Job 4

Eliphaz speaks first among Job’s three friends. He begins gently, then argues that suffering always follows sin, and he backs this up with a frightening night vision. His argument sounds wise, but the book later shows that he has misread Job’s case.

Job 4:1-2

Eliphaz, a man from Teman in Edom, breaks the long silence. He speaks politely and admits that his words may tire Job. Yet he feels he cannot hold them back. Good intentions can still carry mistaken conclusions.

BSA: ventures (“tries, assays”): Eliphaz presents his words as a cautious attempt, though he soon speaks with great confidence.

Job 4:3-4

Eliphaz first honors Job. Job had taught many people and lifted up the weak, the stumbling and the worn out. The pictures of weak hands and buckling knees describe people ready to give way. Job had been a real encourager to others.

BSA: steadied (“upheld and supported”): Job’s words had held people up like a firm hand under someone who is falling.

Job 4:5

Now the comforter needs comforting. Eliphaz points out the contrast: Job helped others in trouble but is shaken by his own. There is some truth in this, but the remark is already a little pointed.

BSA: dismayed (“troubled, alarmed”): Job is deeply shaken, and Eliphaz sees this as a failure of the strength Job once taught.

Job 4:6

Eliphaz asks whether Job’s reverence for God and his upright life should not be his hope. The question hints that Job’s despair is out of place. He means to comfort Job, but the question carries a doubt about Job.

BSA: hope (“expectancy, cord of attachment”): Hope is pictured as a cord tying a person to something sure.

Job 4:7-8

Here is the heart of Eliphaz’s case: the innocent do not perish, and people reap what they sow. He says he has seen this himself. It is often true, but it is not a rule for every case, and Job’s life shows that.

BSA: plow (“cultivate, scratch the ground for”): Wrongdoing is pictured as farming: whatever is planted comes up as a harvest. innocent (“blameless, guiltless”): Eliphaz assumes a truly blameless person would never suffer ruin.

See also: Galatians 6:7; Job 1:1.

Job 4:9

Eliphaz says the wicked are destroyed by God’s own breath and the blast of His anger. God’s breath gives life and can also end it. Eliphaz is sure that Job’s ruin has this cause, and that is the point where he goes wrong.

BSA: breath (“spirit, wind”): The same word can mean wind or spirit, so God’s anger is pictured as a scorching wind.

See also: Isaiah 40:7.

Job 4:10-11

Eliphaz uses lions, with several different words for them, to picture the violent and strong. Even they lose their teeth, starve and see their young scattered. Power built on evil does not last.

BSA: scattered (“separated, dispersed abroad”): The wicked person’s family is broken up when its strong provider falls.

Job 4:12-13

Eliphaz now tells of a secret message that came to him in the night, when sleep is deepest. It reached him only as a whisper. He wants Job to hear his teaching as something beyond ordinary human opinion.

BSA: whisper (“small sound, subtle rumor”): The message came faintly, so that he had to strain to catch it.

Job 4:14-16

The experience was terrifying. His bones shook, his hair stood on end, and a shape stood before him that he could not make out. Then he heard a hushed voice. The scene is meant to give weight to what follows.

BSA: shudder (“to shake, be affrighted”): The fear reached deep inside him, as far as his bones. spirit (“breath of life, supernatural being”): A being from beyond this world passed close by, and he could not tell what it was.

Job 4:17

The voice asks whether a mortal can be more righteous than God. The question is true in itself: no one is purer than his Maker. Eliphaz’s mistake is to use it against Job, as if Job had claimed such a thing.

BSA: Maker (“the one who created, formed him”): The one who made us is the standard of purity, and no creature can outdo Him.

See also: Romans 3:23.

Job 4:18

If even God’s servants and angels cannot be fully trusted beside His perfect holiness, how much less can people. The point is that God’s holiness is so high that no created being stands beside it on its own merit.

BSA: servants (“attendants, slaves”): Even those who serve closest to God’s throne owe everything to Him.

See also: Job 15:15.

Job 4:19

Human beings live in fragile houses of clay, with foundations in dust. A moth can crush them, as it were. The picture shows how frail and short-lived we are, which is humbling and should drive us to God.

BSA: clay (“earthy, fragile material”): Our bodies are like pottery, easily broken.

See also: Genesis 2:7; 2 Corinthians 4:7.

Job 4:20-21

Life can end between morning and evening, and no one notices. The tent cord pulled up pictures a camp being taken down, leaving nothing behind. Eliphaz says people die without wisdom, meaning they never reach the understanding that would have saved them. His words are sobering, but they are not meant to describe Job.

BSA: wisdom (“prudence, discernment, bəḥākəmāh, skill in living”): Wisdom here means a skill in living that people often lack until it is too late. tent cords (“ropes, lifelines”): When the cords are pulled, the whole tent falls, like a life coming to its end.

See also: Psalm 90:5-6; James 4:14.