Job 15:5

Job 15 records the second speech of Eliphaz, and we can hear a harsher tone in it. The friends had come to comfort Job, but their efforts soon turned into argument. Their tempers rose and bitterness spoiled their spirits, as each one argued to prove his own point of view. How often over the centuries has this tragedy ended in quarrels and division, and damaged the testimony of God-fearing people, right down to our own day.

He tells Job that his own iniquity makes him speak as he does, and that Job chose crafty words to cover up his sin (v.5). Clearly Eliphaz was condemning Job, yet he claims that he is not the one condemning him — Job's own words are. He never tells Job which words condemned him. He simply uses this sweeping accusation to cancel everything Job had said. Of course this was deeply unfair, but he smugly insists, "Your own lips testify against you" (v.6).

Job had indeed left himself open to the charge of casting off fear. His language was wild, the opposite of prayer or devotion. His own words, says Eliphaz, confirm what the friends suspected and charged him with — wickedness and contempt for God. But when he accuses Job of craftiness, he charges what is untrue. The poor sufferer had poured out his misery with no thought for the consequences. Whatever else he is, Job is no hypocrite.

There could be no more instructive lesson for us about the danger of judging by appearances. It is beyond question a main point in this wonderful book. A quick look at the surface is never the way to reach a right 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 have a whole book given to guarding us from that trap… So in their judgment they saw nothing but a pretence in all Job's talk of longing to draw near to God, and in his confidence that God would clear him of the suspicion they had formed. They went far past the bounds of loving concern, and did not shrink from passing direct judgment.

What is it that God singles out as the right thing? On the surface of the book you might think Job had said as many wrong things about God as the rest of them. A hasty reader would even think Job spoke more rashly than Eliphaz and his two friends. But the truth is that the grace of God is far gentler than men suppose with the wild words a man lets slip under the pressure of a trial as terrible as Job's.

They seemed to stand up for Him and defend His character. Yet under the searching gaze of the all-knowing God, who reads the hearts of men, they fall short. The charges they had brought against His servant Job were false.