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.

Apparently, of Job's three friends, Eliphaz was the one who understood what danger Job's words posed to the traditional religious worldview: that no reward for the righteous and no punishment for the wicked should be expected either during life or after death. And his reaction to Job's words was paradoxical. On the one hand, he puts forward an argument that, in essence, ought to have confirmed his friend's worst fears. He says to Job: what concern is your righteousness to God? What difference does it make to Him whether you are righteous or sinful? Your righteousness benefits you, and your sins are your problems; no one but you will be worse off because of them. And why should God answer your questions and contend with you as a man would (vv. 2-4)?

Speaking this way, Eliphaz in essence confirms precisely what Job feared so much: that God has no concern for the human world, for its problems, its righteousness, and its sins. But immediately, as if catching himself, Eliphaz begins accusing Job of every sin, implying that the disasters that overtook him were punishment for wickedness (vv. 5-11). Having said that God has no concern for Job's righteousness or sinfulness, Eliphaz at once, contradicting himself, claims that this very view of God caused the destruction of antediluvian humanity (vv. 12-18). Apparently his statement that God has no concern for Job's righteousness or sinfulness was only his first, immediate reaction to Job's words, words that frightened Eliphaz so much that he seized on the first argument at hand without seriously thinking about its meaning or the consequences that follow from it.

In reality, Eliphaz evidently does not think at all that God is too distant from human beings to be interested in their righteousness or sinfulness. If that were so, he would not have appealed to Job to abandon lawlessness, be cleansed, and turn again to God in order to restore the relationship destroyed by sin (vv. 19-30). Eliphaz seems not to notice that, in making such an appeal to Job, he is essentially breaking down an open door: Job himself wants nothing so much as to find the living God, meet Him face to face, and receive from Him the answer to all his questions. Perhaps this misunderstanding is connected with different experiences of communion with God and with the differences in their ideas about God, differences that Job and Eliphaz had. For Eliphaz, it appears, the God of religion and the experience gained within religious boundaries were still enough. For Job those boundaries had already become too narrow.