Bible Commentaries

Job 22. Third Speech of Eliphaz.—The only new thing that Eliphaz has to say, is definitely to describe the sin of Job! Yet his mildness makes him end with bright promises.

Job 22:1-5. Is it not to Job's advantage to be pious? Will God chasten him for anything else but sin? Eliphaz would point out that it is Job s advantage to be pious, but he completes his statement by adding that it is no advantage to God. He means that God is too exalted to take any interest in man, except to reward and punish him. Hence the cause of man's calamities cannot be in God, but only in man (Job 22:6-11).

Job 22:6-9 ascribes to Job the sins typical of the rich man.

Job 22:8, if not a gloss, seems to refer to the sin of land-grabbing (Isaiah 5:8).

Job 22:10 f. deduce Job's calamities as the natural reward of his sin.

Job 22:12-20. Job argues from God's exaltedness that He cannot see through the clouds and darkness down upon the earth (Job 22:12-14). But He punished the rebels of old time (Job 22:15 f.): apparently the reference is to the Flood, when the solid earth (their "foundation") was overflowed.

Job 22:17 f. (cf. Job 21:14 a, Job 21:15 a, Job 21:16 b) breaks the connexion, and is to be removed as a gloss. Then Job 22:19 f. tells how the righteous rejoiced over the fall of the wicked (Job 22:16). With LXX we may change verbs in Job 22:19 to perfects.

Job 22:21-30. Eliphaz recommends Job to return to God, and once more promises his restoration.

Job 22:22 means that Job is to regard his sufferings as disciplinary (Job 5:17).

Job 22:29 f. is very obscure: the text is dubious. The general sense of Job 22:29 is that God casts down pride and saves the humble.

Job 22:30 as it stands seems to mean that God will deliver even him that is not innocent because of Job's innocence (cf. Job 42:8). The conclusion of Eliphaz's speech is very beautiful. Duhm's comment is, however, worth giving. "Humility and purity are also, according to this passage, for Eliphaz the essential elements of religion and the secure foundations of good fortune: both lie in the power of man, whose conduct God reviews and honours according to fixed principles. Theology makes salvation depend on the doing of men, religion on the heart of God."