Job 22:21 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Job 22:21

Comments

We see how Satan gives religious exhortations, but it is pure hypocrisy. ‘Come to God my way and you will get pleasure. You won’t have to worry about a guilty conscience.’ Job must resist the siren sound of Eliphaz’ promise of peace, though his soul longs for relief from his troubles. Eliphaz has turned up the heat and hopes that it has been sufficient to soften Job up to the point that he will now yield to his proposed relief. ‘Acquaint yourself with my God who offers peace on my terms. Those terms are that you accept my diagnosis of your problems and the cause of them and admit that all I have said about you is true.’ Eliphaz reasons with Job in an appealing way which seems to wrong foot Job if he refuses, and makes him appear intransigent in holding out. He has used hardness and now he brings in gentleness. Bystanders to the conversation might have misjudged what was happening and regarded Job as stubborn in not immediately yielding to such moderate words. But really it is Eliphaz who is deceived, deceived by his own words and by his own mollifying language. His words sound gentle in his own ears, but in Satan’s ears they are what he wants them to be: a snare for Job.

Application

We must be aware of false comforters for they constitute a positive danger to us. The believer will always keep the eye of discernment open and know that ‘every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God’. To give ourselves to a false solace is in the long run worse than no solace at all. It entraps in what further weakens and punishes us. There are times when we have to be ruthless with ourselves. Job was a man of integrity and his understanding told him that he could not accept comfort from any other than God. Though he was stretched to the limit, he must hold out longer and wait for the comfort of God, to yield to this false comfort would be like a man who quenches his thirst with salt water, or like one struggling to escape drug addiction who tries to reduce his craving with one last fix.

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Job 22:21 Commentary and Bible Study