Job 15:17-35: a reflection

17“I will show you, listen to me; that which I have seen I will declare 18(which wise men have told by their fathers, and have not hidden it; 19to whom alone the land was given, and no stranger passed among them): 20the wicked man writhes in pain all his days, even the number of years that are laid up for the oppressor. 21A sound of terrors is in his ears. In prosperity the destroyer will come on him. 22He doesn’t believe that he will return out of darkness. He is waited for by the sword. 23He wanders abroad for bread, saying, ‘Where is it?’ He knows that the day of darkness is ready at his hand. 24Distress and anguish make him afraid. They prevail against him, as a king ready to the battle. 25Because he has stretched out his hand against God, and behaves himself proudly against the Almighty, 26he runs at him with a stiff neck, with the thick shields of his bucklers, 27because he has covered his face with his fatness, and gathered fat on his thighs. 28He has lived in desolate cities, in houses which no one inhabited, which were ready to become heaps. 29He will not be rich, neither will his substance continue, neither will their possessions be extended on the earth. 30He will not depart out of darkness. The flame will dry up his branches. He will go away by the breath of God’s mouth. 31Let him not trust in emptiness, deceiving himself, for emptiness will be his reward. 32It will be accomplished before his time. His branch will not be green. 33He will shake off his unripe grape as the vine, and will cast off his flower as the olive tree. 34For the company of the godless will be barren, and fire will consume the tents of bribery. 35They conceive mischief and produce iniquity. Their heart prepares deceit.”

This is one of Job's friends, Eliphaz, and he is very sure of himself. He delivers a polished speech about the fate of the wicked: they writhe in pain all their days, terror fills their ears, disaster overtakes them. His point, aimed straight at the suffering Job, is a tidy formula, the wicked suffer, so your suffering must mean you are wicked. It sounds wise, traditional, confident. And it is wrong.

Notice what makes it wrong, because the book of Job is built around exposing it. Eliphaz has a neat theology, suffering is punishment for sin, and he applies it mechanically to a man God himself called blameless. His confident formula does not fit Job's actual situation, and instead of comforting his afflicted friend, it accuses him, adding wounds to his grief. Later, God rebukes Eliphaz and the friends, not Job, for not speaking rightly.

There is a strong caution here for how we speak to people who are suffering. It is tempting to reach for tidy explanations, to assume we know why someone is going through what they are, to imply their pain must be their own fault. Eliphaz shows how such confident formulas, even religious-sounding ones, can wound the very people they are aimed at, and how badly they can misjudge. When someone is suffering, be slower than Eliphaz. Do not impose a formula on their pain. Sometimes the more faithful thing is to sit with them in the mystery rather than explain it away.

Lord, keep me from being an Eliphaz to those who suffer, imposing tidy explanations on their pain and wounding them with confident formulas. Give me the humility to admit I do not always know why, and the love to sit with people in their grief rather than explain it away.