Job — Chapter 22

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: The third and final round of speeches begins, and it will be short. Eliphaz speaks here for the last time. Bildad will manage only six verses (ch 25), and Zophar will not speak at all. The friends are running out of things to say. Eliphaz is answering Job's speech in chapter 21, where Job attacked the friends' theory head-on: the wicked often live long, grow rich, die in peace and are buried with honor (21:7–13, 32–33). Eliphaz has no answer to that, so he changes ground. His three speeches trace a friendship breaking. In his first speech he was gentle. He reminded Job that his words had "upheld him who was stumbling" and asked, "Is not your fear of God your confidence?" (4:4, 6). In his second he grew harsh, calling Job's words "unprofitable talk" (15:3). Now he says outright what the friends have only hinted at: Job is a great sinner. Eliphaz has no evidence. He reasons backward from Job's disaster to the crimes that must have caused it, and then names them. The reader knows from chapters 1 and 2 that every charge is false. God himself called Job "blameless and upright" (1:8). Yet the speech ends with some of the most beautiful words in Job about returning to God, and with an irony Eliphaz could not have foreseen.

Eliphaz Speaks: Job's Wickedness Is Great (vv1–30)

• "Can a man be profitable to God?" (v2). Eliphaz opens with God's self-sufficiency. God gains nothing from human goodness; "he who is wise is profitable to himself." The verb is sakan, to be of use or benefit. The lexicon shows it is almost a Job word: besides this verse it appears in Eliphaz's jab about "unprofitable talk" (15:3) and twice in the later speeches (34:9; 35:3), where Elihu will press the same idea: "If you are righteous, what do you give to him?" (35:7). The point is true as far as it goes. God needs nothing from anyone (Ps 50:12; Acts 17:25). But Eliphaz uses it to say God has no personal stake in Job at all.
• "Is it any pleasure to the Almighty if you are in the right?" (v3). Eliphaz expects the answer no. The reader knows better. God took delight in Job and pointed him out to Satan: "Have you considered my servant Job?" (1:8). The Tyndale notes observe that God does take pleasure in the upright (1 Chr 29:17; Prov 11:20), and that Job's steady faith was a real gain to God, since it exposed Satan's claim that Job served God only for what he got (1:9–11).- "Is it for your fear of him that he reproves you?" (v4). The question is sarcastic. Does God punish Job for being devout? Obviously not, so it must be for his sin. "Fear of him" picks up Eliphaz's own words from his first speech (4:6). Then he believed Job's piety was real. Now he treats it as a joke. "Enters into judgment with you" may also answer Job's repeated wish to take God to court (9:32; 13:3). Job wanted a trial, Eliphaz implies, and he is already in one.
• "Is not your evil abundant? There is no end to your iniquities" (v5). Here is the turn. In the first two rounds the friends spoke in general terms about "the wicked man." Now Eliphaz looks straight at Job and says "your evil." JFB marks the change: "now he plainly asserts Job's guilt." The logic is simple and terrible: great suffering must mean great sin.
• "You have exacted pledges of your brothers for nothing" (v6). The specific charges follow, and they are the typical sins of a powerful rich man. The verb is chabal, to take something in pledge as security for a debt. The lexicon ties it to the laws protecting the poor: a cloak taken in pledge had to be returned by sunset, since it might be a man's only blanket (Exod 22:26–27; Deut 24:10–13, 17). Eliphaz says Job took pledges "for nothing," with no real debt, and "stripped the naked of their clothing." JFB calls it "the more heinous in a rich man like Job." The Tyndale notes add that the prophets condemned exactly this (Ezek 18:7–8; Amos 2:8), while Job did the opposite and clothed the poor with his own fleece (31:19–20).
• "You have given no water to the weary to drink" (v7). Hospitality to travelers was, as JFB says, "regarded in the East as a primary duty," and in a dry land a cup of water could save a life. Matthew Henry adds the sting: it "would have cost thee nothing." Job will answer that no stranger ever slept in the street, because his door was always open (31:32).
• "The man with power possessed the land, and the favored man lived in it" (v8). The line is abrupt. JFB and most readers take it as describing Job himself, the powerful man who "wrung houses and lands from the poor." Others read it as Job favoring the powerful while turning the poor away. Guzik passes on Adam Clarke's note that "the man with power" is literally "the man of arm," a picture of force. Either way the charge is abuse of power.
• "You have sent widows away empty, and the arms of the fatherless were crushed" (v9). This is the gravest charge. Widows and orphans had no protector in the ancient world, so God made himself theirs: he "executes justice for the fatherless and the widow" (Deut 10:18), and he warned of his wrath against anyone who mistreated them (Exod 22:22–24). The Tyndale notes say Israel's law counted neglect of them among the worst social evils (Deut 27:19). Zophar had described the wicked man who "crushed and abandoned the poor" (20:19). Eliphaz now says that man is Job. Job's answer will be one of the most moving passages in the book: "I delivered the poor who cried for help, and the fatherless who had none to help him... and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy" (29:12–13; compare 31:16–18).
