error that he believes must be animating such wickedness. He accuses Job of a functional atheism. He paints Job as a man who believes God is so high, so distant, so wrapped up in the clouds of heaven that He is effectively blind and irrelevant to the affairs of men.
What we have here is a classic example of using true doctrine as a club to beat an innocent man. Eliphaz's premise about God's majesty is correct. His conclusion about Job's heart is dead wrong. This is a perpetual temptation for the orthodox. We can have our doctrinal ducks in a perfect row, and yet use that very precision to shoot the wounded. Eliphaz is a theologian, but he is not a pastor. He has a system, but he has no compassion. He understands divine transcendence, but he misapplies it with a breathtaking lack of charity.
The argument Eliphaz puts in Job's mouth is a perennial temptation. It is the argument of the practical atheist, the deist, the sophisticated unbeliever who doesn't deny God's existence outright, but simply denies His relevance. God is upstairs, they say, too busy running the cosmos to be bothered with the likes of us. This is a comfortable doctrine for the sinner. It allows one to affirm a generic, high-minded piety while simultaneously living as though God were blind, deaf, and dumb. Eliphaz accuses Job of this very thing, and in so doing, he reveals the bankruptcy of his own counsel and the depth of his own arrogant folly.
The Text
"Is not God in the height of heaven? Look also at the distant stars, how high they are! You say, ‘What does God know? Can He judge through the dense gloom? Clouds are a hiding place for Him, so that He cannot see; And He walks on the vault of heaven.’"
(Job 22:12-14 LSB)
A Truth Weaponized (v. 12)
Eliphaz begins with an unassailable theological truth, a rhetorical question that expects a hearty "Amen."
"Is not God in the height of heaven? Look also at the distant stars, how high they are!" (Job 22:12)
Of course God is in the height of heaven. The Scriptures are replete with this truth. Heaven is His throne, and the earth is His footstool (Is. 66:1). Our God is in the heavens; He does all that He pleases (Ps. 115:3). Eliphaz is affirming the transcendence of God, His magnificent otherness, His exalted majesty. He points to the stars as exhibit A. Their sheer distance and loftiness are meant to give us a small inkling of the infinite loftiness of their Creator. This is basic, sound, creation theology. David does the same thing in Psalm 8: "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him?"
But notice the different directions David and Eliphaz take this truth. For David, God's transcendence leads to humble wonder: "What is man that you are mindful of him?" It magnifies grace. The fact that this infinitely high God would stoop to care for tiny, insignificant man is a cause for doxology. For Eliphaz, however, God's transcendence is about to become a premise in a prosecution. He is not using this truth to evoke worship, but to build a case against his friend. He is saying, "Job, we all agree God is up there. Now let me tell you the wicked conclusion I think you've drawn from that fact."
This is a critical lesson for all of us. A theological truth, detached from love, can become a weapon of mass destruction in a relationship. You can be right on paper and wrong in your soul. Eliphaz has the right doctrine of divine transcendence, but he has a completely wrong diagnosis of Job's heart. He is about to perform spiritual malpractice with a very sharp, and very true, theological scalpel.
The Caricature of Unbelief (v. 13)
Having established his premise, Eliphaz now puts words in Job's mouth. This is not a quote; it is a slanderous inference.
"You say, ‘What does God know? Can He judge through the dense gloom?’" (Job 22:13 LSB)
This is the voice of the fool that Psalm 14 and 53 speak of, the one who says in his heart, "There is no God." But this is a more sophisticated version. This is not the village atheist. This is the country club deist. He doesn't deny God's existence, just His knowledge and His jurisdiction. The argument is simple: God is too high to know, and the world is too dark for Him to see. How can a God who is "way up there" possibly adjudicate the messy, murky affairs of men "down here"?
