Context No. 421 of 4322 · Job
Context · Reflection
Job 4:1-16: in context
1Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered, 2“If someone ventures to talk with you, will you be grieved? But who can withhold himself from speaking? 3Behold, you have instructed many, you have strengthened the weak hands. 4Your words have supported him who was falling, you have made the feeble knees firm. 5But now it has come to you, and you faint. It touches you, and you are troubled. 6Isn’t your piety your confidence? Isn’t the integrity of your ways your hope? 7“Remember, now, who ever perished, being innocent? Or where were the upright cut off? 8According to what I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble, reap the same. 9By the breath of God they perish. By the blast of his anger are they consumed. 10The roaring of the lion, and the voice of the fierce lion, the teeth of the young lions, are broken. 11The old lion perishes for lack of prey. The cubs of the lioness are scattered abroad. 12“Now a thing was secretly brought to me. My ear received a whisper of it. 13In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, 14fear came on me, and trembling, which made all my bones shake. 15Then a spirit passed before my face. The hair of my flesh stood up. 16It stood still, but I couldn’t discern its appearance. A form was before my eyes. Silence, then I heard a voice, saying,
Eliphaz is the first of Job's friends to speak, and much of what he goes on to say is wrong; the book will end with God rebuking these friends for how they spoke of him. But Eliphaz opens with an observation that is painfully accurate, even if he draws the wrong conclusion from it. Behold, he says to Job, you have instructed many, you have strengthened weak hands, your words have held up those who were stumbling and steadied feeble knees. But now trouble has come to you, and you faint; it touches you, and you are dismayed.
That is a real and humbling thing to notice about a person, and it is true of most of us. Job had been, by all accounts, a wise and generous counselor. When others were falling apart, he knew what to say; he strengthened weak hands, steadied buckling knees, held up people who were stumbling under their grief. He was good at comforting the suffering, as long as the suffering belonged to someone else. And now that the trouble has come to his own house, he finds he cannot apply a word of it to himself. The comfort that flowed so easily outward will not steady him when he is the one on the ground. Eliphaz uses this to imply, wrongly, that Job's collapse proves some hidden guilt. But strip away his bad theology, and the observation remains: there is often a wide gap between the truth we can give others and the truth we can actually receive ourselves.
That gap is worth examining honestly, because I know it in myself. I can hand a hurting friend real comfort, sound counsel, the promises of God, and mean every word, and then find, when the trouble is mine, that I cannot take my own medicine at all. The wisdom flows out of me and will not flow back in. Can I actually receive the same comfort I so readily give, and let the truth I dispense to others steady my own feeble knees when it is finally my turn to faint?