• "Therefore snares are all around you, and sudden terror overwhelms you" (vv10–11). "Therefore" is the hinge of the whole argument: Job's troubles prove his crimes. Snares, terror, darkness and flood are stock pictures of the wicked man's end in the friends' speeches (18:8–11; 20:25). But Job had used them first. God "closed his net about me" and "set darkness upon my paths," he said (19:6, 8). JFB notes Eliphaz is "alluding to Job's admission." Job described his pain, and Eliphaz turns it into evidence.
• "Is not God high in the heavens? See the highest stars" (v12). Eliphaz turns from Job's conduct to his theology. God is above the stars, so he sees everything. JFB: "God can from His height behold all things." Henry: "No heaven so high but God is there."
• "But you say, 'What does God know?'" (v13). Eliphaz puts words in Job's mouth. Job had complained that God was hidden from him (9:11), and that God lets the wicked go free (ch 21). He never said God could not see. The Tyndale notes make the same point: Job never made this claim, though others in Scripture did. The cross-references gather them, the godless of the Psalms who say "God has forgotten" (Ps 10:11) and "How can God know?" (Ps 73:11). God answers them: "Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him?" (Jer 23:24). Eliphaz's doctrine is right. His charge is wrong.
• "Thick clouds veil him... and he walks on the vault of heaven" (v14). The picture is of a God far off, pacing the dome of the sky and unable to see through the clouds. "Vault" is chug, a circle or dome. The lexicon lists only two other uses: God "drew a circle on the face of the deep" (Prov 8:27) and "sits above the circle of the earth" (Isa 40:22). There God's height means he rules everything. Eliphaz claims Job thinks it means God is out of touch. JFB calls this an "Epicurean sentiment," the Greek idea of gods who take no interest in human affairs. Henry draws the lesson: "Bad men expel the fear of God out of their hearts by banishing the eye of God out of the world."
• "Will you keep to the old way that wicked men have trod?" (v15). JFB, Henry and most readers hear a reference to the generation of the flood (Gen 6–7), the clearest case of a whole world judged. Guzik notes that John Trapp thought of Sodom instead. Henry: "There is an old way which wicked men have trodden," and "it leads to destruction."
• "They were snatched away before their time; their foundation was washed away" (v16). "Snatched away" is qamat, to seize. The lexicon lists one other use, Job's own complaint that God "has shriveled me up," seized hold of him (16:8). JFB renders it "fettered," arrested by death. The lexicon gives "seize," with a sense of binding in related languages, so JFB's reading is possible but goes a little beyond the entry. The second line pictures a river in flood sweeping away the ground they stood on. Henry links it to Jesus' parable of the house on sand, which fell when "the floods came" (Matt 7:26–27).
• "They said to God, 'Depart from us'" (v17). Eliphaz quotes Job back to him. Job had described the wicked who say to God, "Depart from us!" and "What is the Almighty, that we should serve him?" (21:14–15). JFB notes Eliphaz "designedly uses Job's own words." Job used them to show the wicked prosper; Eliphaz, to show they are swept away.
• "Yet he filled their houses with good things—but the counsel of the wicked is far from me" (v18). The second line is word for word what Job said in 21:16, as the Tyndale notes point out. JFB reads it as sarcasm: Eliphaz throws Job's pious disclaimer back at him, as if to say Job claims distance from the wicked while talking just like them. Others hear Eliphaz sincerely distancing himself from Job's argument. Either way, the first line quietly concedes something. God did fill the houses of the wicked with good things. That was Job's point, and Eliphaz cannot quite deny it.
• "The righteous see it and are glad" (vv19–20). When God judges the wicked, the righteous rejoice (Ps 58:10–11; Rev 19:1–2). JFB calls it "not derision of the wretched, but joy at the vindication of God's ways," and Henry agrees: they are glad, "not to see their fellow-creatures miserable." The Tyndale notes add a needed balance: Eliphaz leaves no room for God's own desire that the wicked would turn and live (Ezek 33:11). In context the verse has an ugly edge. The friends cast themselves as "the righteous," and the fallen wicked man they are watching is Job. The word for "adversaries" in v20, qim, occurs only here, and the lexicon notes many scholars think the text is damaged. "What they left the fire has consumed" may be one more hint at Job's losses to "the fire of God" (1:16).
• "Agree with God, and be at peace; thereby good will come to you" (v21). Now the tone softens into an appeal. The King James Version's "Acquaint now thyself with him" is one of the best-loved lines in the book. The verb is sakan again, the "profitable" of verse 2, and the lexicon gives its sense here as to be in harmony with, to know closely. It is a quiet play on words. A man cannot be useful to God (v2), but he can be on close terms with him (v21). JFB renders it "become a companion of God." Henry calls it "the duty and interest of every one of us." The advice is good. It is aimed at the wrong man. Job's whole cry is that he longs to come near God and cannot find him (23:3).
• "Receive instruction from his mouth, and lay up his words in your heart" (v22). "Instruction" is torah, the word later used for God's law and for the five books of Moses. The lexicon lists this verse under God's own instruction, set beside his "words," and the Tyndale notes observe that it appears only here in Job. Storing God's words in the heart is the language of Deuteronomy and the Psalms (Deut 6:6; Ps 119:11). The irony is sharp. In his next speech Job will say, "I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my portion of food" (23:12). JFB gives only a cross-reference here.
