The Book of Job

Word Study

"castest off," Hebrew taper (תָּפֵר) from parar, to break, annul, make void. Eliphaz makes a devastating and utterly false charge: "thou castest off fear, and restrainest prayer before God." The verb is a strong one, to break a thing off and make it void, and it accuses Job not of a lapse but of a deliberate annulling of what he once held. This is the cruelty of a system that reads a man's heart off his circumstances.

"fear," yirah (יִרְאָה), the fear of God, reverence, piety. What Eliphaz says Job has broken off is the fear of God itself, of being, in effect, an irreverent man who has abandoned piety. The irony is crushing, for the very first verse of the book describes Job as "one that feared God, and eschewed evil" (Job 1:1), and God Himself repeated it (Job 1:8; 2:3). Job's whole life was marked by the fear of God; he even offered sacrifices for his children lest they had sinned (Job 1:5).

"restrainest," tigra (תִּגְרַע), diminish, hold back. The second half of the charge is that Job holds back and cuts short what is owed to God. Eliphaz cannot point to any evidence of it; he reasons backward from the affliction: Job is suffering, therefore Job must be ungodly, therefore Job must have withheld what God is due.

"prayer," sichah (שִׂיחָה), meditation, devotion before God. The word is broader than petition; it is the whole devotional life, the meditation of a heart before God, and Eliphaz says Job has hindered it. Yet Eliphaz cannot see the truth the reader knows: that Job's suffering is not evidence of lost piety but the arena in which his piety is being proved genuine, and that Job has in fact been pouring out his soul before God through every chapter of his complaint. It is a solemn warning against judging the spiritual state of the afflicted by their affliction. The suffering saint may be, like Job, more truly God-fearing in his darkness than his accusers are in their ease.

Explanation

Eliphaz makes a cruel and false charge: Job "castest off fear, and restrainest prayer before God", accusing the most God-fearing man on earth of abandoning piety. The irony is crushing, for the book opens by calling Job "one that feared God, and eschewed evil" (Job 1:1). Eliphaz reasons backward from Job's suffering to supposed ungodliness, the cruelty of a system that reads a man's heart off his circumstances. He cannot see that Job's affliction is not proof of lost piety but the very place his piety is proved real. We must never judge the afflicted by their affliction.

Gospel Focus

"Thou castest off fear, and restrainest prayer before God", Job was falsely accused of irreverence and prayerlessness, and here he foreshadows the One who was perfectly reverent yet accused of the worst. Jesus, who "feared" God with perfect filial reverence and "was heard in that he feared" (Hebrews 5:7), who spent whole nights in prayer, was charged with blasphemy, with casting out devils by Beelzebub, with being a friend of sinners and a wine-bibber. The most God-fearing Man who ever lived was condemned as a godless one, and died between two thieves. So Job's false accusation points to Christ, "reviled" yet reviling not again (1 Peter 2:23), the righteous One counted among the transgressors (Isaiah 53:12). And because Jesus bore the false judgment of men and the true judgment of God in our place, we who are truly guilty are received. The lesson for us is twofold: we should be slow to judge the suffering saint as Eliphaz judged Job, remembering how wrongly even the sinless Christ was judged; and we should take comfort that our standing before God rests not on the verdicts of men but on the finished work of the One who was falsely condemned that we might be truly acquitted. Men may misread our hearts; God, who knows all, has justified us in His Son.

Word Study

"clean," Hebrew zakah (זָכָה), to be pure, clear, blameless. Eliphaz asks, "What is man, that he should be clean?" and adds, "the heavens are not clean in his sight... how much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water" (v15-16). In itself this is sound doctrine, and echoes his own earlier vision (Job 4:17-19). No mere man is clear or blameless before the infinitely holy God; even the heavens and the angels are not pure in His sight; and man, by contrast, drinks iniquity as naturally as he drinks water. This agrees with "we are all as an unclean thing" (Isaiah 64:6).

"righteous," yitzdaq (יִצְדָּק), be just, be in the right. The second half of his question presses the same point in courtroom terms: "and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?" No man can be declared just, no man can stand in the right, when the case is heard before God. This is a strong statement of universal human sinfulness, agreeing with "there is none righteous, no, not one" (Romans 3:10).

"born of a woman," yelud ishshah (יְלוּד אִשָּׁה), the frail, mortal offspring of humanity. The phrase names the whole race by its origin, the frail, mortal offspring of humanity, and it is that frailty Eliphaz sets against the holiness of God. The truth in all of this is real. The problem is how Eliphaz uses it. He wields the doctrine of total human sinfulness not to humble himself alongside Job, nor to point Job to mercy, but purely to crush Job and win the argument, as though this truth applied to Job and not equally to Eliphaz. A doctrine that should level all men before God, driving both accuser and accused to their knees for grace, becomes in Eliphaz's mouth a club to beat a sufferer. The truth that no man is clean is meant to send us all to the only One who can make us clean, not to make us despise one another.

