Commentary on the Book of Job part forty four

                                       Job 22:1-30

In Eliphaz's answer to Job in this chapter, he seemed to have become somewhat confused about the nature of God and Job's relationship with Him.

In Job 22:1-3, Eliphaz, being a deist, contended that an aloof God would not care whether Job were righteous or wicked. God would certainly never desire to judge Job.

In Job 22:5-17, Eliphaz railed against Job for being wicked, and he even invented lies about evil acts that He imagined Job had done. Eliphaz told Job that he was living in fear and darkness because of his wickedness, and yet, Eliphaz accused Job of believing that God dwelt in a thick darkness and could not see, and did not care, about Job's wickedness. But then Eliphaz contradicted himself when he warned Job that in the ancient past, God had destroyed all the wicked of the earth in the great flood.

In Job 22:18-20, Eliphaz forgot his deist philosophy when he realized that God had supplied the needs of the wicked and the righteous before the great flood. Eliphaz admitted that he did not understand the ways of the wicked, and he also admitted that God seemed to bless the righteous in ways that could not always be outwardly seen. Eliphaz also displayed a vague intuition that perhaps the wicked suffered some sort of fiery punishment after death.

In Job 22:21-23, Eliphaz betrayed the fact that he had been listening to Job's revelations about God more than he realized. Eliphaz began to repeat to Job some of the same insights about God that Job had revealed. Eliphaz advised Job that if he would repent of his wickedness and receive God's Word to live by, then God would give him peace and goodness. Because of Job's witness, Eliphaz had caught a glimpse of the fact that perhaps Job did possess some sort of inner, spiritual relationship with God.

But in Job 22:24-27, Eliphaz returned to his former idea that God only blesses the righteous in material ways.

But in Job 22:27-30, Eliphaz again obtained a spiritual glimpse of that which God was actually doing through Job. Eliphaz understood that God had made Job a kind of preacher who could inform men who were "cast down;" that is, ready to repent, that God would "lift up" those who humble themselves to Him in some spiritual way. By his phrase, "the island of the innocent," Eliphaz displayed a spiritual insight into a heavenly reward for those whom God had made innocent. Eliphaz even realized that God would deliver this heaven to Job because God had forgiven him of his sins and had made him pure.