NOTES for Job 22:1-30 — February 6, 2015

NOTES for Job 22:1-30

Eliphaz's response to Job's speech is revealing above all for its internal contradictions. On the one hand, Eliphaz repeats the commonplaces of the traditional writings of the sages. He reminds Job of the path of righteousness and the path of sin, of what awaits a person who chooses one or the other. He goes even further: in his speech to Job, Eliphaz recalls the Torah that comes from God's mouth and the words of God that a person can and should keep in their heart.

In doing so, Eliphaz touches on the best and highest in Second Temple Judaism: the teaching of the inner Torah, grounded in an experience of direct and profound communion with God. We can only guess whether Eliphaz himself knew that experience: judging by what he told Job about his own, we may suppose that his experience of communion with God was rather distinctive. But Eliphaz had undoubtedly heard and read about the inner Torah, as, indeed, had Job. Yet, on the other hand, this same Eliphaz says that God has no concern whatsoever for Job's righteousness.

And here he contradicts himself: almost in the same breath, barely a minute later, he himself asserts that one must not view God as the wicked of ancient times did. For them, God was Someone far away, Someone who had no concern for the earth or the people living on it. According to Eliphaz, this was precisely what made those people wicked. But if God, as Eliphaz claims, has no concern for human righteousness, how does Eliphaz's God differ from the God of those ancient wicked people? In that case, they were right, and there is nothing to condemn them for.

Eliphaz seems not to notice the contradiction in his own words. He fails to notice it because he is no longer trying to convince Job of anything or to help him in any way. What matters more to him is to reassure himself that he is right, and in this respect he is no different from Job's other two friends. What Job has long suspected is confirmed again and again: his friends are concerned not with him, Job, or with his misfortune, but only with themselves.