Job 22:10 Commentary and Bible Study

God’s punishment often matches the crime in a very obvious way. Those who refuse to support to the needy, may meet with snares that terrify them so that they wonder how they will face the next day. If lack of mercy makes us fail to appreciate the troubles of others, and what better way to teach us about those troubles than for God to place us in a similar situation? Not that God’s judgments on the wicked are necessarily remedial and reformative; God exercises justice, and justice demands punishment whether or not it leads to a better understanding and a change of behaviour. Verse 11 describes another state of helplessness which the wicked suffer. Darkness comes in the form of moral and spiritual blindness as well as the physical inability to see for whatever reason. There is nothing so helpless as a blind person in a strange situation without assistance. God has an inexhaustible supply of judgments which we can never proof ourselves against. Do the wicked think that they can make themselves so secure that God cannot reach them? Job would have agreed that what Eliphaz described did at times fall on the wicked, but since he obviously intended to apply these words to Job, it was one more burden for this troubled man of God to struggle under. It is extremely hard for us to resist the verdict of those we once counted as friends, that we are suffering because of our own sins.