Job CCXXXIX

 Job 22:1-5, “Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said: “Can a man be profitable to God, though he who is wise may be profitable to himself? Is it any pleasure to the Almighty that you are righteous? Or is it gain to Him that you make your ways blameless? Is it because of your fear of Him that He corrects you, and enters into judgment with you? Is not your wickedness great, and your iniquity without end?”

A man can wax poetic about his deep wisdom for hours on end, then one slip of the tongue upturns the apple cart. It’s usually when they’re frustrated, vexed, or defensive about some untenable position that the mask slips, and the handful of words they say exposes the reality that they were only wise in their own eyes. The knowledge they claimed to have was nonexistent, and although utterly ignorant regarding the nature and character of the God they took it upon themselves to speak on, their pride will convince them they are in the right.

Something Job had said had gotten under Eliphaz’s skin to the extent that whatever façade of wisdom he was trying to project collapsed, and in its stead, we see a man grasping at straws, insisting that God doesn’t care either way. Is it any pleasure to the Almighty that you are righteous? Or is it a gain to Him that you make your ways blameless? Even if you were the innocent, upright man you claim to be, do you really think God notices or even cares?

Which is it, sir? You can’t have it both ways; you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either Job was the wicked, unrepentant man you painted him to be, or a righteous man whose righteousness did not move the heart of God, nor affected the way God viewed him. A proverbial ocean separates the righteous from the wicked, the upright from the evil, those who fear the Lord, and those who are indifferent toward Him, and a man can’t be both simultaneously. You have to pick a lane. Either Job was wicked or righteous, but to insist that God didn’t care either way is something so intellectually dishonest as to make us look at Eliphaz in a whole new light.

Perhaps it was due to his status as the eldest among his three friends, the most respected, since he always the first to speak from among them, or the perceived superior wisdom he thought himself to possess over the others, but it seems as though Eliphaz has something to prove, and this last and final speech of his differs in tone and content from all the others we’ve studied thus far.

While the first half of the chapter is brutal in its accusations, assumptions, and innuendos, the second half is far more conciliatory, almost poetic, as though two different streams of thought are vying for control. There is an undeniable duality in Eliphaz. He is a man at odds with himself, struggling between leaning on his own understanding and allowing for the possibility of seeing the situation from a different angle.

Eliphaz is not unique in his struggle between what he can see, touch, intuit, or perceive with his human intellect, and what is beyond his understanding, or ability to reason out on his own. Whatever the situation, whenever we start out believing we know everything there is to know, and there is no new information or evidence that can sway us from this knowledge, or the conclusions we’ve come to in our minds, we’ve shut ourselves off from the possibility that things aren’t as they seem, or that we are not as wise as we thought ourselves to be in our own eyes. I have declared it thusly, and it must be so because I have declared it! And you would be?

Although humility is not a popular virtue nowadays, it is a necessary one for the children of God, because when we walk in humility, we acknowledge that only God is all-knowing, only He is omniscient, and defer to Him on matters that aren’t as clear as we once thought.

Job’s predicament was obvious to everyone. What wasn’t as obvious was why he was in the predicament he was in. Based on what they could see, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar had concluded that the reason for his suffering could be none other than wickedness on his part, some sin heretofore unconfessed that spurned the wrath of God against him.

It’s human nature to try to make sense of what we see and process it in a way that fits neatly into our understanding of the world around us. If I see a bedraggled man on the street, clothes torn and grimy, my first thought is that he must be homeless. If I took a closer look and processed what I was seeing without the filter of my preconception that unkempt, grimy, disheveled individuals are likely homeless, I would have noticed certain details that would contradict my previous conclusions, such as the shoes the man was wearing were higher-end wing tips, the torn suit seemed finely tailored, and based on the new evidence I would have to conclude he’d likely been robbed, beaten bloody, and left in an alley until he came to.

Man judges based on what he can see. God judges based on what is seen, unseen, and what can only be seen by Him. When we appropriate the authority and omniscience of God, and go beyond what we rightly understand, passing judgment on individuals or situations regarding which we do not have complete knowledge, it isn’t a quest for truth that’s egging us on, but our own pride and arrogance.

It’s no sin to abstain from passing judgment. It’s not your place to judge anyway. We cannot infer causality based on probability, then conclude that someone lost a child, a spouse, a parent, or a loved one because they were wicked, or that they’re bedridden because God was punishing them. We’re not talking about sin or wickedness, which, biblically speaking, we have a duty to call out, but rather about assigning guilt for sin or wickedness to someone based on a hardship or trial they are going through.

You are suffering, therefore you have sinned. But I’ve searched my heart, I’ve cried out to God, I’ve asked Him to show me if there is any wickedness in me, and there is nothing. I’m not hiding anything; there is nothing I would not be willing to repent of if He showed me it was contrary to His will because my singular desire is to be pleasing in His sight. Well, that just won’t cut it, because if you hadn’t committed great wickedness, you wouldn’t be suffering; therefore, you must have!

Do not assign purpose to someone’s suffering when no purpose is clear. Only God knows the purpose, and it may be that what we see as punishment for sin is a testing of one’s faith that, once they have endured, will bring about the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.