Bible Commentaries

The Last Speech of Eliphaz

Job 22:2-3).

The legitimate interpretation of these words, their fair and honest enlargement, leads us to say: no man can confer patronage upon God, upon the altar, upon the cross, upon the church, upon the truth. We get all; we can give but little or nothing—so little, that giving it we do not know we are worthy of any honour. It is a matter of fact that some men do suppose they add something to God's greatness by according to him their patronage! They would not say so in words. Men are sometimes afraid of their own voices. Not on any account would they say so in so many sentences or phrases; but is there not working in the human heart—that marvellous webwork of mystery—some remote subtle thought that by going to church we confer some favour, not only upon the Church, but upon God himself? How curious in its working is the human heart! Some men seem to live to confer respectability upon whatever they touch. The Church is partly to blame for this. The Church is far too eager to put away the common people and bid them be quiet, in order that some uncommon man may come in and take his velvet-cushioned seat in God's temple. There are some who say that if such and such arguments be true, or such and such men have taken a right view, they will give up religion altogether. What a threat! How it makes the sun tremble, and sends a pain to the earth's very heart! A man who can give up religion has no religion to give up. What! Is religion something to be held in the hand, and laid down at will and pleasure? Is it a garment that is worn, and of which the body can be dispossessed? That is not the indwelling Spirit of God, the ever-living, ever-glowing soul of goodness. Herein is true what has often been misunderstood by the expression of "the perseverance of the saints": they must be saints to persevere; if they do not persevere they are not saints. A man can no more give up religion than he can give up breathing; that is to say, when he gives up breathing he commits suicide. Religion is not a set of phrases, something in book form, a mystery that can be written down and cancelled by the hand that wrote it; it is the soul's life, the heart's sympathy with God, identity with Christ: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Who can separate the two? They are not two—they are one. When a man threatens to give up his religion, O Church of the living God, quiet thyself! say, as a great philosopher said to a too-excited Job 22:5).

The man who could preach so would not vary his method on account of circumstances. He addressed Job personally. The preacher who speaks to thousands of men must bring himself to feel that after all he is only addressing one man. There is only one Job 22:6-7).

Do not run off with the devil's suggestion that these are Oriental terms; they are modern words. The colouring may be eastern, but the genius of the accusation is eastern and western, northern and southern, wide as the world, detailed as the varieties of the human species. Is it possible that men may say, What is the meaning of taking a pledge from thy brother for nought, and stripping the naked of their clothing? What is the meaning of not giving water to the weary to drink? Is it possible to grammarise these words, vivisect them, to understand their Oriental allusion, and to escape their immediate and mortal application to ourselves? We have not done this in the letter, yet every day we may be doing it in the spirit. Do we crush the poor? Do we make the poor man feel that his poverty is a crime? Do we snub him and humiliate him because he is poor? whereas we should crouch before the same man were he a millionaire,—the same Job 22:15-17).

That also is practical preaching. Eliphaz claims all history as his book of anecdotes. Why invent stories, when the whole experience of mankind goes to show that wickedness never comes to a good end, and that the way of transgressors is hard? Let us keep to history, and then we cannot be dislodged from our position. Stand by the realities of life—not as seen within any given five minutes, but as spreading themselves through the length and breadth of history—and we shall find written upon all the pages of the past the fact that God is against the wicked Matthew 13:44-45). Such persons as bankers and sureties, in the commercial sense ( Proverbs 22:26, Nehemiah 5:3), were unknown to the earlier ages of the Hebrew commonwealth. The Law strictly forbade any interest to be taken for a loan to any poor person, either in the shape of money or of produce, and at first, as it seems, even in the case of a foreigner; but this prohibition was afterwards limited to Hebrews only, from whom, of whatever rank, not only was no usury on any pretence to be exacted, but relief to the poor by way of loan was enjoined, and excuses for evading this duty were forbidden ( Exodus 22:25; Leviticus 25:35, Leviticus 25:37; Deuteronomy 15:3, Deuteronomy 15:7-10, Deuteronomy 23:19-20). The instances of extortionate conduct mentioned with disapprobation in the Book of Job probably represent a state of things previous to the Law, and such as the Law was intended to remedy ( Job 22:6, Job 24:3, Job 24:7). As commerce increased, the practice of usury, and so also of suretiship, grew up; but the exaction of it from a Hebrew appears to have been regarded to a late period as discreditable ( Proverbs 6:1, Proverbs 6:4, Proverbs 11:15, Proverbs 17:18, Proverbs 20:16, Proverbs 22:26; Psalm 15:5, Psalm 27:13; Jeremiah 15:10; Ezekiel 18:13, Ezekiel 22:12). Systematic breach of the law in this respect was corrected by Nehemiah after the return from captivity. In later times the practice of borrowing money appears to have prevailed without limitation of race, and to have been carried on on systematic principles, though the original spirit of the Law was approved by our Lord ( Matthew 5:42, Matthew 25:27; Luke 6:35, Luke 19:23). The money-changers (κερματισαί, and κολλυβισταί), who had seats and tables in the Temple, were traders whose profits arose chiefly from the exchange of money with those who came to pay their annual half-shekel ( Matthew 21:12). The documents relating to loans of money appear to have been deposited in public offices in Jerusalem.—Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.

