Job — Chapter 4

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: Job has just cursed the day he was born and asked why God gives life to people who long to die (ch 3). Now the friends who sat with him in silence for a week begin to speak. Chapters 4–27 hold three rounds of speeches: each friend speaks, and Job answers each one. Eliphaz the Temanite goes first. The Tyndale notes suggest he was the oldest and most respected of the three, and his speeches are the longest and most careful. Teman was famous for wisdom (Jer 49:7), and Eliphaz sounds wise. He begins kindly, says many true things, and even reports a mysterious vision. But the reader knows something Eliphaz doesn't: the narrator has already told us Job is "blameless and upright" (1:1), and God will later say that Eliphaz and his friends "have not spoken of me what is right" (42:7). That makes this speech a lesson in how true words can be wrongly applied. Eliphaz's speech runs through chapter 5.

Eliphaz Speaks: The Innocent Prosper (vv1–21)

• "If one ventures a word with you, will you be impatient?" (v2). Eliphaz opens gently, almost apologetically. He knows Job is in pain and his words may hurt. "Yet who can keep from speaking?" The Tyndale notes observe that this echoes the language prophets used when God's word burned inside them (Jer 20:9; Amos 3:8). Eliphaz feels he has a message that must be delivered.
• "You have strengthened the weak hands… made firm the feeble knees" (vv3–4). This is real praise. Job had been a counselor and comforter to many (compare 29:12–16). "Weak hands" and "feeble knees" are pictures of people who have lost heart (Isa 35:3; the letter to the Hebrews borrows the phrase in Heb 12:12).
• "But now it has come to you, and you are impatient; it touches you, and you are dismayed" (v5). Here is the sting. Eliphaz implies Job can give advice but can't take it. "Touches" is the same word Satan used: "touch all that he has" (1:11), "touch his bone and his flesh" (2:5). Eliphaz unknowingly uses the vocabulary of the heavenly scene he knows nothing about.
• "Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope?" (v6). On the surface this is encouragement: if you really fear God, you have nothing to worry about. Underneath is an assumption that runs through the friends' speeches. A truly upright man would not be suffering like this, or at least would not be complaining like this. "Integrity" here is tom, from the same root as "blameless" in 1:1. Eliphaz uses Job's own virtues as a test he is now failing.
• "Remember: who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off?" (v7). This is the heart of Eliphaz's theology. The innocent don't perish; the wicked do. The Tyndale notes point out how painful this is. Job's ten children have just died, and Job had prayed for them faithfully (1:5). Eliphaz surely knew that innocent blood is sometimes shed (Deut 19:10; Prov 6:17). Abel was innocent and was cut off. The principle is generally true over the long run and in final judgment, but it is false as a rule for every life in this world.
• "Those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same" (v8). The harvest picture is biblical and true (Prov 22:8; Hos 8:7; Gal 6:7). The problem is running it backward. "Sinners reap trouble" does not mean "everyone who reaps trouble is a sinner." Jesus rejected exactly that reverse logic: the Galileans killed by Pilate and the eighteen crushed by the tower of Siloam were not worse sinners than others (Luke 13:1–5), and the man born blind suffered "that the works of God might be displayed in him" (John 9:1–3).
• "By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of his anger they are consumed" (v9). The Tyndale notes suggest this is a pointed allusion. Job's children died when "a great wind" struck the house (1:19). Eliphaz may be hinting that the wind was God's judgment.
• The lions (vv10–11). Five different Hebrew words for "lion" appear in two verses: roaring lion, fierce lion, young lions, strong lion, lioness. The image is of the powerful and violent wicked, whose teeth God breaks and whose cubs are scattered. Job, who had been the most powerful man in the east, has lost his "cubs." The implication is hard to miss.
• "Now a word was brought to me stealthily; my ear received the whisper of it" (v12). Eliphaz now appeals to a higher authority than experience: a private revelation. "Word" is davar, the term the prophets used for "the word of the LORD." The Tyndale notes say Eliphaz is presenting himself as a prophet (compare Num 12:6). "Whisper" means only a faint sound, a fragment.
• "Amid thoughts from visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men" (v13). "Deep sleep" (tardemah) is the word for the sleep God sent on Adam (Gen 2:21) and on Abraham when God made the covenant with him (Gen 15:12). Eliphaz describes the classic setting for a revelation from God.
• "Dread came upon me, and trembling" (v14). Fear in the presence of the supernatural is common in Scripture (Dan 10:8–10; Hab 3:16). Eliphaz's bones shook.
• "A spirit glided past my face; the hair of my flesh stood up" (v15). "Spirit" is ruach, which can also mean "wind" or "breath." It may have been a breath of wind on his face, or a spirit-being passing by. Either way, his skin crawled.
• "It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance… there was silence, then I heard a voice" (v16). The description is deliberately vague: a shape, a hush, a voice. It recalls Elijah's "sound of a low whisper" after the wind (1 Kgs 19:12), but nothing in the text says this was God.
• Was the vision from God? Faithful readers disagree. Henry thought "Probably God had sent Eliphaz this messenger and message," and JFB calls it a real message, not a deceptive dream. Others note that the voice never claims to be from the LORD, that its message is used to wound a righteous man, and that God later says Eliphaz did not speak rightly of him (42:7). The Tyndale notes observe that God did eventually speak to Eliphaz, but not to support his advice. What is clear is this: the content of the message, that no human is pure before God, is true, and Eliphaz uses it to say something false about Job.
• "Can mortal man be in the right before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker?" (v17). The two words for "man" are different. The first is enosh, "mortal man," often used to stress human weakness when set against God (Ps 8:4; 103:15). The second is gever, "man" in his strength. Weak or strong, no human is righteous in God's sight. The Bible agrees (Ps 14:3; Rom 3:10). But the question can also be read "more righteous than God," which would be a rebuke of Job for complaining against his Maker. Either way, the question of how a person can be "in the right" with God returns again and again in Job (9:2; 15:14; 25:4), and the Tyndale notes point out that Job and Eliphaz mean different things by it. Eliphaz means every human is a sinner, so Job must be one too. Job means he has kept faith with God, and he is not being punished for some particular sin.
• "Even in his servants he puts no trust, and his angels he charges with error" (v18). If even the angels fall short of God's perfect holiness, then humans certainly do. The Tyndale notes say this idea is unusual in the Old Testament, though it may point back to the fall of the "sons of God" in Genesis 6:1–4. There is an irony here that Eliphaz could not see: an angel had gone wrong, and it was Satan who brought Job's trouble.
• "Houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust" (v19). The human body is a mud-brick house, the common building material of the ancient world, which crumbles and washes away. "Dust" points back to Genesis 2:7 and 3:19. People "are crushed like the moth," as easily as a moth is squashed.
• "Between morning and evening they are beaten to pieces" (v20). Human life can end within a single day, and nobody even notices. Job knows that better than anyone: he lost everything in one day (1:13–19).
• "Is not their tent-cord plucked up within them?" (v21). A tent is a common picture for the body and human life (Isa 38:12; 2 Cor 5:1). Pull up the cord, and the tent collapses. "Without wisdom" means they die without ever having understood. Eliphaz is subtly warning Job that he risks dying the same way.
• Commentators: Henry frames the whole debate as "whether Job was an honest man or no," which is exactly Satan's question from chapter 1. He praises Eliphaz's gentle opening, "We should show ourselves backward to say that which we foresee will be grievous," and agrees with his jab at Job in part: "It is easier to give good counsel than to take it." But Henry calls the hint of hypocrisy in v6 "the very thing Satan aimed at," and warns, "A man's character is not to be taken from a single act." On v7 he says the principle is "ill applied to Job." JFB calls Eliphaz "the mildest of Job's three accusers" and gives this advice on v6: "Judge not by a part, but by the whole of a godly man's life." On v17 JFB notes the two words for man, "the first implying his feebleness; the second his strength," which the lexicon supports for enosh. JFB adds that the vision's lesson is true but could have been known without a vision. Guzik is the sharpest critic of Eliphaz. He treats vv7–8 as common sense that is often true but becomes cruel when turned into an absolute law, and he leaves the source of the vision an open question.