• "If you return to the Almighty you will be built up" (v23). "Return" is the great Old Testament word for repentance (Isa 55:7; Hos 14:1). JFB pictures Job rebuilt "as a restored house." The Tyndale notes point out that Bildad and Zophar had made the same appeal (8:5–6; 11:13–14), and that all three take a true principle and apply it to the wrong case.
• "If you lay gold in the dust, and gold of Ophir among the stones of the torrent-bed" (v24). "Gold" here is betser, which the lexicon defines as precious ore and finds only in this verse and the next. Ophir's gold was the finest. Solomon's ships brought it (1 Kgs 9:28), and it became the standard of the best (Isa 13:12). Eliphaz tells Job to throw his treasure into the gravel of a dry streambed. The hint is unfair. Job had never trusted in gold (31:24–25), and he has none left to throw away.
• "Then the Almighty will be your gold and your precious silver" (v25). This is the high point of the speech. God himself becomes the treasure. JFB: "God will be to thee in the place of riches." Henry turns it into a proverb: "Worldlings make gold their god, saints make God their gold." The word behind "precious" is uncertain. The lexicon says to'aphot elsewhere means peaks or towering strength (Ps 95:4; Num 23:22), suggests heaps or bars of silver here, and calls the meaning "very dubious." The Tyndale notes link the verse with God as his people's treasure (Ps 16:5; Isa 33:6) and with Jesus' call to "treasure in heaven" (Matt 19:21).
• "Then you will delight yourself in the Almighty and lift up your face to God" (v26). To lift up the face is to look at God without shame. JFB notes the phrase is "repeated from Zophar" (11:15). Guzik draws on a sermon by C. H. Spurgeon, who found four things in it: joy in God, guilt removed, freedom from fear, and confident hope of help. Henry: "The way to have our heart's desire is to make God our heart's delight" (compare Ps 37:4).
• "You will make your prayer to him, and he will hear you" (vv27–28). A restored man prays and is heard, and pays the vows he made, the promised offerings of thanks (Ps 22:25; Jonah 2:9). The Tyndale notes catch the irony: Job will indeed pray, God will hear, and the man who benefits will be Eliphaz (42:8). "Light will shine on your ways" (v28), which JFB reads as "success," reverses the darkness of v11.
• "When they are humbled you say, 'It is because of pride'; but he saves the lowly" (v29). Translations differ widely here. The key word is gevah. The lexicon gives "pride" but lists this verse under "lifting up," noting that some scholars read a cry, "Up!", a prayer for those brought low, while others read "pride," as the ESV does. The King James Version takes the first: "There is lifting up." So does JFB. The Tyndale notes read the verse as a picture of the power of a righteous person's prayer (Jas 5:16). Whatever the details, the last line is plain: God "saves the lowly."
• "He delivers even the one who is not innocent... through the cleanness of your hands" (v30). Eliphaz ends with a striking promise. God will rescue even a guilty man because of a righteous man's clean hands and prayers. "Not innocent" uses the little word 'i, "not." The lexicon says this is its only use as a negative in the Bible and notes suggested corrections to the text. Because 'i usually means "island," the King James Version reads "the island of the innocent." The cross-references go straight to the end of the book. God tells Eliphaz, "My anger burns against you and against your two friends," and sends them to Job: "my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer" (42:7–8). Henry: Job's friends, "who in this matter were not innocent, were delivered by the pureness of Job's hands." Eliphaz has described himself without knowing it.
• What Eliphaz gets right and wrong. This speech holds the worst and the best of the friends' theology side by side. The worst is vv5–9, crimes invented because the theory required them. Henry calls this a real wrong, "for a man's good name is more precious and valuable than his wealth," and warns that "Innocency itself will be no security against a false and foul tongue." The best is vv21–30, a beautiful call to know God, receive his word, treasure him above gold and pray. Both come from one blind spot: unable to see the scene in heaven (1:6–12), Eliphaz can imagine no reason for Job's suffering except Job's sin.
• Commentators: All three see this as the point where Eliphaz moves from hints to open accusation. Guzik passes on Francis Andersen's view that the dialogue is breaking down because the friendship has broken. He calls the charges of vv6–9 groundless, inferred only from Job's former wealth and present misery, and passes on G. Campbell Morgan's verdict that they are the worst sins a man of wealth and position could commit. On vv2–3 Guzik agrees that God does not need Job but says Eliphaz misapplies a true doctrine, since God did take pleasure in Job, which is also the Tyndale notes' point. Matthew Henry opens soberly: "It was one of the unhappinesses of Job, as it is of many an honest man, to be misunderstood by his friends." He outlines the chapter as a rebuke of Job's complaints (vv2–4), charges of oppression (vv5–11) and unbelief (vv12–14), a comparison with "the old world" (vv15–20), and "good counsel" (vv21–30). Guzik and Henry both admire that counsel while noting it was misapplied. JFB comments on nearly every verse but gives only a cross-reference on v22. On v29 JFB follows "there is lifting up," which the lexicon allows alongside the ESV's "pride."

