Job 4:7

Eliphaz had told Job he was a pious and righteous man (verse 6). And now he tells him: "Remember: who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off?" Only those who plow iniquity and sow wickedness reap what they have sown. God makes them perish in His wrath. They are cut off even if they were like strong lions. What dogmatic logic! Job, if you are righteous and suffering like this, then God has no justice at all. But if God is just, then you have plowed iniquity and sown wickedness, and all your suffering is your own harvest.

But while these things are true, generally, Eliphaz has lost all distinction between the righteous and the wicked, and presses Job into a dilemma which he is already beginning to feel — either he or God is unjust!

These sentences make it clear. Eliphaz belonged to that class of people who argue mainly from their own experience. His motto was, "As I have seen." Now, what we have seen may be all true enough, so far as we are concerned. But it is a total mistake to build a general rule on one person's experience. It is a mistake thousands make. What, for instance, had the experience of Eliphaz to do with Job? Perhaps he had never met a case just like it. And if there is a single point of difference between the two cases, then the whole argument from experience counts for nothing.

"Remember: who that was innocent ever perished?" — now he comes to his false comfort... Well, what about Abel? I am beginning early enough in the Bible, and with a clear example... there was Abel that perished. We are speaking about perishing in this world. Job never had a question about the next, and they were looking not at the next world but at this. It is not a question of faith at all. It was a question of sight. They were drawing all their conclusions from what they saw. That is always a false ground for a believer... Abel was righteous, and the unrighteous man cut him off. Abel was completely guiltless. Cain could not endure it, because the LORD accepted Abel's offering.

No doubt he knew nothing of Genesis, since that book was likely not written in his day. Yet people still knew ancient things through tradition they had kept with care. What about Abel? He perished being innocent. The first disaster recorded after sin entered the world disproved the position Eliphaz took up.

He had no evidence at all that Job had sinned, but he treated Job's condition as evidence enough that he must have sinned. He says, "Who that was innocent ever perished?" But Job had not perished. "Where were the upright cut off?" But Job was not cut off... there was not the slightest sign that this applied to Job. God called him "a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil" (Job 1:8).

There surely, if anywhere, is the pattern of all perfection in this world. Was He to pass through without suffering? Would the serpent spare Him?... God's first revelation about the Seed of the woman, the coming Deliverer, should have guarded them, like others, from the sad mistake the book of Job sets out to correct. It is a bruised One that is to bruise Satan finally... Does suffering, even suffering no one can match, mean there was evil in Him? Not at all. So the theory is false. The theory says the only cause of a man's suffering in this world is evil that God sees in him. And the measure of truth in it does not make the falsehood less harmful. It makes it more harmful.