Job — Chapter 5

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: This chapter is the second half of Eliphaz's first speech, which began at 4:1, and the ESV keeps it under the same heading. In chapter 4 Eliphaz praised Job's past, gently suggested he was failing his own advice, declared that the innocent never perish, and reported a night vision: no mortal is pure before God. Now he draws his conclusions. He warns Job against the fool's resentment (vv1–7), urges him to turn to God, who reverses fortunes (vv8–16), and ends with a beautiful picture of the blessings that follow God's discipline (vv17–27). Much of what he says is true and some of it is quoted in the New Testament. Yet God's verdict at the end of the book is that Eliphaz did not speak rightly of him (42:7). The chapter is a study in how sound words can become the wrong words when they're aimed at the wrong person.

Eliphaz Speaks: The Innocent Prosper (vv1–27)

• "Call now; is there anyone who will answer you? To which of the holy ones will you turn?" (v1). The "holy ones" are the angels, the same beings Eliphaz just said God "charges with error" (4:18). The Tyndale notes explain that they are called holy because they belong to God's presence, not because they are morally perfect (15:15; Dan 8:13). Eliphaz's point: no heavenly being will take your side against God, so stop complaining and accept the verdict. Ironically, Job will later long for exactly that, a heavenly "witness" or "arbiter" to plead his case (9:33; 16:19), and the New Testament gives him one (1 Tim 2:5).
• "Surely vexation kills the fool, and jealousy slays the simple" (v2). "Vexation" is resentment or angry frustration. "Fool" (evil) in Proverbs is the person who is morally careless and won't be taught. Eliphaz doesn't call Job a fool outright, but the warning is aimed at Job's angry lament in chapter 3: keep raging like that, and it will destroy you.
• "I have seen the fool taking root, but suddenly I cursed his dwelling" (v3). Eliphaz appeals to his own experience again, as in 4:8. He has watched a wicked man prosper and put down roots, and then seen him ruined. "Cursed" here probably means he recognized the man's home as cursed, not that he called down a curse himself.
• "His children are far from safety; they are crushed in the gate" (v4). The "gate" was where the town elders sat as a court, the place for business and justice (Ruth 4:1–11). Job himself used to sit there in honor (29:7). The fool's children have nobody to defend them in court. This is painfully close to home. Job's children have died, and Eliphaz's picture of the fool's household falling apart looks very much like Job's.
• "The hungry eat his harvest… and the thirsty pant after his wealth" (v5). Strangers grab his crops, even from behind the thorn hedges meant to protect them. Job's oxen, donkeys and camels were taken by raiders (1:15, 17). Again, the picture fits Job's losses too well to be accidental.
• "For affliction does not come from the dust, nor does trouble sprout from the ground" (v6). Trouble isn't random, like weeds springing up by themselves. It has a cause. For Eliphaz the cause is human sin, and v7 explains why.
• "But man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward" (v7). This is one of the best-known lines in Job. Humans produce trouble as naturally as a fire throws sparks into the air. Eliphaz means that trouble comes from what human beings are, sinful by nature. The Hebrew for "sparks" is literally "sons of resheph," and the lexicon defines resheph as "flame" or "fire-bolt," so "sons of flame" means sparks. Elsewhere resheph describes lightning (Ps 78:48) and the fiery plague God sends (Deut 32:24; Hab 3:5). In Canaanite religion Reshef was a god of plague, and some scholars hear a faint allusion to him here. The lexicon doesn't support pressing that, and the plain meaning is clear without it.
• "As for me, I would seek God, and to God would I commit my cause" (v8). This is good advice in itself: bring your situation to God. "Seek" is the word used for going to God for help or guidance (Amos 5:4). "Commit my cause" is legal language: lay out your case before him. The Tyndale notes point out the irony. Job will do exactly this. He will present his case to God at length (13:3, 18; 23:3–7; chs 29–31). But Eliphaz means "go to God and confess," while Job will go to God to protest his innocence.
• "Who does great things and unsearchable, marvelous things without number" (v9). Eliphaz breaks into a hymn. God's works are beyond human understanding. Job himself will repeat these exact words in 9:10, but to make a darker point: if God is that great, how can a man argue with him?
• "He gives rain on the earth and sends waters on the fields" (v10). In a land with no great rivers, rain was everything (36:27–28). It is God's gift, and it is a picture of how he lifts up and restores.
• "He sets on high those who are lowly, and those who mourn are lifted to safety" (v11). God reverses fortunes. This theme runs through Scripture: Hannah's song (1 Sam 2:7–8), Mary's song (Luke 1:52), and Jesus' beatitude, "Blessed are those who mourn" (Matt 5:4). Eliphaz means it as a promise: humble yourself, Job, and God will lift you. And in the end God does restore Job (42:10), though not for the reason Eliphaz expects.
• "He catches the wise in their own craftiness" (v13). Paul quotes this verse in 1 Corinthians 3:19 with the formula "it is written," to show that the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. It is one of only two places the New Testament quotes Job directly (the other is Rom 11:35, from Job 41:11). Paul's use shows that Eliphaz's statement is true Scripture. The problem is not the statement but whom Eliphaz is applying it to. He is hinting that Job is one of the crafty schemers whom God trips up.
