Eliphaz Speaks
Eliphaz begins gently: Job has steadied other people, so his own integrity should be his hope. Then comes the argument, that the innocent never perish, and a night vision whispering that no mortal is pure before his Maker. It is comfort with an accusation inside it.
4 1Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered: 2"If someone ventures a word with you, will you grow weary? Yet who can hold back from speaking? 3Look, you have instructed many, and you have strengthened weak hands. 4Your words have lifted up the one stumbling, and you have made firm the buckling knees. 5But now it comes to you, and you are weary; it touches you, and you are dismayed. 6Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope? 7Remember now: who, being innocent, ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed? 8As I have seen, those who plow wrongdoing and sow trouble reap the same. 9By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of his anger they are consumed. 10The roar of the lion, the voice of the fierce lion, the teeth of the young lions—they are broken. 11The strong lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered. 12Now a word was brought to me in secret; my ear caught a whisper of it. 13Amid troubling thoughts from visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on people, 14dread came upon me, and trembling, and it made all my bones shake. 15A spirit glided past my face; the hair on my body stood on end. 16It stood still, but I could not make out its shape. A form was before my eyes; there was silence, then I heard a voice: 17'Can a mortal be righteous before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker? a a v17 Eliphaz frames God as a distant judge before whom no mortal can stand — the register the three friends will never break free from, and the framing the book's closing chapters expose as not knowing our Father. 18Look, he puts no trust in his servants, and he charges his angels with error; 19how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed like a moth. 20Between morning and evening they are shattered; unnoticed, they perish forever. 21Is not their tent-cord pulled up within them? They die without ever gaining wisdom.'" b b v21 The tent-cord image pictures life as a tent: when the cord is pulled up, the whole structure collapses and is gone.