Eliphaz is accusing Job of using God's transcendence as a cover for sin. "Because God is in the heights, He can't possibly know what I'm doing in the depths. Because He is surrounded by light, He cannot penetrate my darkness." This is the oldest lie in the book, going all the way back to the garden. The serpent's tactic was to make God seem distant, out of touch, and not altogether aware of the situation on the ground. Sin always flourishes in the soil of a diminished view of God's omniscience. If you can convince yourself that God doesn't see, or doesn't know, or doesn't care, you can grant yourself permission to do just about anything.
The psalmist confronts this very foolishness head-on. "The wicked in his proud countenance does not seek God; God is in none of his thoughts... He has said in his heart, 'God has forgotten; He hides His face; He will never see'" (Psalm 10:4, 11). This is the lie that props up all tyranny, all injustice, all secret sin. And Eliphaz, in his sanctimonious cruelty, lays this damnable heresy at Job's doorstep. He has heard Job's complaints that God is silent and seems hidden, and he has twisted those cries of pain into a doctrinal confession of practical atheism.
A God in Bubble Wrap (v. 14)
Eliphaz continues to flesh out his caricature of Job's supposed theology.
"Clouds are a hiding place for Him, so that He cannot see; And He walks on the vault of heaven." (Job 22:14 LSB)
The picture here is of a detached, insulated deity. The clouds are not the majestic chariot of God (Ps. 104:3), but rather a thick veil, a divine blindfold. God is not enthroned above the heavens, actively ruling, but is rather taking a constitutional stroll around the perimeter, oblivious to the goings-on inside the house. He is a celestial landlord who lives out of state and never inspects the property.
This is a profound misunderstanding of biblical imagery. The Bible does speak of clouds and darkness surrounding God, but not to obscure His vision. Rather, they are a manifestation of His unapproachable holiness and His terrifying majesty. "The LORD reigns... Clouds and darkness surround Him; Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne" (Psalm 97:1-2). The darkness is not a sign of God's ignorance, but of our inability to withstand the full blaze of His glory. Eliphaz takes the symbol of God's awesome holiness and twists it into an excuse for man's sinfulness.
He is essentially telling Job, "You think you can get away with it because God is in His celestial bubble, too high and mighty to be bothered. You have made for yourself a convenient God, a God who reigns but does not rule." This is the god of the Epicureans, a god who is too blessed and happy to be troubled with the world. But this is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is the one from whom nothing is hidden. "And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account" (Hebrews 4:13). The darkness and the light are the same to Him (Psalm 139:12).
Conclusion: The God Who Comes Down
Eliphaz's great error was to set God's transcendence in opposition to His immanence. He was right that God is in the height of heaven. He was dead wrong to infer that this meant God could not or would not involve Himself in the grime and grit of earth. He constructed a straw man of Job's supposed unbelief, but in doing so, he revealed his own truncated view of God. His God was a prisoner of His own majesty, trapped in the heights of heaven.
The entire story of redemption is the story of the God who is in the height of heaven coming down. He came down on Sinai in smoke and fire. He came down and filled the tabernacle with His glory. He came down and spoke through the prophets. And in the fullness of time, He came all the way down. The Word, who was with God and was God, through whom the distant stars were made, became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).
The ultimate answer to Eliphaz's charge is the incarnation. Is God in the height of heaven? Yes. Can He judge through the dense gloom? Yes, because He entered into our dense gloom. Are the clouds a hiding place for Him? No, for He veiled His glory in human flesh so that we could see Him and not die. Jesus is Immanuel, God with us. He is the God who is not just high and lifted up, but also the one who is near to the brokenhearted. He is the one who did not remain on the vault of heaven, but descended to the dust of a tomb, and in so doing, bridged the infinite gap between the height of heaven and the heart of man.
The folly of Eliphaz is to use God's greatness as an argument for His distance. The glory of the gospel is that God's greatness is the very reason for His nearness. He is great enough to become small. He is high enough to stoop low. He is holy enough to touch the unclean and make them clean. Let us therefore abandon all such foolish theology that keeps God at a safe distance, and let us instead run to the one who closed that distance forever on the cross.