Job 22:10

He first reasons backward from the fact of Job's sufferings. He sees this trouble as the result of Job's wickedness. Then he reasons forward. He tells Job that this trouble has come upon him because he has been so wicked. This is true of many people: they argue with no basis in actual fact, but from the viewpoint of their own assumptions. Only established fact can be a true basis for discussion.

He treats it as absurd and insulting to suggest that anything could sway God from His unbending uprightness. So he concludes that Job's wickedness must be extreme, because God's hand has dealt with him so extremely... And if Job sent widows away with nothing, and broke the arms of orphans instead of holding them up, who could wonder that snares were all around him, and sudden terror overwhelming him? Was this not the dreadful warning of a worse judgment still to come?

Proofs? Witnesses? Who needs them, when the theory proves everything so neatly without the trouble of establishing any facts! So, out of his own "inner consciousness," the solemn, gray-haired Eliphaz produces conclusive proof that the suffering friend and patriarch in front of him is a monster of wickedness! From such friendship, and such twisting of the truth, may God deliver us.

Eliphaz asks Job: does not the discipline he is under prove his sin? Would God rebuke a man for being godly — for his reverence for God? So Job's sin is proven! That is an easy way, in a world of suffering, to prove a man is a sinner. But it proves too much, because it takes in every sufferer — the righteous as well as the wicked.

Eliphaz ends his charge by saying that these sins explain why Job is caught as in a snare, and overwhelmed with fear. Can he not see the darkness closing around him, and the flood of waters drowning him?

Job had already admitted in chapter 19 that God had fenced up his way so that he could not pass, and had set darkness on his paths. Eliphaz now turns that confession against him, by asking if he did not see the darkness and the flood of waters covering him.

A man does badly in business, has illness in his family, loses loved ones — and others jump to the conclusion that God is disciplining him for some imagined fault. How cruel this is! It goes against the plain rule that "every charge must be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses." Let us be slow to suspect, and slower still to accuse a man of evil we know nothing about. Leave that to the One who searches hearts.

They seemed to stand up for Him and defend His character. Yet under the searchlight of the all-knowing God, who searches the hearts of men, they fall short. The charges they had brought against His servant Job were false. They had wickedly accused Job, the man God Himself had called "a blameless and upright man." In all their charges they had slandered God.