who does great things and unsearchable, marvelous things without number:
Eliphaz, one of Job's three friends, has just told Job to take his case to God, and verse 9 is his reason: God works on a scale no one can measure or count. The words are true — so the chapter asks a harder question: can a man use true words about God to wound someone who is suffering?
The advice itself is sound
Verse 9 backs up the advice of verse 8, and on its own that advice points Job in the right direction:
Samuel RidoutIt is always good to advise men to trust in God, for He never fails those who trust in Him. "Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him." "Cast your burden on the LORD." He is powerful, good and kind. He can lift up those who are bowed down. He refreshes their dried-up spirits as the rain refreshes thirsty ground. So taken on its own, this advice is good. But the assumption underneath it is that Job is suffering for his sins. Given that, it can only irritate. It is all the more subtle because it comes so near the truth — as Job will learn in due time.
What "unsearchable" carries with it
The verse does not only place God beyond human search. The lines just after it speak of rain and of lifting up the poor, and that makes the picture a generous one:
William KellySo Job should accept his suffering from God and turn to Him in prayer. God is not only great beyond anything a creature can search out. He is also generous — and generous in a moral way to the lowest and most wretched, just as surely as He defeats the crafty and the strong.
Half the case, presented as the whole
Eliphaz describes a God who sends rain and raises the lowly. Job was not rising; suffering was crushing him. That gap is where the argument turns against him:
Leslie M. GrantHe goes on speaking truly of how great God is. God does great things, unsearchable and marvellous. He sends rain to bless man, and He lifts the lowly to places of honour (vv. 9-11). But Job at the time was not lifted up, so Eliphaz thought Job was not right with God!
The picture is also selective. Eliphaz names rain as a mercy, and it is. But rain is not always mercy:
William KellyBut does not God sometimes try people? The rains are not only for fruitful seasons, but can destroy the fruit. The rains may greatly try the poor farmer and the labourer, and it may all turn out quite the other way. What we find in these men is entirely one-sided argument. It is not the whole case at all; it is never the full case. It is not the judge speaking; it is merely the advocate — and in this case Job was the poor defendant.
Where Eliphaz got his authority
Where does Eliphaz get his confidence? He keeps pointing back to what he has seen for himself:
F. B. HoleIn Job 5 Eliphaz keeps to this note, and again he points to what he had seen. Verse 3 begins, "I have seen …". In his second speech he says again, "what I have seen I will declare" (Job 15:17). So his argument rests mainly on his own powers of observation. He trusted those powers for his opinion about what Job's disasters meant.
Yet this verse calls God's works unsearchable. Eliphaz judged by what one man could watch.
True words, wrong target
So how can words that brought a rebuke turn up later as Scripture? The answer is simple:
William KellyOne only has to examine the words of Eliphaz to see that in themselves they contain nothing but truth. But if we weigh them as applied to Job, they are inexcusably wrong… The New Testament quotes the words of Eliphaz in both the first letter to the Corinthians and the letter to the Hebrews. There the application is perfectly right. In the history given in the Old Testament the application was wrong, and the speakers were reproved for it.
The same holds for the whole speech, which ends in real comfort even while resting on a false charge:
Arno C. GaebeleinThe first address of Eliphaz closes with a marvellous climax built on the same wrong assumption — that Job had sinned and must seek God. But Job had not renounced God; he had not left Him. Apart from that, this closing statement shows the gracious power of the Almighty in a most blessed way.
Summary
- True. God does great works beyond counting. The sentence itself needs no correction.
- Generous. "Unsearchable" does not only mean far off. The God no one can search out is generous, and generous to the lowest.
- Partial. Eliphaz names the rain that blesses and leaves out the rain that ruins. He argues like an advocate against Job, not like a judge weighing the whole case.
- Borrowed. His confidence rests on what he had seen himself. That is a weak base for judging a God whose works cannot be searched out.
- Misapplied. The New Testament quotes these words as Scripture, and there they fit. Aimed at Job, they were wrong. A true statement about God becomes a weapon when aimed at the wrong person.