Eliphaz’ Second Indictment, and Job’s Humiliation

“Humble yourselves... under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.”’ — 1 Peter v. 6. “Then answered Eliphaz ... Thine own mouth condemneth thee, and not I.’’ — Chap. xv. 1, 6.

pees again speaks, and charges Job with doing away with the fear of God, he is diminishing ‘‘ devotion” (v. 4, m.) by liberty of speech in addressing Him. The language he uses proves his iniquity; his tongue is crafty; his own lips testify against him; he condemns himself by his own mouth (v. 5, 6).

Once more Eliphaz employs the weapon of sarcasm in dealing with the stricken man. “Art thou the first man that was born?’ ‘* Dost thou hearken in the council of God,’ and assume that thou alone art wise (v. 7, 8, m.)? ‘* What knowest thou, that we know not? What understandest thou, which is not inus?’’ he says, “‘ With us are both the grayheaded and the very aged men, much elder than thy father’ (v. 9, 10)!

Eliphaz appeals to age as proof of wisdom. Did Job presume to think he knew more of God than these aged men. *“Us” said Eliphaz! Ah, this “us”? meets us again and again in every human story. ‘‘ He followeth not us!” cry the disciples to the Lord in after years.:

“Do you presume to know more than we know,” cries Eliphaz to Job? ‘Tradition; age; the voice of the majority; all this carries weight. Will you — one man — stand out against the united conclusions of all of us? Is there any secret sin with thee, Job, and ‘‘ why doth thine heart carry thee away”? (v. 12)? that ‘‘ thou turnest thy spirit against God”, for God is with us, and the ‘“‘ consolations of God” we are offering thee seem too little for thee (v. 11), even “‘ the word that dealeth gently with thee |”

Eliphaz continues that he did not think a man could be righteous before God (v. 14), a God so holy that even the heavens were not clean in His sight, ‘‘ how much less that which is abominable and corrupt, a man that drinketh iniquity like water” (v.15; 16, m.).

This is an echo of the spirit-voice that Eliphaz relied upon as his authority for dealing with Job, and the language proves that ‘‘ visions”? given to the soul by the Adversary do not result in deliverance from the power of sin, whereas the Holy Spirit reveals the truth of God for the one purpose of freeing the sinner from his sins.

Moreover the devil often makes use of a half-truth to blind his captives. He is quite satisfied that Eliphaz should believe in the utter corruption of fallen man if thereby he will remain in it, and continue to “‘ drink iniquity like water ’’.

The message of the gospel comes to fallen man, and offers to make him a mew creature. He is bidden to take his place in Christ upon His Cross, and ‘“‘ put off... the old man, which is corrupt ’’, and ‘‘ put on the new man.... created in righteousness and holiness of truth”’.

Taught of God, Job, offering the burnt offerings commanded him, had learnt in experience the way to God, although he could not have explained it in New Testament language. The words he uses show that he clearly knew what he was in himself, but he also knew in his heart that he had access to God, and had walked before Him with the witness in his soul of integrity and truth, being kept by Jehovah Himself from all that he knew to be evil.

It was this confidence that the friends did not understand, for they measured him by their own knowledge and experience.

Eliphaz is not able to do more than assert that man is too corrupt and filthy to hope to stand righteous before God. He had been taught it by a spirit-vision, but he cannot explain it further, so he will keep to the line of things he does understand, to the tradition he has been taught by the fathers (v. 17-19). He will describe again to Job the portion of the wicked man, the one who defies God and behaves himself proudly against El-Shaddai (v. 25).

Authentic tradition, carefully preserved and handed down from the fathers, as well as his own eyesight, proved that the wicked travailed in pain all his days (v. 20); he was always in terror; he had no prosperity (v. 21); no bread (v. 23); no permanent home (v. 28, m.); no riches (v. 29); no fruit (v. 33, 34); in fact nothing but distress, anguish and darkness (v. 24), because he bade defiance to the Almighty.

Job’s reply to Eliphaz “I have heard many such things; wearisome comforters are ye

all.”’ — Chap. xvi. 2, m.

“* Miserable comforters’? in truth these men were to the afflicted Job. If you were in my place, and ‘‘ if your soul were in my soul’s stead, I could join words together against you, and shake my head at you,” he replies to Eliphaz (v. 4).

“It is so easy,” cries Job, ‘‘ when we are not in the furnace ourselves, to ‘ talk to the grief’* of those who are suffering”*!

It is true that we can only minister the comfort of God to others, so far as we ourselves have realized it in our own lives. This was the secret of Paul’s tactful tenderness with suffering souls. He understood that he was being fitted by his afflictions to minister to others. ‘* Whether we be afflicted, it is for your comfort,” he writes to the Corinthians, and ‘‘ whether we be comforted, it is for your comfort, which worketh in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer ’’.t

But — said Job to Eliphaz — if you had been in my place, suffering as I am, I should have tried to strengthen you with my mouth, not cast you down and condemn you; I would have sought to assuage your grief with consoling speech (v. 5), instead of callous reasonings and philosophisings over the greatness of God, and the corruption of man, and telling me I was only being given what I deserved!

Alas, what ‘‘ miserable comforters’? we children of God oft-times are! Though we live in the full light of the gospel, and in the knowledge of Him Who was made ‘“perfect through suffering ’’, many of us still have hidden in our hearts the very same thoughts as those of the friends of Job, and are disposed to make freedom from suffering a test — for

others and ourselues — of being “‘ right with God”. ‘‘ Christ bore our sorrows,” we say, “‘ He took the Cross that we might be free from a cross’’. Ah, how little do we understand the deepest purposes of God in the stupendous sacrifice of His Son upon the Cross of Calvary. * Psalm lxix. 26, A.V. pee Core tebe

Christ bore our sorrows, it is true, but it was that we might enter into His sorrows over the world and His people; He took the Cross to bring us into fellowship with Him in the Cross, and He gives us deliverance from our own burdens, so that we might be free to share His burden of souls, and, in our measure, fill up the afflictions of Christ for His body’s sake, the Church.