• "They meet with darkness in the daytime and grope at noonday" (v14). The clever are confused in broad daylight, a picture of judgment found also in Deuteronomy 28:29.
• "He saves the needy from the sword of their mouth" (v15). The weapons of the powerful include their words: slander, false accusations and lies. God protects the poor from both "the sword of their mouth" and "the hand of the mighty."
• "So the poor have hope, and injustice shuts her mouth" (v16). Injustice is pictured as a person forced into silence. Psalm 107:42 uses almost the same words.
• "Behold, blessed is the one whom God reproves; therefore despise not the discipline of the Almighty" (v17). This is the most famous verse in the chapter, and it is true. "Discipline" is musar, which the lexicon defines as correction or chastening, especially the training a father gives a son. Proverbs 3:11–12 says the same thing with the same word: "do not despise the LORD's discipline," and Hebrews 12:5–11 quotes Proverbs to comfort suffering Christians. The Almighty (Shaddai) is the main name for God in the poetry of Job, used over thirty times. Eliphaz's mistake is assuming that Job's suffering must be correction for sin. Discipline in Scripture can also mean training and refining, not just punishment, and the reader knows Job's suffering began with God's praise, not God's displeasure.
• "For he wounds, but he binds up; he shatters, but his hands heal" (v18). God is the surgeon who cuts in order to heal. Hosea uses the same picture: "he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up" (Hos 6:1; compare Deut 32:39).
• "He will deliver you from six troubles; in seven no evil shall touch you" (v19). "Six… seven" is a Hebrew way of saying "every possible trouble," a number pattern also found in Proverbs 6:16 and 30:15–31. The Tyndale notes observe that the list of blessings that follows is drawn from the blessings of the covenant (Lev 26; Deut 28): rescue from famine and war, protection from slander, peace with wild animals, a safe home, many descendants and a long life.
• Famine, sword, the lash of the tongue (vv20–21). God redeems from death in famine and from "the power of the sword," literally "the hands of the sword." He hides his people from "the lash of the tongue," the whip of slander and gossip. Job will feel that lash from these very friends.
• "At destruction and famine you shall laugh" (v22). The one who trusts God is free from fear. Compare the woman of strength who "laughs at the time to come" (Prov 31:25).
• "In league with the stones of the field" (v23). A striking image: a covenant with the rocks. The Tyndale notes suggest it may mean fields free of stones and good for farming (compare 2 Kgs 3:19, 25), or harmony with all creation, where even wild animals are at peace (Hos 2:18; Isa 11:6–9).
• "You shall inspect your fold and miss nothing" (v24). This must have stung. Job had already lost all his flocks and herds (1:14–17).
• "Your offspring shall be many" (v25). This too was painful. Job had just buried ten children. God does give Job ten more children at the end of the book (42:13), but Eliphaz's promise lands on a fresh wound.
• "You shall come to your grave in ripe old age, like a sheaf gathered up in its season" (v26). A beautiful picture: death as a harvest, not a disaster. The grain is cut when it is ripe and brought in at the right time. Job does in fact die "an old man, and full of days" (42:17), like Abraham (Gen 25:8).
• "Behold, this we have searched out; it is true. Hear, and know it for your good" (v27). Eliphaz ends with full confidence. "We" may include the other friends, or the wise men of his tradition. His closing words sound humble but are not: we have studied this, we are right, now accept it. The rest of the book shows how much they had not searched out, starting with the scene in heaven.
• Why God rebuked him. Almost every sentence in this chapter can be paralleled elsewhere in Scripture, and two are quoted in the New Testament. So why does God say Eliphaz spoke wrongly (42:7)? Because he made the truths into a closed system: suffering always means sin, repentance always brings prosperity, and Job must therefore be guilty. He offered true doctrine without listening to the man in front of him and without allowing that God might have purposes he didn't know about. Job's words in chapter 3 were rough, but they were honest to God. Eliphaz's words were polished, but they were wrong about God's ways.
• Commentators: Henry reads chapter 5 as Eliphaz appealing to "the saints" and the settled wisdom of the godly, and he finds a lot here to apply to believers. On v7 he says, "Man is born in sin, and therefore born to trouble." On v17 he links Eliphaz's words to Hebrews 12:5, and on v26 he writes, "That man lives long enough that has done his work and is fit for another world." He still grants that the friends were not guided by the Spirit in everything they said. JFB says Paul "quoted this clause with the formula establishing its inspiration, 'it is written,'" and explains that "happy" in v17 doesn't mean "that the actual suffering is joyous." But JFB also observes that "Eliphaz does not give due prominence to this truth, but rather to Job's sin," and on v26 adds that the point is "not mere length of years, but ripeness for death." Guzik is the most critical. He stresses that every blessing in vv17–26 depends on Job admitting sin he hasn't committed, and he passes on the view that Eliphaz's real failure was a lack of sympathy more than bad doctrine. On v7 Guzik mentions the "sons of Resheph" reading, which the lexicon doesn't support beyond "sparks."

