NOTES for Job 15:1-35

The reaction of Job's friends to his words is revealing. Their main concern is no longer to support Job, but to justify their own position and their own religiosity, both in his eyes and in their own. In answering Job, Eliphaz no longer appeals to his own experience. Like Bildad before him, he turns to Tradition. Yet he takes from it only the part devoted to the fate of the wicked person who defies God. The writings of the sages, it must be said, contain so much about the fate of the wicked that one could go on selecting quotations on the subject indefinitely.

Eliphaz chooses only some of the most typical passages. What is striking, however, is that he turns everything concerning the wicked against Job. He now accuses Job himself of wickedness. Above all, for daring to address God directly. To him, Eliphaz, such an address seems utterly unacceptable.

One may, of course, recall Eliphaz's own experience here: at the time, God's presence filled him with such trembling that he almost fell into a stupor and could not contemplate asking any questions, let alone answering God, who was speaking to him. Of course, not everyone had such an experience: Jewish history knows many examples of dialogue between God and a human being, and none of those who took part in such a dialogue was wicked in God's eyes. Yet something else was at work here too: the simple reaction of a religious person. Someone for whom direct, unplanned communion with God is always an exceptional disruption. Something that does not ordinarily happen and, generally speaking, should not happen in the normal course of things. And something a person certainly must not demand.

Besides, as Eliphaz says, it is simply foolish for a person to insist on being pure: surely Job must understand that there are no absolutely pure people. Really, he should simply surrender. Give up every claim and humbly ask God to have mercy and compassion on him. Job has no rights before God anyway. It would seem hard to argue with this last point: fallen humanity is hardly in a position to insist on its rights before God.

But from this generally indisputable premise Eliphaz draws a very peculiar conclusion. Demand nothing of God, insist on nothing; accept as a fact that before Him you are nobody, a complete nonentity. Then perhaps He will turn a blind eye to some of your imperfections and some of your uncleanness. Above all, when He appears, sit quietly and say nothing. Try to remain as inconspicuous as possible. But to demand something of Him, to insist on anything before Him, and to do so openly and loudly, is sheer madness: who is a human being, even the most righteous, that God should take them seriously?

An angry Eliphaz rejoins the conversation, and this time he openly accuses Job of impiety. In Eliphaz's view, Job's words contain nothing but pride, which makes him forget the fear of God. Eliphaz's reproaches sound impressive, and much of what he says seems just. But he does not answer Job on the substance of the matter; his criticism is directed against the very fact that Job dares to cry out to God. We are no worse than you and know no less, Eliphaz says—and this is precisely where he departs from the truth. There is an obvious answer to his question to Job: ‘What have you learnt that we do not know?’ Unlike his friends, Job has come to know real suffering, and that alone justifies his boldness.

In essence, Eliphaz's speech contains nothing new compared with what he and Job's other two friends have already said. He again says that Job is a sinner ‘by definition’, since no one born of a woman can be righteous before God. In the heat of the argument, Eliphaz portrays God as distrustful and vindictive, loathing the whole human race. The image of God behind Eliphaz's speeches is, admittedly, extremely unattractive; the distrust ‘even of the holy ones’ that he attributes to God contains none of the majesty Job's friends so zealously defend. This image of God is cut to a petty human measure. Eliphaz ascribes to God a kind of disgust towards people, like people's own attitude towards creatures such as slugs. Clearly, his words are theory through and through, for it is impossible to live and pray with such an idea of God.

Compared with what Eliphaz says at the beginning of the chapter, the second part of his speech, devoted to the deserved punishment of the wicked, is elaborately poetic and detailed. This is a common psychological effect: in religious matters, people find it easiest and most comfortable to speak about other people's sins and punishments. The book's author evidently knows this type of religiosity well. Eliphaz lectures Job that the wicked person is the author of their own misfortunes, believing that this explains Job's suffering. This lengthy argument echoes what Israel's great prophets said several centuries before the Book of Job was written. Then, in the pre-exilic period, they told the people heading towards destruction that God was not arbitrarily sending punishment upon them, but that punishment was the fruit of human thoughts. For the prophets, however, this idea was only a prelude to the immense revelation that, for a person perishing through their own wickedness, God becomes the Saviour, the only Hope and Consolation. To Eliphaz, by contrast, this message of the Creator's mercy is alien. God's words through the prophet Ezekiel, that the Lord desires not the sinner's death but their conversion and salvation, directly contradict Eliphaz's reasoning.

Once again we hear Eliphaz, and now he observes that no human being, and therefore Job as well, can be pure in comparison with God. A person not only cannot be perfect and spotless before Him but is also incapable of understanding His ways; therefore no one, plainly lacking complete knowledge, has the right to be certain of being right. Eliphaz now speaks not only in his own name or on behalf of Job's several friends, but also claims to express the shared wisdom of generations (Both the gray-haired and the aged are among us...).

In essence, it is impossible to object to Eliphaz's words: in principle, everything in them is true. Yet once again we see looming over the suffering Job the figure of an accuser who has no doubt that Job is being punished as he deserves. Eliphaz declares Job's despair, which arose from his suffering, to be a manifestation of his wickedness and presents it as an argument supporting the validity of his accusations. Once again, abstract “rightness,” detached from living and suffering reality, triumphs.