CHAPTER 4 Dec. 3 
Eliphaz’s First Speech
Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered, 2If someone ventures to talk with you, will you be grieved? But who can withhold himself from speaking? 3Behold, you have instructed many, you have strengthened the weak hands. 4Your words have supported him who was falling, you have strengthened the feeble knees. 5But now it has come to you, and you faint. It touches you, and you are troubled. 6Isn’t your piety your confidence? Isn’t the integrity of your ways your hope? 7Remember now, whoever perished, being innocent? Or where were the upright cut off? 8According to what I have seen, those who plough iniquity and sow trouble, reap the same. 9By the breath of God they perish. By the blast of His anger are they consumed. 10The roaring of the lion and the voice of the fierce lion, the teeth of the young lions, are broken. 11The old lion perishes for lack of prey. The cubs of the lioness are scattered abroad. 12Now a thing was secretly brought to me; my ear received a whisper of it. 13In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, 14fear came on me, and trembling, which made all my bones shake. 15Then a spirit passed before my face. The hair of my flesh stood up. 16It stood still, but I couldn’t discern its appearance. A form was before my eyes. Silence; then I heard a voice saying, 17‘Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his Maker? 18Behold, He puts no trust in His servants. He charges His angels with folly. 19How much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before the moth! 20Between morning and evening they are destroyed. They perish forever without any regarding it. 21Isn’t their tent cord plucked up within them? They die, and that without wisdom’. 

Commentary

4:7 Whoever perished, being innocent- The friends were reasoning from the position that suffering only comes as a punishment for sin; and therefore, they concluded, Job must have been a huge secret sinner. Therefore they laid false guilt upon him, and urged him to repent for things he hadn’t done. We too live in a world which often loads us with false guilt. We must take guilt for our actual sins, and allow the reality of our personal relationship with God to free us from the false guilt others wish to place upon us. The righteous remnant in exile had struggled with the question of how the righteous had perished in the Babylonian invasion (Is. 57:1), and the book of Job was an answer to their struggle over this (see on 3:23).
4:8 According to what I have seen- Eliphaz appeals to personal experience and secular history and wisdom- hence he asks Job to “remember”, to think back and realize, that only the wicked perish (:7). One theme of the book of Job is that God’s ways, as revealed in His word and in His history, contradict human wisdom and traditional conclusions.
4:18 He charges His angels with folly- These are Eliphaz’s words, and God at the end says that he didn’t speak what was right about God (42:7,8). There cannot be sin or rebellion against God in heaven (Ps. 5:4-5; Hab. 1:13; Mt. 6:10; Ps. 103:19-21); Angels don’t sin (Lk. 20:35,36 cp. Rom. 6:23). The book of Job actually deconstructs such notions, revealing God as the ultimate source of suffering.