Job 4:6

He asks Job, "Is not your fear of God your confidence?" Because Job had true reverence toward God, he had confidence about all his former life. He also speaks of Job's integrity — which he knew to be true — as his hope. That is, Job had a right to look forward to the future because of his integrity.

What he says is perfectly true. Job had comforted others in times of distress, and he should have borne up under his own trials. And yet would we not expect some words of sympathy from a friend — a "brother born for adversity"? Would grace not always 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, and it comes out more clearly as he goes on. For Eliphaz, sin and suffering are root and fruit. He knows no classes of suffering and fails to tell the righteous from the wicked, so in the end he proves a false accuser of his friend.

If godly fear was his, as Eliphaz still hoped, why was it not his confidence? Why was the uprightness of his ways not his hope? It is plain that Eliphaz was as ignorant as Job of the source, the character, and the aim of the trial then going on. All he sees is the necessary triumph of righteousness and the irretrievable ruin of the wicked.

Here, we believe, he did put his finger on the weak spot in Job, as the rest of the book shows. God Himself has guaranteed that Job's character and ways were excellent. But that being so, how subtle the trap! It means making them the basis of one's confidence and hope, and building everything on them, before God as well as before men. It is what many a very godly believer has done since the days of Job.

By dwelling on the grace that had worked so much in him and through him, Job lost sight of the source of that grace. He was taken up with its effects... Instead of pointing him to the grace that is in God, Eliphaz threw him more and more back on himself and his ways. That was exactly the error Job had already fallen into.

The verse consists of only two clauses. The true meaning is, "Is not your fear of God your confidence? Is not the uprightness of your ways your hope?"... The fear of God gave him confidence that God would take care of him. "The uprightness of his ways" — yes, he was not a hypocrite; but that is a poor ground after all, when we think of a Christian. Why? Christ is our ground. Our upright ways are not the great spring of our hope. Nothing but Christ gives us firm confidence before God.