Job 15:3

Eliphaz shows less self-restraint here than in his first speech. Then he at least spoke with some consideration for Job. Now he flatly accuses him of gross sin and hypocrisy. He says in effect: if Job thought himself wise, why did he speak with empty knowledge, his words like the east wind? Eliphaz does not answer what Job has said. He accuses him of unprofitable talk and speeches that can do no good (vv.2-3). He tells Job that he casts off fear and holds back prayer before God. But Job's words showed a very real fear, and he had prayed to God in front of his friends. What was Eliphaz talking about?

He never tells Job which words condemned him. He simply uses one sweeping accusation to wipe out everything Job had said.

Arguing with speech that avails not, / And with words in which is no profit.

Is it wisdom, he asks, for a man who claims to be wise to pour out empty words like a blast of the east wind — something dry and withering? Job's uncontrolled language did leave him open to the charge of casting off fear. It was the opposite of prayer or devotion.

The second round of speeches opens with the appeal of Eliphaz. He now shows less restraint about 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 this sufferer had no ground at all, and so it was unjust in the highest degree.

But when he accuses Job of craftiness, the charge is untrue. The poor sufferer had poured out his misery without caring what it would cost him. Whatever else Job is, he is no hypocrite.

This speech of Eliphaz is short, for he felt that he was a wise man reasoning with unprofitable talk, and listening to speeches that were worth nothing. Job, he thought, was casting off fear — or as another version puts it, making godliness of no effect — and so holding back prayer. In his view, godliness paid: it brought God's favour, shown in prosperity here on earth. If it did not, where was the practical gain of godliness?

Here is where they went astray. They assumed that the way the world looks now is a fair expression of God's judgment on men's ways. We find this assumption running through the speeches of the three friends. At first they voiced it fairly calmly, but in the end it ripened into severity.

No lesson teaches us more than this one about the danger of judging by appearances. It is without question a main point in this remarkable book. A quick look at the surface is never the way to reach a righteous judgment. The Lord Himself warned of this in His day. If it was wrong in them then, it is far more blameworthy in us.

Underneath there was faith. Job's trust in God was far stronger and truer than that of anyone who blamed him, and God did bring that out in the end.