Job 15:18

Eliphaz had shown mankind in general to be "abominable and filthy." Now he dwells on the character and actions of wicked men. So he does make a distinction between the wicked and the righteous. But he wants to compare Job to the wicked man. "I will tell you, hear me," he says, implying that this was the instruction Job needed. For he was depending on what wise men had told, receiving it from their fathers. This shows again that tradition was most important to Eliphaz. He says, "no stranger passed among them" — that is, there were none to disagree with their conclusions.

As we open Job 5, we find Eliphaz continuing on this note and again he refers to what he had seen. Verse 3 begins, "I have seen…". Turn to Job 15, which holds his second speech, and again we find him saying, "what I have seen I will declare" (verse 17). So his argument stands or falls mainly on his own powers of observation. In those powers he trusted for his opinion of the meaning of the calamities that had fallen upon Job.

Eliphaz was a man who strongly stood for the great value of experience. Are the great and good men who have gone before us a standard? No one with any decency denies the honour due to elders. But Eliphaz used that honour in the wrong way. He told Job, "Why, you are going against everything the best men who ever lived have held. Are you the first man? Are you as old as the hills, talking like this, as if you knew better than these most excellent men, older than your father?"

Their error was not unusual at all. You find it most among the righteous, who know God but have never been thoroughly broken down about themselves. You still find such people among His own on the earth. But here is where they went astray. They assumed that the present state of the world is an adequate expression of His judgment of men's ways.

So tradition said, "The wicked man writhes with pain all his days" (v.20). Of course Job was writhing with pain, so this was another cruel thrust at Job… "In prosperity the destroyer comes upon him" (v.21). Trouble came upon Job suddenly while he was enjoying prosperity. So Eliphaz concluded that Job must be a wicked man. He did not stop to consider that others besides wicked men had trouble too.

One of the wonderful ways of God is this: no tradition can ever meet present circumstances. Even the same facts may occur, but they stand in a different light. The circumstances change them greatly, and you have to take all of that into account.

Eliphaz tried to comfort Job. He presented his own observation as a conclusive witness that he was right in what he said (ch. 4:8). Bildad came after him. He appealed to the tradition handed down from older men as a reliable witness. Then Zophar virtually told Job that he was right because his own intuition told him so! All this was in vain. Elihu alone insisted that mankind is totally ignorant of God unless God reveals Himself. Now God can speak!