Context No. 3408 of 4322 · Job

Job 22:1-16: in context

1Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered, 2“Can a man be profitable to God? Surely he who is wise is profitable to himself. 3Is it any pleasure to the Almighty that you are righteous? Or does it benefit him that you make your ways perfect? 4Is it for your piety that he reproves you, that he enters with you into judgment? 5Isn’t your wickedness great? Neither is there any end to your iniquities. 6For you have taken pledges from your brother for nothing, and stripped the naked of their clothing. 7You haven’t given water to the weary to drink, and you have withheld bread from the hungry. 8But as for the mighty man, he had the earth. The honorable man, he lived in it. 9You have sent widows away empty, and the arms of the fatherless have been broken. 10Therefore snares are around you. Sudden fear troubles you, 11or darkness, so that you can not see, and floods of waters cover you. 12“Isn’t God in the heights of heaven? See the height of the stars, how high they are! 13You say, ‘What does God know? Can he judge through the thick darkness? 14Thick clouds are a covering to him, so that he doesn’t see. He walks on the vault of the sky.’ 15Will you keep the old way, which wicked men have trodden, 16who were snatched away before their time, whose foundation was poured out as a stream,

Eliphaz, unable to accept that a righteous man could suffer, invents sins to explain Job's misery. He accuses Job of stripping the poor of their clothing, withholding bread from the hungry, sending widows away empty. None of it is true; Eliphaz is slandering an innocent man to defend his tidy theology that suffering must always mean guilt.

It is a warning about how we can twist facts to fit our assumptions, even accusing the innocent to protect a theory we are attached to. And yet, buried in his speech, Eliphaz throws out a real truth as a taunt: some imagine God is too high, hidden behind thick clouds, to see what people do. Eliphaz means it as an accusation against Job, but the answer to it is yes, God does see, and he sees rightly, which is exactly why false accusation is so dangerous. God is not blind behind the clouds. He sees the truth of every heart, including the innocence Eliphaz refuses to grant, and he will not be fooled by our neat theories about one another.

Do I resist twisting the facts to fit my assumptions about others, remembering that God sees the truth clearly, even when human judgments are false?

Sources

Job 22:6: "For you have taken pledges from your brother for nothing, and stripped the naked of their clothing."
Job 22:13: "You say, What does God know? Can he judge through the thick darkness?"
Psalm 139:1: "LORD, you have searched me, and you know me."