CHAPTER 5

(1520 B.C.)

JOB IS CONCLUDED BY ELIPHAZ TO BE WICKED

¹Call now, if there be any who will answer you; and to which of the Saints will you turn? (Certain ones in Roman Catholicism have tried to use this Verse to authorize prayers to the Saints. The argument, however, of this Verse is to show the uselessness of such prayer.

Eliphaz argument will now become more pointed, more direct, more cutting. He will now pour sarcasm upon Job. He is taunting Job, claiming that its not even possible for Job to get his prayers answered. In other words, Job has sinned so terribly, he says, that God will not even hear him any longer.

As well, there is not another believer [Saint] to whom he can turn. All the Saints, according to Eliphaz, know of Jobs hypocrisy.)

²For wrath kills the foolish man, and envy kills the silly one (Job is foolish and silly, according to Eliphaz, if he thinks that anyone will hear him now!).

³I have seen the foolish taking root: but suddenly I cursed his habitation.

⁴His children are far from safety, and they are crushed in the gate, neither is there any to deliver them. (Inasmuch as Jobs ten children were instantly killed, in effect, Eliphaz is saying that Job is to blame.

To judge what seems to be obvious is, most of the time, wrong, just as here.)

⁵Whose harvest the hungry eats up, and takes it even out of the thorns, and the robber swallows up their substance (once again implying that Job has come to this condition because of his wickedness).

⁶Although affliction comes not forth of the dust, neither does trouble spring out of the ground (in other words, he is saying that Job is in the condition hes in simply because he has been secretly wicked);

⁷Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward (this is true, but it is because of mans corrupt nature, due to the Fall).

ELIPHAZ CLAIMS THAT JOB MUST CONFESS HIS SINS

⁸I would seek unto God, and unto God would I commit my cause (in other words, Job should confess to God what he really is):

⁹Who does great things and unsearchable; marvelous things without number:

¹⁰Who gives rain upon the Earth, and sends waters upon the fields:

¹¹To set up on high those who be low; that those which mourn may be exalted to safety.

¹²He disappoints the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise (Job is judged here to be crafty, but God, so says Eliphaz, sees through Jobs craftiness).

¹³He takes the wise in their own craftiness: and the counsel of the froward is carried headlong.

¹⁴They meet with darkness in the daytime, and grope in the noonday as in the night (which is what is now happening to Job!).

¹⁵But He saves the poor from the sword, from their mouth, and from the hand of the mighty (Job wasnt poor, so this doesnt apply to him, according to Eliphaz).

¹⁶So the poor has hope, and iniquity stops her mouth (Jobs mouth has now been stopped, and the poor can rest in ease; the truth is, Job had been a great benefactor to the poor).

¹⁷Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects: therefore despise not you the chastening of the Almighty (true! However, the Lord is not really correcting Job, at least not as Eliphaz thinks):

¹⁸For He makes sore, and binds up: He wounds, and His Hands make whole.

¹⁹He shall deliver you in six troubles: yes, in seven there shall no evil touch you (once again, the idea is, at least as expressed by Eliphaz, that if one is walking in righteousness that no evil will touch you; so, Job is judged to be unrighteous!).

²⁰In famine He shall redeem you from death: and in war from the power of the sword.

²¹You shall be hid from the scourge of the tongue (therefore, since many people are now speaking evil of Job, this means that Job must be wicked): neither shall you be afraid of destruction when it comes (Job is afraid, so this means that something is badly wrong with him in a spiritual sense).

²²At destruction and famine you shall laugh: neither shall you be afraid of the beasts of the Earth.

²³For you shall be in league with the stones of the field: and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with you.

²⁴And you shall know that your tabernacle shall be in peace; and you shall visit your habitation, and shall not sin (its very obvious that Job now has no peace, so that means he, according to Eliphaz, has sinned; however, the Lord has said differently [1:10, 22]).

²⁵You shall know also that your seed shall be great, and your offspring as the grass of the Earth (inasmuch as Jobs ten children were killed, this only furnishes more proof of Jobs wickedness, according to Eliphaz).

²⁶You shall come to your grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn comes in in his season.

²⁷Lo this, we have searched it, so it is; hear it, and know you it for your good (Eliphaz claims that his word is law and gospel; the truth is, it is anything but).