Job 22King James Version
Eliphaz, third round. This time he invents specific sins he imagines Job must have committed: you took garments of the naked for pledges, you did not give water to the weary. It is pure slander. Return to the Almighty, he says, as if Job had not been begging for just that.
Eliphaz speaks for the third time, and now he stops suggesting Job sinned and starts specifying. He accuses Job directly: stripping collateral from the poor, withholding water from the thirsty, refusing bread to the hungry, sending widows away empty, crushing the arms of orphans. He tells Job to remove iniquity far from him and return to the Almighty. If he does, gold will be dust to him, and God will be his gold.
Eliphaz has moved from insinuation to invention. Unable to reconcile Job's suffering with his proclaimed innocence, he fabricates specific sins to fit his theology.
5: "Is not thy wickedness great? and thine iniquities infinite?" Eliphaz has been building to this accusation since chapter 4. He does not have evidence. He has a system that requires guilt, and so he supplies it.
The social sins Eliphaz describes, stripping collateral, refusing water and bread to the vulnerable, dismissing widows, crushing orphans, were the specific sins the wisdom tradition identified as the wickedness of the powerful. They were the marks of the oppressor class in Israelite and Near Eastern social teaching. By using these categories, Eliphaz is placing Job in the worst possible moral category.
Eliphaz speaks in his third and final address. His accusations against Job are specific and entirely fabricated: stripping the poor, abusing widows, crushing orphans. These are the opposite of what chapter 1 tells us about Job. Job does not speak in this chapter.
This is the nadir of the friends' case. Eliphaz is not arguing from evidence; he is arguing from necessity. His theology requires Job to have sinned, so he lists sins. The irony is excruciating: the man who opened with the most pastoral and measured speech now ends with accusations he invented.
Being falsely accused of the exact opposite of who you are is a particular form of suffering. Job spent his life defending the poor and protecting widows, and now a man he respected is naming those very acts as crimes he committed.
1Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said,
2Can a man be profitable unto God, as he that is wise may be profitable unto himself?
3Is it any pleasure to the Almighty, that thou art righteous? or is it gain to him, that thou makest thy ways perfect?
4Will he reprove thee for fear of thee? will he enter with thee into judgment?
5Is not thy wickedness great? and thine iniquities infinite?
6For thou hast taken a pledge from thy brother for nought, and stripped the naked of their clothing.
7Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink, and thou hast withholden bread from the hungry.
8But as for the mighty man, he had the earth; and the honourable man dwelt in it.
9Thou hast sent widows away empty, and the arms of the fatherless have been broken.
10Therefore snares are round about thee, and sudden fear troubleth thee;
11Or darkness, that thou canst not see; and abundance of waters cover thee.
12Is not God in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the stars, how high they are!
13And thou sayest, How doth God know? can he judge through the dark cloud?
14Thick clouds are a covering to him, that he seeth not; and he walketh in the circuit of heaven.
15Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden?
16Which were cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflown with a flood:
17Which said unto God, Depart from us: and what can the Almighty do for them?
18Yet he filled their houses with good things: but the counsel of the wicked is far from me.
19The righteous see it, and are glad: and the innocent laugh them to scorn.
20Whereas our substance is not cut down, but the remnant of them the fire consumeth.
21Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace: thereby good shall come unto thee.
22Receive, I pray thee, the law from his mouth, and lay up his words in thine heart.
23If thou return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up, thou shalt put away iniquity far from thy tabernacles.
24Then shalt thou lay up gold as dust, and the gold of Ophir as the stones of the brooks.
25Yea, the Almighty shall be thy defence, and thou shalt have plenty of silver.
26For then shalt thou have thy delight in the Almighty, and shalt lift up thy face unto God.
27Thou shalt make thy prayer unto him, and he shall hear thee, and thou shalt pay thy vows.
28Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall be established unto thee: and the light shall shine upon thy ways.
29When men are cast down, then thou shalt say, There is lifting up; and he shall save the humble person.
30He shall deliver the island of the innocent: and it is delivered by the pureness of thine hands.