NOTES for Job 5:2-3

Continuing his speech to Job, Eliphaz speaks of the futility of lamenting. Simply pouring out one's grief changes nothing and makes no one feel any better. Instead, Eliphaz proposes that Job turn to God as his only hope. The very God who, in Eliphaz's view, is punishing Job for unknown offences is the only hope of the afflicted. ‘He wounds, and he himself binds up,’ Eliphaz says. The image seems to be borrowed from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, where God says that he—or, more precisely, the Messiah, of whom God says ‘I myself’—will bind up his sheep's wounds. Ezekiel, however, testifies that God will heal the wounds inflicted on his sheep by their unfaithful shepherds and their own sinfulness. The thought that God himself punishes and himself comforts those who suffer would have been impossible for the prophet.

Indeed, if he punishes a person for their sins, why comfort them? Justice, at least in its human understanding, requires the guilty to bear the full weight of their punishment. If, on the other hand, God himself grants comfort and healing to the sufferer, why did he need to cause that suffering? One immediately recalls the line from the film The Irony of Fate: ‘I'll break it myself, and I'll fix it myself...’

But Eliphaz cannot think otherwise: he was brought up in the biblical conviction that everything that happens on earth happens by the will of the one God. The same is said in the book's prologue, where God agrees to Satan's proposal to put Job to the test. Human spiritual freedom and the slavery to sin that calls for a Deliverer lie outside Eliphaz's conceptual framework; still less can he imagine the paradoxical combination of the Creator's absolute sovereignty and human freedom.

Such is Eliphaz's first attempt to justify God and accuse Job with the help of a theological theory. The theory is quite coherent and, in many cases, sufficient to explain human suffering. But there is a problem: it bears no relation to Job's experience. First, Job's conscience does not accuse him, and he asks about the reasons for his suffering. Second, real human pain can hardly be eased at all by cold theological constructions. Finally, and most importantly, it is only in theory, when reasoning about other people, that one can accept that suffering can correct anything. This is how people train their children, slaves and dogs. And God?

Eliphaz is not simply speaking general words to Job; he is trying to explain to his friend what is happening to him. If Job is still righteous, then why is he suffering? Answering that question was not so simple. Everyone understood that a sinner may be punished by God for his sins; but how can one explain suffering that falls on someone who has not sinned? Of course, on the basis of the revelation he had received, Eliphaz had just concluded that there are no sinless people. But in that case, following the traditional logic, there should be no healthy people in the world either.

Meanwhile, it is obvious to everyone that this is not so. Then Eliphaz puts forward a new argument: he connects Job's suffering, like all suffering in general, with instruction received from God. Eliphaz claims that suffering is natural to human beings in general, that a person is even born into the world for suffering (vv. 6-7). Such is the order established by God, and it is foolish to rebel against it (vv. 1-5). Nothing can be changed, and there is no need to change anything, because suffering, if one relates to it rightly, benefits a person. The main thing is to entrust everything to God, who in any case will not abandon the righteous person, so that even evil will be turned to good for him (vv. 8-16).

Suffering is not merely punishment; it is precisely correction and instruction from God. It does not last forever. The day will come when all sufferings are left behind, and the righteous person will emerge from the trial God sent him stronger in every respect than before (vv. 17-27). Such reasoning, of course, has its own logic, understandable to every religious person. But it has one weak point: following it, one would have to consider God Himself the source of all human misfortunes, which He sends to some for punishment and to others for correction.

The author of the Book of Job, of course, explains Job's sufferings differently. He sees them as the result of what theologians call God's permission: something God does not do and does not want, but allows to be, yielding to the freedom of the creatures He has made, whether angels or human beings. The author of the Book of Job understands perfectly well that evil comes not from God, but from Satan, who opposes God, since he makes Satan responsible for all Job's sufferings. Yet for some reason God still allows Satan to act. The whole Book of Job became the answer to the question of why God needs this. But the answer turned out not to be as simple as it seemed to Eliphaz. And Job understands this perfectly well. He objects to his friend, and the conversation continues.