Job 22:15

In verses 15-18 we have a reference to the flood. Job had just spoken of wicked men who said to God, "Depart from us." Here Eliphaz asks if Job had really taken that to heart, as it was shown in the world before the flood. What men did after the flood, as they lapsed into idolatry, was just what had been done before the flood. Eliphaz is quite right about the root of all their appalling wickedness. It was departure from God, shutting Him out of their lives and even out of their thoughts.

Will you keep to the old way that wicked men walked? They were snatched away before their time, and a flood poured on their foundation. They were saying to God, "Depart from us; and what could the Almighty do for them?" And He filled their houses with good!

A flood swept away their seemingly solid foundations — or, to put it more exactly, turned those foundations into a flood. The meaning is the same either way. There may be a reference to the days of Noah, when people ate and drank, married, and were given in marriage, "until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all."

Eliphaz turns from such contempt for God in horror — and we may believe he is sincere: "The counsel of the wicked be far from me." He is quoting the very words of Job (Job 21:16). Why will he not credit his old friend with the same hatred of evil that he claims for himself? Instead of this, it would almost seem that he is expressing his disgust at Job, associating him with those who defy God.

Job was as sincere in his hatred of that defiance as Eliphaz was, and Eliphaz had no real ground for casting such blame on him. It was the bitter fruit of his hard, narrow, misleading theory of present affliction.

He totally ignores what Job had argued in his answer to Zophar about many wicked men being cut down (ch.21:7-17), for he had no answer for this... He considered that the wicked would be cut down before their time, like Job was being cut down. So he side-steps the truth that many wicked men fill out their lives in pleasure without any trouble falling on them.

Job's point was that God often prospered the wicked, and their judgment only came at the end. Eliphaz insisted that God did step in with judgment, as the flood had shown. Both it seems were right. In our own day we can see the terrible results of men dismissing God from their thoughts and lives. If God is turned out like this, every kind of evil comes in.

Now, my friends, if you have never marked this way before, I ask you earnestly tonight to mark it... For the careless, thoughtless man of the world, who lives in pleasure and sin, I think the question of Eliphaz here is very important... They did not want God. They did not like God. They heard of God, yet they would not take His warnings, spoken through Enoch and Noah.