Job 4 – Eliphaz Speaks: Can the Innocent Perish?
Job's friend offers his first, gentle theory for why Job is suffering.
Responding to the despair of Job 3, Eliphaz the Temanite speaks first among Job's three friends, gently noting that Job has strengthened others in the past and should now draw on that same faith. He argues from experience that the truly innocent do not perish and that suffering points to hidden wrongdoing.
Then Eliphaz, the Themanite, answered, and said:
If we begin to speak to thee, perhaps thou wilt take it ill; but who can withhold the words he hath conceived?
Behold thou hast taught many, and thou hast strengthened the weary hands:
Thy words have confirmed them that were staggering, and thou hast strengthened the trembling knees:
But now the scourge is come upon thee, and thou faintest: It hath touched thee, and thou art troubled.
Where is thy fear, thy fortitude, thy patience, and the perfection of thy ways?
Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished being innocent? or when were the just destroyed?
On the contrary, I have seen those who work iniquity, and sow sorrows, and reap them,
Perishing by the blast of God, and consumed by the spirit of his wrath.
The roaring of the lion, and the voice of the lioness, and the teeth of the whelps of lions, are broken:
The tiger hath perished for want of prey, and the young lions are scattered abroad.
Now there was a word spoken to me in private, and my ears by stealth, as it were, received the veins of its whisper.
In the horror of a vision by night, when deep sleep is wont to hold men,
Fear seized upon me, and trembling, and all my bones were affrighted:
And when a spirit passed before me, the hair of my flesh stood up.
There stood one whose countenance I knew not, an image before my eyes, and I heard the voice, as it were, of a gentle wind.
Shall man be justified in comparison of God, or shall a man be more pure than his maker?
Behold, they that serve him are not steadfast, and in his angels he found wickedness:
How much more shall they that dwell in houses of clay, who have an earthly foundation, be consumed as with the moth?
From morning till evening they shall be cut down: and because no one understandeth, they shall perish for ever.
And they that shall be left, shall be taken away from them: they shall die, and not in wisdom.