Job 4:3

Eliphaz no doubt thought his remarkable knowledge and skill in speaking would help Job. But his diagnosis of Job's illness was completely wrong. He begins gently and kindly... Then he rightly reminds Job that he had instructed many. He had strengthened weak hands. His words had supported those who stumbled, and he had strengthened the feeble knees. Since this was true, should Eliphaz not have given proper weight to such fine character in Job, and shown some real appreciation of it?

What he says is completely true. Job had comforted others in their distress, and he should have held up under his own trials. Yet would we not expect some words of sympathy from a friend — a "brother born for adversity"? Would not grace ever teach us to "weep with those who weep"? The blessed Man of Sorrows did not scold sufferers like this. Human sorrow moved Him with compassion, even to tears. This harshness shows a wrong principle in Eliphaz.

Why did Eliphaz not do as he says Job had done in the past, strengthening the weak hands and upholding those who stumbled? It is easy for us to discern what we think is wrong in another without providing for him what might be for his help.

Simple, all this — to see and say it about someone else! With the chill and the shadow on us, is it always so easy?... It is the same for more than Job. At the critical moment, when the demand comes for us to show strength, there is nothing but weakness. The arguments we ourselves used with others still stand where they did, but they do not help. They have not been refuted, but they do not comfort us. We need more than argument: the living strength of the God of strength alone is enough in the day of personal need. And then, perhaps, we realise a terrible thing: how much of the energy that carried us along was not that strength at all.

And now Satan renews the attack through friend Eliphaz. He shoots poisoned arrows through his lips, in chapter 4:3-8. "You have instructed many." It is terrible when Satan can fix a poor believer's thoughts on himself. "What!" he says, "is this you? You, who profess so much — you who instruct others — you who are looked up to?"... It is the first hint that Job is a hypocrite. We shall find this wedge driven, blow after blow, as we go on in the book.

The furnace usually has to set saints right. It reduces or silences some impatience, selfishness or complaint... Job was overcome. Trouble touched him and he fainted, though he had often strengthened weak hands and held up falling people with his words. "The strongest are knocked off their feet," as an old writer says. Peter sleeps in the garden, and in the judgment hall tells lies and swears to them. But there has been One whom the furnace, heated seven times, proved to be precious beyond expression.