Job 4:8

The word literally means to break up the ground for planting. It is also used as a picture of "plotting" wickedness. Job 4:8; Hosea 10:13. Israel, looking back on the trials they went through, says, "The plowers plowed upon my back; they made long their furrows." Psalm 129:3. This surely points to what the blessed Lord suffered on earth, above all the scourging.

These sentences make it clear that Eliphaz was one of those people who argue very much from their own experience. His motto was, "As I have seen." Now, what we have seen may be true enough for us. But it is a total mistake to build a general rule on one person's experience, and thousands still fall into it. What, for instance, had the experience of Eliphaz to do with Job? Perhaps he had never met a case exactly like it. And if there is a single point of difference between the two cases, then the whole argument from experience counts for nothing.

In this speech Eliphaz takes trouble to show Job that everyone on the earth reaps what he sows. "As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same" (Job 4:8). All he says is true in principle, but in Job's case it is false. It is right in itself and wrong in its application. Often the wicked grow old in sin, while the good are cut off in the strength of their youth. The ungodly often live in plenty while those who fear God have to do without the common necessities of life.

But in his next paragraph (verses 7-11) Eliphaz completely misunderstands the situation. He asks, "Who that was innocent ever perished?" ... What about Abel? He perished being innocent. Why, the first disaster recorded after sin entered the world disproved the position Eliphaz took up. The righteous Abel was cut off. So the idea, which he worked out with his picture of the lions, breaks down. Reaping disaster does not always mean that those who reap "plow iniquity and sow trouble."

This harshness shows a wrong principle in Eliphaz, and it comes out more plainly as he goes on. For him sin and suffering are root and fruit. He knows no classes of suffering. He does not tell the righteous apart from the wicked. So in the end he turns out to be a false accuser of his friend.

Quick as thought, Satan gives the thrust he gave to Job: "As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same." "By the breath of God they perish." This is the thin end of Satan's great wedge. 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.

"Whatever one sows, that will he also reap." The sin of sowing weeds may be forgiven, but the reaping must match the sowing. The first is grace, the second is government. Each acts in its own sphere, and neither interferes with the other... God let David walk the courts of the sanctuary as a subject of grace (2 Samuel 12:20). Only later did David climb the rough slopes of the Mount of Olives as a subject of government (2 Samuel 15:30). We may safely say this: David's heart never felt divine grace more deeply than at the very time he was feeling the righteous action of divine government.