Job 4:3 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters | Metropolitan Tabernacle

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Job 4:3

Comments

Eliphaz starts gently – ‘we mean to come to you as friends, and you should accept what we say as friendly counsel’ – but in time he will harden his position and make the case that Job is a wicked man, a hypocrite. He begins by reminding Job of his past record – Eliphaz is evidently very familiar with Job’s life and reputation. Job has been a support to many others who have come into great straights, and he has spoken words of correction and comfort which he expected them to receive if they were going to be helped. Let Job apply those former words that he spoke to his own case now, and let him become his own counsellor, for what he had said before is what he himself now needs to hear if he is to be helped. And yet that is exactly what he is failing to do. These remarks are going to be the prelude to Eliphaz saying that Job is responsible for his trials because God is correcting him for some serious sin. He effectively turns the former Job against the latter Job, and identifies his error as a failure to be consistent with what he knows. A person who is good at giving advice to others but cannot take advice himself is counted by all as an insincere counsellor of others, and one who has had an inner weakness exposed by trials. The good advice he gives others has only an appearance of sincerity, but the failure to follow that advice in person reveals hypocrisy.Eliphaz, says Caryl, is butting Job. ‘When a man commends you highly, for however many sentences, then starts the next with a “but”, you are about to be stabbed.’ Eliphaz’ opening would have been helpful, if it had been a genuine attempt to encourage Job by his past behaviour, but instead it was an attempt to lift Job up before dashing him down again; to prove him a hypocrite in ever having offered help to others in the first place.

Application

Caryl says, ‘There are many advisors in the world as there are many troubles. It pays to be careful as to the ones you tell your troubles to, for an avalanche of advice is bound to come your way.’ How dangerous it is to make assumptions about other people’s lives, especially when we have no evidence. This sort of jumping to conclusions often reveals more about the one making the assumptions than about the other. Eliphaz did not realise it, but these circumstances were bring out aspects of his character which he afterwards greatly regretted.

Questions

How we understand these criticisms of Job will depend on what we make of the character of the comforters overall. It is clear from the conclusion of the book that the Lord disapproves of their speeches – ‘the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath’ (Job 42:7) – and therefore we are compelled to find fault with what they say from the start. But there are two ways of doing this. One way is to accept that what they said to Job was essentially true, but that they misapplied it in his case. They failed to look sympathetically enough on his sufferings, and they misread his response to his trials, so that they put the worst possible construction on his complaints and wrote him off as a hypocrite. They spoke too harshly to him, but they did not say anything that would have been inappropriate if spoken to a genuinely wicked person. Another way is to say that the comforters used bad theology which betrayed their lack of understanding, and that in fact they were not evangelical at all. This is certainly the conclusion that we are led to by Job’s criticism of their speeches. He does not simply say that they have misread his case, but he says that some of the things they have uttered are fundamentally false and do not apply to anyone. The speeches of the comforters are not simply criticisms of Job prompted by his extreme language (which certainly warranted some word of correction), but they had an edge to them originating in their underlying resentment at his evangelical doctrine.

Outline

Purpose

Introduction

Job 4:3 Commentary and Bible Study