Explanation

Eliphaz states a true doctrine: "What is man, that he should be clean?" No mere man is pure or righteous before the holy God; even the heavens are not clean in His sight, and man drinks iniquity like water. This agrees with the whole Bible's teaching on human sinfulness (Romans 3:10; Isaiah 64:6). The error is in the use. Eliphaz wields the doctrine only to crush Job and win the argument, as if it applied to Job but not to himself. A truth that should level all men before God and drive them to grace becomes a club to beat a sufferer.

Gospel Focus

"What is man, that he should be clean?", the honest answer is, no man is, and that very truth is the doorway to the Gospel. If no one born of woman can be clean or righteous before God, then our only hope is a cleanness and righteousness given from outside ourselves. And that is exactly what God provides in Christ. There came One "made of a woman" (Galatians 4:4) who was, uniquely, clean and righteous, "who did no sin" (1 Peter 2:22), and He gives His people both cleansing and righteousness. He cleanses: "the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). And He is made unto us righteousness: "Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption" (1 Corinthians 1:30). Eliphaz used "no man is clean" to condemn; the Gospel uses it to drive us to the only One who can make us clean. The doctrine that levels every human being, accuser and accused alike, before a holy God is meant to empty us of all self-righteousness and send us together to the fountain "opened... for sin and for uncleanness" (Zechariah 13:1). No man born of woman can be clean by himself; but every one who comes to Christ is washed whiter than snow, clothed in a righteousness not his own. The truth that humbles us is the truth that saves us, when it leads us to Jesus.

Word Study

"travaileth with pain," Hebrew mitcholel (מִתְחוֹלֵל), writhes in anguish, is in torment. Eliphaz launches into a long and vivid description of the fate of the wicked (v20-35): the wicked man "travaileth with pain all his days"; "a dreadful sound is in his ears" (v21); "trouble and anguish shall make him afraid" (v24); he "shall not depart out of darkness" (v30). The verb pictures a man writhing in torment, and the portrait is designed with one aim: to make Job see himself in it. Every torment Eliphaz describes matches something in Job's experience, and the unspoken conclusion is, "This is you, Job; you are the wicked man reaping his reward."

"the oppressor," aritz (עָרִיץ), the ruthless, violent, terrifying man. This is the sort of man Eliphaz has in view throughout the passage, and the sort he is quietly inviting Job to recognise as himself: not a man who has slipped, but the ruthless and violent man who has terrified others and now meets terror in his turn. To place Job in that company is a savage thing to do to a grieving man. Now, there is a measure of truth in what Eliphaz says; Scripture does teach that "the way of transgressors is hard" (Proverbs 13:15) and that sin brings misery. But Eliphaz makes it an absolute and mechanical law, the wicked always suffer, therefore the suffering are wicked, and that law is false. Job's own case disproves it, and Job will answer in the next chapters that the wicked often prosper while the righteous suffer. Eliphaz has taken a partial truth and turned it into a rigid system that condemns the innocent. His theology has no room for a suffering saint, no room for the mystery the whole book exists to explore, and, crucially, no room for the greatest righteous Sufferer of all.

Explanation

Eliphaz paints a long, vivid picture of the torment of the wicked, writhing in pain all his days, dread in his ears, darkness closing in, designed so that Job will see himself in it. There is partial truth here, for sin does bring misery (Proverbs 13:15). But Eliphaz makes it an absolute law: the wicked always suffer, so the suffering must be wicked. That law is false, and Job's own case disproves it. Eliphaz's rigid system has no room for a suffering saint, no room for the mystery of the book, and no room for the greatest righteous Sufferer of all.

Gospel Focus

"The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days", Eliphaz's rigid law, that suffering proves wickedness, is shattered forever at the cross. There the most righteous One who ever lived, the sinless Son of God, "travailed" in the deepest pain of all, not for His own sin, but for ours. If Eliphaz's formula were true, Calvary would be impossible, for it shows the perfectly righteous One in the place of ultimate suffering. Isaiah foresaw it: "he shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied" (Isaiah 53:11); "it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief" (Isaiah 53:10). The cross proves once and for all that suffering is not always the wage of personal sin; sometimes it is the path of obedience, even of substitution. And because Christ, the innocent, bore the travail that the guilty deserved, the true wicked who come to Him need not travail in pain forever; their punishment fell on Him. Meanwhile the righteous who suffer, like Job, like the saints, like the Lord Himself, may know that their pain is not proof of God's rejection but often the very fellowship of Christ's sufferings (Philippians 3:10), working "a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory" (2 Corinthians 4:17). Eliphaz's cruel arithmetic cannot survive the cross, where the sinless One travailed that sinners might have peace.