“Teach me, and I will be silent; make me understand how I have gone astray.
Eliphaz has hinted that suffering like Job's must come from hidden sin. Job answers with an offer no guilty man would make: name the fault, and I will stop talking.
The plain force of the appeal
Job gives no ground here. He asks for proof, and promises to listen if it comes.
Leslie M. GrantIf they had something profitable and true to teach him, Job would willingly hold his tongue and listen. If he had erred as they supposed, why did they not tell him in what way he had erred (v.24). Right words would have been forceful and effective, but their arguments proved nothing (v.25).
Hints instead of real charges
The request marks a turn in Job's speech. The failure it exposes is not unique to Job's friends.
F. B. HoleAt verse 24 a more direct appeal begins. He challenged his friends to stop hinting and make a direct charge. He was right to say, "How forcible are right words," but what did Eliphaz's arguing or scolding achieve? Among Christians, vague hints or even accusations have often done damage. "Right words," based on specific facts, would have proved forceful and done good.
The one thing Job wanted
In the verses just before, Job lists the favours he never asked for: money, rescue, ransom. Against that list, what he does ask for is small. The wording below is from an older translation.
William KellyHe says, "It is not that I need anything at all. Yet you are treating me as if I were someone wanting to draw on you in my trouble. No, I ask nothing of you except that you should not misjudge me." "Did I say, Bring to me? or, Give a reward for me of your substance? or, Deliver me from the enemy's hand? or, Redeem me from the hand of the mighty? Teach me, and I will hold my tongue; and cause me to understand where I have erred."
Why their teaching taught nothing
Job asks for a real test. But his friends start from a false rule, and they test the wrong material: the cries of a man in agony.
Samuel RidoutJob now asks that true tests be applied to his own case. Let them prove, according to their rigid rule of "punishment for sin," that he is the sinner. Theories are all very well in their place, but if based on false premises they utterly fail. "How forcible are right words!" Let them teach him in line with the truth, and he will be silent. But what is all their arguing worth? They are taking his poor, rash, desperate words, forced out of him by his suffering. They treat them as if they were the carefully weighed statements of someone putting forward some philosophical principle.
The error they could never have named
Job is right that they cannot point to the sin they imagine. But he is wrong to conclude there is nothing left to learn, and the thing he has missed is not on their list either.
William Kelly"Return, I pray you, let it not be iniquity" — he begs them to come back to a sound judgment of the case. Their poor friend had been put to a tremendous trial, and he could not see why it had come upon him. "Let it not be iniquity." It has nothing to do with that. He had to learn that his own righteousness, however real, could be no ground. He needed the righteousness of God to stand on, though he hardly knew how that could be.
The same words, addressed higher
Later in the book another speaker, Elihu, puts almost this same prayer into Job's mouth — aimed at God instead of at men.
Leslie M. GrantElihu indicates that God was testing Job. If Job was failing the test, he must be tested further. Could Job not say to God, "I have borne correction; I will offend no more. Teach me what I do not see. If I have done wrong, I will do it no more"? It was plain that Job did not see the reasons for God's dealing with him. Why not then humbly appeal to God to teach him, rather than criticise God?
Summary
- Teach — Job's whole request is teachable silence: show the fault, and the arguing stops. He asks for nothing else from his friends, not money, not rescue, only that they stop misjudging him.
- Specifics — "Right words" carry force because they rest on facts. Insinuation without a named charge proves nothing and does real damage, then and now.
- Premises — Their rule was false. They assumed all suffering is punishment for sin, and a theory built on a wrong foundation proves nothing.
- Allowance — They weighed the cries of a man in torment as if he were arguing a case. Words wrung out by pain call for compassion, not cross-examination.
- Direction — The prayer was right; the audience was wrong. Elihu later urges Job to say "teach me what I do not see" to God. God's lesson was one no friend had named: Job's own righteousness, however real, was no ground to stand on.