Bible Study Chat #25

Job 4:1–21 (NIV)
Eliphaz
4 Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:
2 “If someone ventures a word with you, will you be impatient?
But who can keep from speaking?
3 Think how you have instructed many,
how you have strengthened feeble hands.
4 Your words have supported those who stumbled;
you have strengthened faltering knees.
5 But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged;
it strikes you, and you are dismayed.
6 Should not your piety be your confidence
and your blameless ways your hope?
7 “Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished?
Where were the upright ever destroyed?
8 As I have observed, those who plow evil
and those who sow trouble reap it.
9 At the breath of God they are destroyed;
at the blast of his anger they perish.
10 The lions may roar and growl,
yet the teeth of the great lions are broken.
11 The lion perishes for lack of prey,
and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.
12 “A word was secretly brought to me,
my ears caught a whisper of it.
13 Amid disquieting dreams in the night,
when deep sleep falls on men,
14 fear and trembling seized me
and made all my bones shake.
15 A spirit glided past my face,
and the hair on my body stood on end.
16 It stopped,
but I could not tell what it was.
A form stood before my eyes,
and I heard a hushed voice:
17 ‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God?
Can a man be more pure than his Maker?
18 If God places no trust in his servants,
if he charges his angels with error,
19 how much more those who live in houses of clay,
whose foundations are in the dust,
who are crushed more readily than a moth!
20 Between dawn and dusk they are broken to pieces;
unnoticed, they perish forever.
21 Are not the cords of their tent pulled up,
so that they die without wisdom?’a

a Some interpreters end the quotation after verse 17.
The Holy Bible: New International Version.

 

Originally Posted by catt

Job 4:1-2
Does Eliphaz mean big wind bag?
He seems to put to words the things Job was trying not to say.
It seems like an oration made with one foot on Job's neck.
vs.2. He spoke because he couldn't stop himself.
I have been nervous before, babbling when I should keep my mouth shut.
vs.3. The way to tell someone they are useless, while they are already sick
and grieving.
vs.6. this seems to say 'believe in yourself'. How many times do we hear that one.
No, Job preferred to believe in God only.
Eliphaz is also hinting that Jobe is guilty of some secret offense.
vs.12-17 This is a ghost story.
vs.17-21 How cruel to remind Job that his family was just crushed to death.
Under all this, he is questioning Job's integrity. Like he was saying 'In my expert
opinion, only God is righteous. So, you must have done something wrong.

 

No, actually Eliphaz means, “God is victorious.”

Yes, you've pretty much nailed it. He reminds me of these prosperity teachers who preach the false teaching that if someone is sick and isn't healed it's either because they don't have enough faith or they have some secret unconfessed sin in their life. Here he basically tells Job that while he helped many other people when they were going through trials, now that he was personally going through one, he wasn't applying his own words to himself. He was saying that Job was being a hypocrite. It wouldn't surprise me if all of us who live with chronic pain or illness had heard these kind of things from people who have such a shallow view of God.

I should say though, that while much of what Eliphaz says isn't true, there is some truth in it. That's how Satan has always worked though. He takes a piece of truth and spins lies around it and with it. Eliphaz's other mistake is something most of us do at times too, which is that we tend to think that whatever we believe is ALL the truth and that there are no exceptions whatsoever to it.

If we look closely at what Eliphaz said, it is true that in general God causes the righteous to prosper and punishes the wicked - those who are living in unrepented sin or who aren't saved. The important words in that sentence however, are the words, "in general". This is because the prosperity of the righteous, and the punishment of the wicked, isn't always done in this lifetime. It's also true that God will use our circumstances to discipline us when we sin, and also to point out sin, and it's true that God always causes everything to work out for our good. But just because God will use trials in those ways, doesn't mean that everyone who's going through a trial has some kind of unrepented sin in their life, which is what Eliphaz was saying of Job. His other friends will pick up this same line of thought which is why Job becomes so adamant that he has not sinned.

 

Originally Posted by Fearnot

I am wondering if perhaps Eliphaz was maybe unknowingly listening to a demon, because starting in v12 it says ( opps I started reading this in my KJV because I was soooooo tired and didn't get up for a different version so sorry, I will try to use a different version next time). That's ok hon. there's nothing wrong with the KJV. It's just not the way we talk anymore which makes it harder for us to understand is all.

Anyway, it says "a thing was secretly brought to me, and mine ear recieved a little thereof"

So already it sounds like gossip at the very least ? and maybe demonic at the worst?
Job 4:12 —“A word was secretly brought to me, my ears caught a whisper of it. *

I can see where you might get gossip from that, but gossip doesn't hold up when you read the next verses. They show that it had nothing to do with any other person(s) and couldn't have been gossip.

v14 says:" fear came upon me" ...
well God doesn't usually make us to fear about another person..

it goes on to say he was trembling, his bones were shaking and the hair of his flesh stood up and a 'spirit' passed before his face.

