Job 4 explained: A Friend's First Hard Words

Eliphaz speaks carefully (vv. 1-6)

Eliphaz, one of the three friends who came to sit with Job, asks if he may speak, then reminds Job that he once steadied many people who were falling apart. Now he hints that Job cannot take his own advice, and that a truly good man should feel secure in his goodness.

Do the innocent ever perish? (vv. 7-11)

Eliphaz states his core belief that people reap what they sow, so ruin comes to the wicked and never to the innocent. The starving, scattered lions picture powerful wrongdoers brought down, though the book's ending says this tidy view was wrong about Job (42:7).

A whisper in the night (vv. 12-16)

To support his view, Eliphaz describes a frightening night experience: a spirit glides past, his hair stands on end, and a shadowy figure speaks in a hushed voice. He presents it as a message from beyond, which gives his words extra authority.

No one is pure before God (vv. 17-21)

The voice says no human can be more righteous than God, and if even God's heavenly servants fall short, then frail people do too, living in bodies like houses of dried mud and crushed more easily than a moth. Their lives can end within a single day, like a tent pulled down, and while the last line is hard to translate, it seems to say they die without ever gaining wisdom.

Key verse: Job 4:7

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on how to treat Eliphaz's vision: some see its message as a real truth about human frailty that he wrongly applied to Job, while others see the whole speech, vision included, as the kind of mistaken thinking the book sets out to overturn.

Something to think about

Why do you think people so often look for a reason behind someone else's misfortune?