Job 15:5 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters | Metropolitan Tabernacle

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Job 15:5

Comments

Eliphaz felt the force of what Job said (and for this reason probably avoided interacting with it in detail), but he saw it as highly dangerous talk. He saw it as destructive to Job and corrupting to anyone else taken in by it. By calling it the tongue of the crafty he admits that what Job had said was hard to answer. He was distressed by Job’s deeply held conviction that what he said was right. His position was too far from Job’s for him to understand it. It must have been a great shock to him to find that Job vindicated, and he condemned. Job needs no refutation, says Eliphaz, because his own words condemn him. This was too easy a way out for Eliphaz. By saying this, he avoided doing the hard work of interacting with Job’s arguments in detail. He saves himself the trouble of answering all of those points of Job which are inconsistent with his own theology, hoping that it will be self-evident to any onlookers that no man can speak against God as Job had done and not be a sinner. But there is at least one onlooker to whom it is not self-evident – Elihu.Job had already admitted that if he were to attempt to justify himself before God, his own mouth must condemn him even though he were a righteous man (9:20), and yet he proceeded to do just that. In this he could not fail to appear impious, and yet Eliphaz interpreted this in the worst possible light. While Job had seen this danger, he had been unable to refrain from bringing his case to God because of his internal anguish, yet he insisted that he was blameless not because he was without sin but because he possessed an inner integrity before the Lord. But Eliphaz is convinced that no one can speak out in this way without overthrowing the fear of the Lord and all restraint before God. Therefore the mere fact that Job has uttered these words is enough to condemn him.

Application

How could Eliphaz so misjudge Job as to see him as a man driven only by iniquity? Was he to blame for this wrong assessment? Certainly, and God later rebukes severely him for it. This attack on Job was a defence of himself and his own false theology. A man cannot hold a position as much at odds with the truth as Eliphaz did and not be to blame. His system of theology was ostensibly designed to vindicate the righteousness and honour of the Lord, but in reality it took away from God his perfect standards. It made the Lord to be one who was content to accept human beings in their own righteousness, rather than insisting on accepting them only when clothed with the righteousness of God. It was a subtle attack which left Job struggling to disentangle himself from its snares. Job was a sinner in Eliphaz’ eyes, because, in his attempts to understand the ways of the Lord, he questioned how God could treat one who trusts him with such harshness and without any apparent cause. (Later he was to discover that there was a very important cause.) He therefore frets greatly in his confusion and his faith is unable for the moment to surmount this obstacle. Eliphaz has a much simpler view of the world, but it is a view that is only possible if God’s perfections are taken from him: God rewards men strictly according to their behaviour and therefore, if Job is punished while Eliphaz is not, it is because one is a hypocrite and the other is pleasing to God. He was wrong on both accounts.

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Job 15:5 Commentary and Bible Study