It says 'it' stood still but he couldn't discern the form thereof.....that just doesn't sound human?

Any it seems like 1/2 truths' not to mention it was said ( at least to my way of thinking) mean spiritedly.

Am I off on a wrong tack due to it being the KJV?

 

No, not entirely. You got a lot of it, there are just a few things I'd like to point out and others I'd like to enlarge on for everyone. First, let's read it as a whole:

Job 4:12–16 —“A word was secretly brought to me, my ears caught a whisper of it. *Amid disquieting dreams in the night, when deep sleep falls on men, *fear and trembling seized me and made all my bones shake. *A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end. *It stopped, but I could not tell what it was. A form stood before my eyes, and I heard a hushed voice: *

Now, we'll take it apart, but when we do, it's also important to remember that the original had no verse numbers and didn't even have punctuation. It was like one long sentence. Those were supplied later by the scribes and then the verse numbers by the translators.

As we begin to take this apart, we need to remember the rest of the context - that this is Eliphaz speaking and that he's an older man, respected and well versed in the traditions of his country. That he's speaking to Job as well as two other men who are also leaders in their communities, as Job had been. In other words, he's speaking about spiritual matters that he and the other men are all very familiar with and he's speaking as an "elder". He has just finished lecturing on a theological truth that the righteous are never destroyed, but the wicked are sure to be punished either themselves or through their children. What he was saying to Job was quite true. What wasn't true was that he figured any kind of bad thing happening was punishment, therefore Job had to have done something wicked, or to put it another way, Job must have sinned. OK?

Now he begins to back up what he said by saying he'd had a vision. A word was secretly brought to me, my ears caught a whisper of it. What's unusual about this is that he says simply that a word was brought to him, but he doesn't ever say that it was "the word of the Lord" or "a word from the Lord". All the prophets and everyone who had visions from the Lord, were careful to be sure that was included when they spoke of it, and yet he didn't.

From the way this is being presented by Eliphaz, it seems like he is trying to use this "vision" as a means of proving his opinion, to give his opinion more weight. It's easy for anyone to say they disagree with something said, but when that something has come from a vision, it generally causes people to be more cautious about disagreeing. This seems to fit better with what we know about Eliphaz too. While he was a respected elder in his town, Job was the most respected elder of the whole surrounding area. It sounds to me like this man at least, may have harbored some jealousy that Job was more respected and more knowledgeable then he was, and was taking the opportunity of Job's tragic circumstances to show off. Actually it sounds like he may have been the type to have harbored thoughts that he was better then Job and always had been but the people wouldn't recognize that, and so was secretly glad that Job had been brought down a notch so he could take his rightful place as the "top elder". Know what I mean?

Amid disquieting dreams in the night, when deep sleep falls on men, *fear and trembling seized me and made all my bones shake. This part makes it sound like he'd been having some bad dreams which had awakened him, when it occurred. A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end. This doesn't sound "biblical" at all, at least as far as something an angel might have done. Just the fact that he used the word "spirit" rather then "an angel" is a bit disquieting here. He leaves no doubt though that it was something supernatural and that he believed it was from God. He then says, It stopped, but I could not tell what it was. A form stood before my eyes, and I heard a hushed voice:
Again what we're told is ambiguous. Instead of those listening being able to know instantly that they're hearing a Word from the Lord, it's open to interpretation. It can be taken that way- as a word from the Lord, but it can also be taken to simply be the words of another person or even of his own making. He is stacking up the evidence in such a way that most folks hearing it would assume it's from the Lord as they didn't have the time we're taking to think it through, but doesn't actually say it is so he can't later be said to have lied.

The next verses tell us what this "word" was about and it does back up what he was telling Job before. Again, what he's saying is true, but not ALL the truth, and his application of it is wrong. We know that no one is righteous, therefore no one could be more righteous then God. Since no one is really righteous, no suffering anyone goes through can ever said to be really unjust. That's true. But what he's not remembering is that we are also made in the imagine of God and God who created us is also a God of love, mercy, and grace. Eliphaz was very quick to judge Job and assume he'd sinned so God was punishing him, but I bet that if their positions were reversed, he wouldn't welcome someone saying that to him.

Again, it really sounds like Eliphaz was either making up a "vision" to give his words more weight in the minds of the men that he was talking to; or that he had a dream and he's using that dream to give his opinions more weight. Remember that in those days, mystics and seers were common, especially among the pagans. But even those who worshiped God, living among the pagans, often picked up ideas and ways of living from them.

So, it's a lot like what you said, just in a much longer, drawn out way of saying it