Pointing to Christ

Eliphaz's spirit asked, "Can mortal man be in the right before God?" (v17). The Bible's answer is yes, but not by anything a creature of dust can achieve. Paul asks the same question and answers it: God is "just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Rom 3:26). The gospel turns Eliphaz's logic upside down. Eliphaz said the innocent never perish. At the cross the one truly innocent man was "cut off out of the land of the living" (Isa 53:8), and he perished not for his own sin but for ours. The "house of clay" Eliphaz describes is the very house the Son of God moved into when "the Word became flesh" (John 1:14). Because he took on a body of dust, died and rose again, believers whose earthly tent is torn down "have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Cor 5:1).

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik notes that Eliphaz begins well — acknowledging Job's past faithfulness — but quickly moves to the wrong conclusion. His question "who ever perished, being innocent?" (v.7) sounds compassionate but is actually an accusation disguised as a question. Guzik observes that the night vision (vv.12-16) is genuinely eerie and may not be from God at all — its theology, while partially true, leads to a condemning conclusion rather than a merciful one. True revelation from God leads to hope; this vision leads only to despair about human unworthiness.
• 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

• A "Comforter" Who Blames Isn't Comforting (vv.5-7) — Eliphaz reminds Job of the encouragement he once gave others, then uses it to imply Job should simply take his own advice. When you're with someone in pain, are you offering comfort or quietly scoring a point?
• Personal Experience Isn't the Final Word (v.8) — Eliphaz builds his whole argument on what he has personally "seen," as though his observation covers every case. Where might you be treating your own limited experience as though it explains everything?
• Not Every Spiritual Experience Deserves Trust (vv.12-16) — Eliphaz's terrifying night vision leads him toward condemnation rather than hope. When you sense something spiritual is happening, do you test it against what you know of God's character, or accept it uncritically?
• Human Frailty Should Lead to Humility, Not Despair (v.19) — The vision's claim that we are fragile "houses of clay" is true, yet Eliphaz turns it into an accusation instead of an invitation to grace. Does recognizing your own weakness draw you toward dependence on God, or toward shame?