Pointing to Christ

Eliphaz accused an innocent man of terrible crimes with no evidence except his suffering. That pattern was repeated at the trial of Jesus, when the chief priests "were seeking false testimony against Jesus" (Matt 26:59), and onlookers at the cross reasoned as Eliphaz did: if God delighted in him, God would rescue him (Matt 27:43). Yet the last line of Eliphaz's speech, which turned back on Eliphaz himself, points further. "He delivers even the one who is not innocent... through the cleanness of your hands" (v30). Job's clean hands and prayers saved his guilty friends (42:8). Christ is the one whose hands are truly clean, and he "makes intercession for the transgressors" (Isa 53:12). He prayed for those who crucified him (Luke 23:34), and "he always lives to make intercession" for those who draw near to God through him (Heb 7:25). "Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God" (1 Pet 3:18). That is how the best of Eliphaz's counsel finally comes true. Through Christ the guilty can be at peace with God, and the Almighty does become the treasure worth more than gold: Paul counted everything as loss "because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Phil 3:8).

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik notes that Eliphaz's specific accusations are completely fabricated — there is no evidence anywhere in the book that Job committed these sins. Eliphaz has moved from theological argument to bearing false witness. His system requires Job to be guilty, so he invents the guilt. Guzik observes that vv.21-30 contain beautiful truths about knowing God, but they are cruelly misapplied to a righteous sufferer.
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• BibleProject: bibleproject.com On the whole book: the speech from the whirlwind, and why it answers Job the way it does.
• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of Job -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

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Reflection

• Inventing Sin to Protect a Theory (vv.5-9) — Eliphaz fabricates specific crimes against Job — oppressing the poor, withholding bread, stripping the naked — with no evidence, because his theology requires a guilty man. Have you ever assumed the worst about someone's character simply because your explanation for their situation required it?
• Transcendence Doesn't Mean Distance (v.12) — Eliphaz accuses Job of thinking God is too high in the heavens to notice human affairs, misreading Job's honest questions as a denial of God's awareness. Do you ever confuse God's greatness with Him being distant or uninvolved in your actual life?
• True Words Aimed at the Wrong Person (vv.21-30) — Eliphaz's call to know God and find peace with Him is genuinely beautiful theology, but he speaks it to a man who already knows God intimately and is suffering without cause. Have you ever spoken a true and good word to someone in a way that wounded rather than helped because it didn't fit their actual situation?
• Repentance Requires Actual Sin (v.23) — Eliphaz calls Job to repent and be restored, but repentance only makes sense when there is something real to turn from. Do you ever pressure yourself or others toward repentance for something that was never actually sin in the first place?