For you shall be in league with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with you.
Eliphaz ends his first speech with a promise of a world made friendly — even its rocks and its wild animals. He says it to Job, a man who had just lost his children, his wealth and his health. The words are lovely. But commentators ask whether the man saying them had any right to aim them at Job.
Where the verse falls in the speech
Eliphaz's speech builds to an appeal. He urges Job to bow under God's correcting hand. Then he paints what would follow: safety from famine, war and slander, and this line about the field and its beasts.
William KellyIn the end, Eliphaz advises Job to submit to the chastening hand of God. God would surely rescue him from all evil and bless him with all good. And Eliphaz says this not just for himself, but in the name of his friends, whose full agreement he counts on with confidence.
What the promise itself says
The picture moves from public disasters to private ones, and then out to the land itself.
Samuel RidoutGoing into detail, Eliphaz mentions the worst outward trials: famine and war, even destruction. He also names the inner, bitter pains Job was suffering at that very moment, caused by the biting tongue. No harmful beast can hurt him. When someone is right with God, He makes all things that person's friends. The home of the righteous stands secure. His children will bear witness to the faithfulness of God.
True words, wrong man
Here is the puzzle of the whole speech, and one writer's answer to it.
William KellyGod Himself declares that what they said was not right. Yet the Holy Spirit gives it all by inspiration, and uses the words of one of these men as Scripture. These two things can be reconciled, and very simply. You only have to examine the words of Eliphaz to see that in themselves they contain nothing but truth. But weigh them as applied to Job, and they are inexcusably wrong. The New Testament quotes the words of Eliphaz, in the first letter to the Corinthians and in the letter to the Hebrews — and there the application is perfectly good.
Where Eliphaz got his rule
A promise is only as good as the authority behind it. Eliphaz builds his case on what he has watched happen to people, and then reads Job's disasters by that rule.
F. B. HoleIt is clear that his argument rests for its force mainly on his own powers of observation. In those powers he trusted for his opinion about the meaning of the disasters that had fallen on Job.
Grant puts the same test to the reader:
Leslie M. GrantCan we depend on another person's word so far as to know it is fact? No. We need more than another person's observation. We need the Word of God to be certain about any serious matter.
The right outcome by another road
Job did end up with this restored, peaceful life. What Eliphaz got wrong was not the outcome but the route, and the diagnosis behind it.
Leslie M. GrantIn verses 20 to 27 Eliphaz describes the many blessings that would be Job's if he took his advice. In fact God did give these blessings to Job in the end. It happened after He spoke to Job in chapters 38-41 and broke him down, so that Job judged the pride of his own sinful nature. But Eliphaz had not discerned what Job really needed — the same need that Eliphaz himself had.
Beyond Job: a creation at peace
The world today does not offer this — land and animals that are no threat. Other writers place that state in a coming day, when man's place over creation is put right again.
T. B. BainesAgain, the ferocity of the wild beasts is restrained, and man's supremacy established. All nature is made subject to the Son of Man — the Second Man: "all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea" (Ps. 8:7-8). So "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat … and a little child shall lead them" (Isa. 11:6).
The same hope reaches further than farms and flocks. Ridout carries the verse forward into words the New Testament gives believers:
Samuel Ridout"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us."
Summary
- Peace promised. The verse crowns Eliphaz's picture of a restored life. Field, beasts and home are all at peace with a man who bows to God's correcting hand.
- Peace explained. When someone is right with God, He makes all things that person's friends — even the animals that could harm him.
- Peace misapplied. The words in themselves contain nothing but truth. Aimed at Job, they are inexcusably wrong.
- Peace mis-sourced. Eliphaz built his rule on what he had seen in life. So he could state a true promise and still misread the man in front of him.
- Peace fulfilled. Job did receive these blessings — but only after God Himself spoke, and by a road Eliphaz never understood. The same peace waits for all creation.