Job 22 - Paining pictures - bad ones

Eliphaz re-enters the fray. Again the theology is good as far as it goes. God is completely independent of man. Verse 3 is, however, wrong. The Lord does derive pleasure from a man being righteous. The whole problem in the Bible is that man is not righteous (Psalm 14:3; Rom 3:10). God has sent Jesus so that we can be righteous, and when He has completed His work in us He will be pleased. Moreover, we see examples of God being pleased with men and women when they show faith in Him. In fact, right at the beginning of Job we see that God is pleased with Job. We need to be God focused, but we also need to realise how man-focused God is.

Eliphaz then launches into a diatribe against Job. From what we know of Job it is likely that, while of course he was not sinless, most of this is complete rubbish. Then in the final part Eliphaz urges Job to return to God, to learn from Him.

So what are we to make of all this? First we need to be aware of the human tendency to blame people. No answer was being found to Job's problems, so Eliphaz strays into a totally unwarranted attack on him. We can easily paint totally unjustified pictures in our minds of people. We paint a picture which can then, in our minds, easily explain all that is happening, usually what is happening to someone else. This may satisfy us, but it is usually wrong. We need to realise that we do not fully understand any man and we certainly do not fully understand God (1 Cor 2:11; Prov 20:5).

So Eliphaz needs to be more careful. But Job can also learn. Despite the tosh in v4-11 there is good advice in the latter part of the chapter. When we are suffering we need to realise that others will not understand what we are going through, nor what God is doing. Our natural reaction is then to be angry or hurt when they display this lack of understanding. This is natural because we are indeed hurt. However, we should try and get over that, for there can still be nuggets of gold in what people say, there can still be things that God can use to help us.