Job 22:21-30

21. Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace: thereby good shall come unto thee.

22. Receive, I pray thee, the law from his mouth, and lay up his words in thine heart.

23. If thou return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up, thou shalt put away iniquity far from thy tabernacles.

24. Then shalt thou lay up gold as dust, and the gold of Ophir as the stones of the brooks.

25. Yea, the Almighty shall be thy defence, and thou shalt have plenty of silver.

26. For then shalt thou have thy delight in the Almighty, and shalt lift up thy face unto God.

27. Thou shalt make thy prayer unto him, and he shall hear thee, and thou shalt pay thy vows.

28. Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall be established unto thee: and the light shall shine upon thy ways.

29. When men are cast down, then thou shalt say, There is lifting up; and he shall save the humble person.

30. He shall deliver the island of the innocent: and it is delivered by the pureness of thine hands.

Reconciliation and Results

That is all the three friends could, in substance, say. It is difficult to read the exhortation of another man. We are, indeed, apt to put our own tone into all reading, and thereby sometimes we may do grievous injustice to the authors or speakers whom we seek to interpret. Of one thing, however, we may be quite sure, namely, that when a man so seer-like, so prophet-like as Eliphaz, concluded his controversy with Job 22:24-25).

Was the motive a bad one? Nothing of the kind; otherwise the whole of the Old Testament is vitiated by the suggestion. The Lord has always worked upon this plan of promising men what they could understand, of accommodating his kingdom to some form, parabolic or material, which might touch the imagination and even the senses of the people whom he addressed. Thus the Lord said unto Abram: Arise, come away, and I will give thee a land flowing with milk and honey. Was that an appeal to a selfish motive? Certainly not. It was the only appeal which Abram could then understand. The Lord promised the patriarchs length of days. Now we would not have length of days, for we are weary of old grey time. The period comes when a man says, When is the upper door going to be opened? I would not live alway; I have seen every revolution of this little wheel, and I am tired of watching the tautology; I know spring and summer, and autumn and winter, and birth and marriage, and death, and weal and woe, and loss and gain, and book-keeping and balancing, and profit and disadvantage, and sickness and recovery and dissolution: I am tired of watching that mocking monotony: when will the golden gates swing back, and let me pass where the light is purer, and where the service is without weariness? Did God, then, appeal to a poor motive when he promised length of days? The answer Job 22:26-27).

But Eliphaz also points out a result which is full of practical instruction:—

"When men are cast down, then thou shalt say, There is lifting up; and he shall save the humble person" ( Job 22:29).

The meaning Psalm 45:10; Job 28:16; Isaiah 13:12; 1 Chronicles 29:4); and in one passage ( Job 22:24) the word "Ophir" by itself is used for gold of Ophir, and for gold generally. In addition to gold, the vessels brought from Ophir almug wood and precious stones.

The precise geographical situation of Ophir has long been a subject of doubt and discussion. The two countries which have divided the opinions of the learned have been Arabia and India, while some have placed it in Africa. There are only five passages in the historical books which mention Ophir by name; three in the Book of Kings ( 1 Kings 9:26-28, 1 Kings 10:11, 1 Kings 22:48), and two in the Book of Chronicles ( 2 Chronicles 8:18, 2 Chronicles 9:10). The latter were probably copied from the former. In addition to these passages, the following verse in the Book of Kings has very frequently been referred to Ophir: "For the king (i.e. Solomon) had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks" ( 1 Kings 10:22). But there is not sufficient evidence to show that the fleet mentioned in this verse was identical with the fleet mentioned in 1 Kings 9:26-28, and 1 Kings 10:11, as bringing gold, almug trees, and precious stones from Ophir. If the three passages of the Book of Kings are carefully examined, it will be seen that all the information given respecting Ophir is that it was a place or region accessible by sea from Ezion-geber on the Red Sea, from which imports of gold, almug trees, and precious stones were brought back by the Tyrian and Hebrew sailors.—Smith's Old Testament History.