Job 15:30 Commentary and Bible Study

Eliphaz seems incapable of sympathy and offers Job no hope; indeed he works hard to cut off every possible source of comfort that Job might grasp hold of. This inability to sympathise is another sign that Eliphaz and his friends lack any spiritual understanding, for it is so unlike a child of God that he should feel no pity for those who suffer. It points to some deep-seated resentment that rankles in his heart when he can speak so cruelly to one who he once called his friend. To say that he is a pessimist with regard to Job’s future would be a gross understatement.Job, he says, will not depart from the darkness that has enveloped him and which will eventually deprive him of life. He is like a tree dried out by the winds: once it was green and flourishing and covered in rich foliage, but now it has become a dead thing. The hot winds of misfortune have dried it out and now it is easily set alight and burned up. God’s breath will come out of his mouth and consume it to that what was once verdant and luxurious is burned up. Let Job therefore take no comfort in what he was in the past; the blessings that seemed to surround him in days of prosperity were no real indication of God’s approval. Let Job not trust in futile things such as the idea that a man who lives as a hypocrite can expect any favour from God. Let him not think that God will justify him when he does not live a morally upright life. Many aspects of Job’s life had irritated the three friends in the past, and now the chickens have come home to roost: Job’s wrong ideas and secret sins have caught up with him. The only reward for a man who tries to make futile ideas his refuge is to reap futility itself – if you live by futility, you will die by futility. God’s judgment will, according to Eliphaz, interrupt the life of the evil man, preventing him reaching length of days. ‘His time’ here refers to the time when he would have passed from this world if he had been allowed to live out his life to the full. God does not let him exercise his strength and then gradually growing old and passing into the final stage of life, surrounded by children and children’s children and more, who love him and honour his person. The wicked are not allowed to live out their lives in peace and reap on earth the fruits of wisdom; instead the come to an untimely end.God will take the wicked and treat them like a vine, whose grapes are shaken from it before they have had the chance to ripen. He will cast off the blossom of the evil man as if he were an olive tree shaken by a great wind so that none of its blossom turns into fruit, or that casts its own blossom just when a great crop was anticipated. Both of these illustrations are images of God’s frustrating the plans of the wicked so that they cannot count on success. What does Eliphaz think he is saying? Does he imagine that all the wicked are treated by God in this way, so that he is describing the general case? If so, then he is dreaming and he is trying to invent a picture of God’s government that is far from the truth. Yes, God treats some of the wicked in this way, but he takes away some of the righteous early also. Is this really a reliable way of distinguishing the one from the other? Can these principles of God’s government be used to prove Job a hypocrite? This is what Eliphaz wants to do. He is sure that his explanation for Job’s suffering is the right one, and therefore the justice of God on earth must be an open book.