Job 15:12

Eliphaz considered that Job's heart was carrying him away and he was turning his spirit against God (vv.12-13). Why? Because Job set his spirit against what his friends were saying, and Eliphaz thought they were speaking for God. He could sharply rebuke Job for ever letting such words come out of his mouth. But Eliphaz did not stop to consider that he needed to restrain such words as came from his own mouth.

What does Eliphaz mean by asking, "Are the comforts of God too small for you, or the word that deals gently with you?" (v.11). No doubt he meant that he and his friends had brought the consolations of God to Job, and Job did not appreciate such help. Of course Job did not think their words were gentle. He did not think they were showing him "the comforts of God." No wonder Job said in chapter 16:2, "miserable comforters are you all!"

Why, he asks, do Job's eyes flash the rebellion of his wayward heart, instead of bowing to the charges of the friends? He counts this as turning away from God. It is a charge of heresy against a man who will not bow to his questioners, and such charges are common enough.

Job had indeed opened himself to the charge of casting off fear. His wild words were the opposite of prayer or devotion. His own words, says Eliphaz, confirm what the friends suspect and charge him with: wickedness and godlessness. But when he accuses Job of craftiness, he charges what is untrue. The poor sufferer had poured out his misery with no thought of what it would cost him. Whatever he is, Job is no hypocrite.

The second round of debate now opens with the appeal of Eliphaz. He shows more openly the growing sense in his soul that Job must lack integrity. As before, there is weighty truth in what he presses, and he presses it with great force. But applying it to the sufferer had no ground, and so it was unjust in the highest degree.

Here was where they went astray; they assumed that the present state of the world is an adequate expression of His judgment of men's ways. This assumption runs through the speeches of all three friends. At first they express it fairly calmly. In time it ripens into severity, as Job's passionate outburst resents what they point to more and more as the hidden explanation of the facts.

The friends spoke much of God, but they looked on Him only as a judge. This was a great defect, and the correction is the moral of the whole book. Some make the one question before God now to be whether He marks out what we deserve in this present life. They completely miss the truth. God has taken advantage of the evil that is here to show the grace that is in Himself, above the evil.