Job 15:19

Finally Eliphaz sets before Job what mature and uncorrupted wisdom had found true from the beginning. That was before the voice of strangers brought in the clever distortions they had heard too much of.

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, that there were none to disagree with their conclusions.

Eliphaz was a man who strongly stood for the great value of experience. You know there are people who are very strong for experience. And what about the great and good men who have gone before — is that a standard? No one denies the honour due to elders, at least no person with any sense of propriety. But Eliphaz used it in a wrong manner. He told Job, "You are going against everything the best men who ever lived have held."

He had appealed to tradition before. Now he says that not only tradition, but the men who started it, were on the side of these three men!

Eliphaz next takes the familiar ground of experience and observation. He calls to his aid those wise men whose freedom from any foreign mixture made them especially authoritative. This wisdom, he assures Job, has discovered the wretchedness of the wicked. A sword, like that of Damocles, always hangs over their guilty head; even in outward prosperity the dreadful bell of doom sounds in their ears... Is Eliphaz trying to terrify Job, or is it an echo of the distant fears of his own heart?

Their error was not an unusual one. It happens most among the righteous, who know God but have never been thoroughly broken down about themselves. You still find such people among His own people on the earth. It was common to all three of them, yet there must have been some ground of righteousness in their thinking, as every believer would allow. But here is where they went astray: they assumed that the present state of the world is an adequate expression of God's judgment of men's ways.

There cannot be a more instructive lesson for us about the danger of judging by appearances. It is beyond question a main point in this remarkable book. A quick glance at the surface is never the way to form a righteous judgment, as the Lord Himself warned in His day. If it was wrong in them then, it is far more blameworthy in us. Here we find an entire book devoted to guarding us from such a trap.