NOTES for Job 15:1-35

In response to Job's words, Eliphaz delivers a long speech in which he repeats all the well-known and generally accepted truths concerning the wicked and their fate (vv. 17-35). Yet the invectives against the wicked now also imply another addressee: Job himself. Eliphaz reproaches his friend for wickedness and for having forgotten the fear of God (vv. 2-6). Of course, Eliphaz, like Job's other friends, is moved in part by religious fear, which grows stronger with every word of the sufferer. But unlike the others, Eliphaz still tries to find a rational basis for this fear. He puts forward an argument that at first glance seems indisputable. He says to Job: what can you know about the plans of God (vv. 7-8)? And how dare you speak with God and demand an accounting from Him (vv. 12-13)? Such a reaction is typical of a religious person who, seeing in God an infinitely distant and powerful Ruler of the world, considers any attempt to draw near to Him almost blasphemy.

And questions such as those Job asks God, demanding an answer, must seem simply monstrous to a religious person. But Eliphaz also advances another, more rational argument. He says: who can assert his purity before God? Before Him no one is pure, not even angels, to say nothing of human beings (vv. 14-16). At first glance, such an argument appears completely unanswerable, refuting and devaluing everything Job has said to God. But in essence it misses the mark, like all the other objections of Job's friends. Of course, compared with God no one is pure or holy, because God Himself is the source of both purity and holiness. The holiness of a person, like that of any other created being, is only a reflection of the holiness of God. But in this case Eliphaz plainly confuses holiness with righteousness. A righteous person is by no means sinless, but he follows God and remains God's witness despite his sinfulness and in defiance of it.

Of course, if the measure of holiness of such a righteous person, who still remains a sinful human being, is compared with the holiness of God, it will not withstand the comparison, and the righteous person will turn out to be unclean before God. But with such an approach to the human person, righteousness as such is devalued, and devalued completely. If one admits that God truly approaches a person with this measure, then human life simply loses all meaning. It is precisely against this approach that Job protests, and he wants to find out from God Himself whether this is really so. But Eliphaz, as we can see, answers Job ahead of God on the question Job has addressed to God.