Pointing to Christ

"He wounds, but he binds up; he shatters, but his hands heal" (v18). Eliphaz's words come true most fully in Jesus, but in a way Eliphaz never imagined. Isaiah says of the Servant, "upon him was the chastisement (musar) that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed" (Isa 53:5). The discipline that Eliphaz said must fall on the sinner fell instead on the sinless one. And Paul's quote of v13 sits in a passage about the cross, the "foolishness" of God that is wiser than human wisdom (1 Cor 1:18–25; 3:19). God catches the wise in their own craftiness, and he did it supremely at Calvary, when the plans of rulers and the schemes of the Accuser became the means of the world's salvation (1 Cor 2:8). Eliphaz offered a sufferer a formula. God offers a Savior who suffered.

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik notes the tragic irony: Eliphaz's speech contains much that is true about God — His power, His justice, His care for the lowly, His discipline of those He loves. But truth wrongly applied becomes cruelty. Eliphaz's error is not theological ignorance but pastoral insensitivity. He applies general truths to a specific situation without knowing the facts. God will later condemn not what Eliphaz said about God's attributes, but how he used those truths against a suffering man.
• 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

• Universal Truth Can Still Minimize Someone's Pain (v.7) — Eliphaz reminds Job that everyone experiences trouble, as if that alone should settle Job's complaint. When someone shares specific pain with you, does pointing out that "everyone struggles" ever function as a way to avoid really listening?
• Beautiful Theology Can Still Land as an Accusation (v.17) — Eliphaz's description of God's discipline is biblically sound, yet spoken to Job it implies unproven guilt. Before you explain someone else's hardship as God "teaching them a lesson," do you actually know that's true?
• Restoration Doesn't Follow a Formula (vv.19-26) — Eliphaz promises Job a neat, guaranteed recovery if he just repents the right way. Are you tempted to treat God's blessing as something you can earn through the correct steps, rather than receive as grace on His timing?
• Confident Certainty Has Limits (v.27) — Eliphaz insists his conclusions are settled and researched, yet God later disagrees with him. Where might you be holding a theological or personal conviction with more certainty than the evidence actually supports?