For this we need to be broken down on every side, so that we might lose the hardness that is ours in dealing with our fellow-men.

Fob’s faith in God ““He hath made me weary: Thou hast made me desolate ...

Thou hast laid fast hold on me.”’ — Chap. xvi. 7, 8.

After this complaint of the hard dealings of his friends, Job goes on to repeat that he knows he is in the hand of God.

Though I speak, or not, it is all the same, he says, I am not eased (v. 6); He hath made me weary, yea, it is even God Who hath allowed my friends thus to deal with me, and leave me desolate and without human sympathy (v. 7). In my hour of trial ‘‘ Mine adversary sharpeneth his eyes upon me” (v. 9). Job clearly means the Adversary at work through human instruments, for he goes on to say, ‘‘ They have smitten me... they gather themselves together against me”’ (v. 10).

Keenly the Adversary fixes his eye upon the soul in the furnace of trial, even “‘ sharpening the eyes” of others to watch for the halting of their fellows in the fire of God’s crucible.

It was even so with Jeremiah the prophet. He cries, ‘“‘ I have heard the defaming of many, terror on every side. Denounce, and we will denounce him, say all my familiar friends, they that watch for my halting”’.*

No faithful servant of God has ever yet escaped this aspect of the fiery trial. ‘‘ All day long they wrest my words,”’ said David, the sweet Psalmist of Israel. Even thus are we taught fellowship with the Christ, the Man of sorrows, and are made conformable to the image of the Lamb.

“* God hath shut me up to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked” (v. 11, A.V.m.), Job cries. ‘‘ J was at ease, and He brake me asunder; yea, He hath taken me by the neck, and dashed me to pieces; He hath also set me up for His mark”’ (v. 12); His archers compass me; He cleaveth my heart

TCL RK POs and doth not spare me (v. 13). I cried “‘ let Him not spare’, and He has taken me at my word. ‘‘ He breaketh me with breach upon breach; He runneth upon me” with His power “like a giant’’ (v. 14).

Job’s humilration “I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and have laid my horn in

the dust.” — Chap. xvi. 15.

“I have humbled myself before Him,”’ Job continues to say, ‘‘I have covered myself with sackcloth, and laid my horn — the symbol of authority and dignity — in the dust. I have wept before Him until my face is foul (v. 16), and my eyelids are swollen as under the shadow of death, although there is no violence in mine hands (v. 17), and ‘ my prayer is pure’”’. ‘“‘ Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and He that voucheth for me is on high”’ (v. 19).

It was this persistent clinging to the fact that God knew his life, and God would vouch that he walked with Him in integrity of heart, that aroused the indignation of the three friends of Job.

Yet what else could Job say? He knew that his prayer was sincere, and pure in its motive, even when they said it was mockery and craft! He knew that he had the witness of God in his soul, the while his friends scorned him (v. 20), and condemned him as a wilful presumptuous man.

Job’s cessation from struggling “My spirit is spent....” — Chap. xvii. 1, A.V., m.

Job turns away from his friends, and reminds himself that it cannot matter much what they think, his “‘ spzrit is spent” with all the conflict, his days are almost over, the grave is ready for him. It was mockery to continue discussing the matter, his friends could not answer for him (v. 3). He must rest upon God as the First Cause. It was He Who had “hid their heart from understanding ’’ (v. 4) his position. The loss was theirs, for God would not exalt them after they had denounced a friend for their own gain — even the gain of being considered right in their condemnation of Job.

After all, Job ponders, it is better that they should say what they think rather than deceive him by flattery (v. 5, A.V.). It is God Who has permitted all this, and allowed him — a man who has walked in fellowship with Him — to become an open abhorring, “‘ one in whose face they spit’? (v. 6, m.), although by reason of the pain and sorrow of it, his eye is becoming dim and his body wasting to a shadow (v. 7).

Nevertheless the ‘‘ righteous”? can “‘ hold on his way”. Though his body grows weaker, if his hands are clean and his conscience clear before God, his inner man will wax stronger and stronger (v. 9).

Friends, ye can go your way, cries Job, “‘I find not a wise man among you”? (v. 10, m.)! Let me be with God. ‘“My days are past, my purposes are broken off, even the possessions of my heart”? (v. 11, m.). There is naught before me but the grave; I have made my bed in the darkness (v. 13, A.V.); I acknowledge corruption to be my native condition, it is ‘‘ my father’, and I have said “to the worm, thou art my mother, and my sister”? (v. 14, A.V.)! ‘* There is rest in the dust”? (v. 16)!

We watch Job slowly ceasing from struggling and coming to the place of rest. So long as we writhe in our afflictions so long do we prolong them. God would have us “‘ make our bed in the darkness’; that is lze down in the dark, and rest in His faithfulness.

Oh soul in the hand of God, take thy place in the dust and acknowledge that thou art corrupt in thy nativity.

Thy God is watching thee in the deep darkness where He hath brought thee, lie down and be still. Thou that fearest the Lord and walkest in darkness, stay thyself upon thy God, seek not to kindle a fire by thine own efforts, but wait and thou shalt be blest with “blessings of the deep that coucheth beneath ’’, blessings that shall prevail ‘‘ unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills”’.

Job, Chapters xviii, xix,