You have sent widows away empty, and the arms of the fatherless were crushed.
Eliphaz has lost patience with Job. In his last speech he stops hinting and starts naming crimes. The worst of them is cruelty to widows and orphans. The charge sounds specific enough to be true. So where did Eliphaz get it?
An Accusation With No Evidence Behind It
These are the crimes Eliphaz lays at Job's door — and the question he never answers.
Samuel RidoutJob has taken away his brother's goods on a false claim! He has stripped the poor of his last covering! He has refused water to the fainting and bread to the starving! Widows and orphans have been driven away by this heartless monster! Proofs? Witnesses? What need of these, when the theory proves it all so satisfactorily without the trouble of establishing facts!
The problem runs deeper than missing evidence. Eliphaz also blames Job for failing to give water and food to those who needed it.
Leslie M. GrantHow did Eliphaz know this? He would have to be acquainted with all Job's life to have any such knowledge. Of course God knew what Job had done and what he had not done. Evidently Eliphaz thought that he shared God's knowledge!
The Theory Came First, the Charges Second
Eliphaz is not reporting; he is working backwards. He begins with Job's disaster, concludes there must be sin, and then supplies the sin.
Leslie M. GrantHe first reasons backward from the fact of Job's sufferings, seeing this trouble as the result of Job's wickedness. Then he reasons forward, telling Job that because he has been so wicked this trouble has come upon him. This is true of many people: they argue with no basis of actual fact, but from the viewpoint of their own suppositions. Only established fact can rightly be a true basis of discussion.
Once a man has decided in advance what he is looking at, the ordinary restraints fall away one by one.
William KellyProvoked by such a clinching answer to his argument, he now clearly charges Job with hidden evil. A man who suspects on the strength of appearances will soon stop needing even appearances.
The Exact Reverse of the Real Man
God Himself had already testified about Job's character at the start of the book. That settles the matter before Eliphaz opens his mouth.
F. B. HoleEliphaz plunged into a series of accusations against Job. In the light of the testimony God bore to him at the start of the story, they must have been completely unfounded. Eliphaz did not deal in vague insinuations. He asserted Job's wrongdoing towards the needy, the naked, the weary, the hungry, the widow and the fatherless. In Job 29 Job answers these things, and is just as explicit in declaring how well he had acted towards these very people.
Job's own account matches, point for point, what Eliphaz denied of him.
William KellyAnd was not Job the deliverer of the poor, the orphan, the perishing, and the widow? Indeed this field of his kind and righteous activity was large. As he put on justice, so did it fit Job, and judgement suited him like a robe and turban. He was eyes to the man who had none, and feet to the lame, and a father to the needy. He refused no trouble to search out a case he did not know.
Why the Widow and the Fatherless Weigh So Much
Eliphaz says the arms of the fatherless were crushed. He struck at the people God guards most closely.
Edward DennettOf all the helpless ones who appeal to our compassion, the widow and the fatherless have the first claim. God surrounds them with the powerful defence of His own arm... Throughout the whole of Scripture these two groups are always marked out as the special object of God's care. So they should be the objects of our compassionate concern. James says, "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world."
The Same Habit in Us
This habit did not die with Eliphaz.
Samuel RidoutBut even now, is suspicion of others not all too common? A man is unsuccessful in business, has illness in his family, loses loved ones. The hasty conclusion is that God is chastening him for some imagined faults. How cruel this is, and how contrary to the plain direction that two or three witnesses must establish every charge. Let us be slow to suspect, and slower still to charge unknown evil, leaving that to the Searcher of hearts.
Summary
- Theory. Eliphaz starts from a rule: suffering proves sin. He works backwards from it, so the accusations serve the theory, not the facts.
- Invention. He offers no proof, no witness, no date. To know what he claims to know, he would need God's own knowledge of Job's whole life.
- Escalation. A man who suspects on appearances soon stops needing even appearances. He moves from hints to flat charges of hidden evil.
- Inversion. Job was in fact the deliverer of the poor, the orphan and the widow — eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, a father to the needy.
- Caution. Widows and orphans are God's special care. Be slow to suspect, slower to accuse, and leave hidden evil to the Searcher of hearts.