1Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied: 2“If one ventures a word with you, will you be wearied? Yet who can keep from speaking? 3Surely you have instructed many, and have strengthened their feeble hands. 4Your words have steadied those who stumbled; you have braced the knees that were buckling. 5But now trouble has come upon you, and you are weary. It strikes you, and you are dismayed. 6Is your reverence not your confidence, and the uprightness of your ways your hope? 7Consider now, I plead: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Or where have the upright been destroyed? 8As I have observed, those who plow iniquity and those who sow trouble reap the same. 9By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of His anger they are consumed. 10The lion may roar, and the fierce lion may growl, yet the teeth of the young lions are broken. 11The old lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered. 12Now a word came to me secretly; my ears caught a whisper of it. 13In disquieting visions in the night, when deep sleep falls on men, 14fear and trembling came over me and made all my bones shudder. 15Then a spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body bristled. 16It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance; a form loomed before my eyes, and I heard a whispering voice: 17‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God, or a man more pure than his Maker? 18If God puts no trust in His servants, and He charges His angels with error, 19how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who can be crushed like a moth! 20They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk; unnoticed, they perish forever. 21Are not their tent cords pulled up, so that they die without wisdom?’
Matthew Henry's Commentary
Eliphaz reproves Job. (1-6) And maintains that God's judgments are for the wicked. (7-11) The vision of Eliphaz. (12-21) 1-6 Satan undertook to prove Job a hypocrite by afflicting him; and his friends concluded him to be one because he was so afflicted, and showed impatience. This we must keep in mind if we would understand what passed. Eliphaz speaks of Job, and his afflicted condition, with tenderness; but charges him with weakness and faint-heartedness. Men make few allowances for those who have taught others. Even pious friends will count that only a touch which we feel as a wound. Learn from hence to draw off the mind of a sufferer from brooding over the affliction, to look at the God of mercies in the affliction. And how can this be done so well as by looking to Christ Jesus, in whose unequalled sorrows every child of God soonest learns to forget his own? 7-11 Eliphaz argues, 1. That good men were never thus ruined. But there is one event both to the righteous and to the wicked, #Ec 9:2|, both in life and death; the great and certain difference is after death. Our worst mistakes are occasioned by drawing wrong views from undeniable truths. 2. That wicked men were often thus ruined: for the proof of this, Eliphaz vouches his own observation. We may see the same every day. 12-21 Eliphaz relates a vision. When we are communing with our own hearts, and are still, #Ps 4:4|, then is a time for the Holy Spirit to commune with us. This vision put him into very great fear. Ever since man sinned, it has been terrible to him to receive communications from Heaven, conscious that he can expect no good tidings thence. Sinful man! shall he pretend to be more just, more pure, than God, who being his Maker, is his Lord and Owner? How dreadful, then, the pride and presumption of man! How great the patience of God! Look upon man in his life. The very foundation of that cottage of clay in which man dwells, is in the dust, and it will sink with its own weight. We stand but upon the dust. Some have a higher heap of dust to stand upon than others but still it is the earth that stays us up, and will shortly swallow us up. Man is soon crushed; or if some lingering distemper, which consumes like a moth, be sent to destroy him, he cannot resist it. Shall such a creature pretend to blame the appointments of God? Look upon man in his death. Life is short, and in a little time men are cut off. Beauty, strength, learning, not only cannot secure them from death, but these things die with them; nor shall their pomp, their wealth, or power, continue after them. Shall a weak, sinful, dying creature, pretend to be more just than God, and more pure than his Maker? No: instead of quarrelling with his afflictions, let him wonder that he is out of hell. Can a man be cleansed without his Maker? Will God justify sinful mortals, and clear them from guilt? or will he do so without their having an interest in the righteousness and gracious help of their promised Redeemer, when angels, once ministering spirits before his throne, receive the just recompence of their sins? Notwithstanding the seeming impunity of men for a short time, though living without God in the world, their doom is as certain as that of the fallen angels, and is continually overtaking them. Yet careless sinners note it so little, that they expect not the change, nor are wise to consider their latter end.