Job 22:11

"Therefore," he says, "snares are all around you, and sudden terror overwhelms you; or darkness, so that you cannot see, and a flood of water covers you" (vv.10-11). He first reasons backward from 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 on him because he has been so wicked. Many people do the same. They argue with no basis in actual fact, but from their own assumptions. Only proven fact is a true basis for discussion.

Concluding his charge, Eliphaz declares 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 swallowing him up?

He charges Job with greed and cruelty, and with dealing in a heartless way with widows and the fatherless. Then he tells Job that this is why these snares are around him, and why he is covered with darkness and with the waters of affliction. The astonishing thing is that every word Eliphaz says is a lying invention. Job later gives the clearest proof that all of it was made up. The Lord's own word about Job shows Eliphaz to be a miserable liar. The Lord had said of Job, "there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man." Would the Lord have said that if Job had trampled on the laws of human kindness? Would He have said it if Job had kept water and bread from the destitute, or stripped the clothes off the naked? How could Eliphaz stoop so low? It was the result of his wicked logic.

It is a fair question whether verse 11 closes the first part of the chapter, which is the obvious and common reading, or opens a new and even worse charge. If it opens a new charge, the sense runs like this. Job had already admitted in Job 19 that God had walled up his way so that he could not pass, and had set darkness on his paths. Eliphaz now turns that confession against him. He asks whether Job did not see the darkness and the flood of waters covering him.

Eliphaz describes God, but we get only a cold view of Him. The word of God does the opposite. It presents Him as concerned in all our affairs and closely tied to His creation. There would be no room for the gospel in the one-sided statements of Eliphaz. God is not simply holding the scales of justice as an uninvolved observer, handing out punishment to the one who falls short. If that teaching were true, where would we find room for, "As a Father shows compassion to His children"; "The Lord disciplines the one He loves"; "He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness"?

But even now, is not suspicion of others all too common? A man fails in business. Illness comes into his family. He loses loved ones. Others rush to the conclusion that God is chastening him for faults they have imagined. How cruel this is. It also goes against the plain direction, "Every charge must be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses." Let us be slow to suspect, and slower still to charge someone with an evil we do not know. Leave that to the One who searches hearts.