Job 22:18

Eliphaz is the first of Job’s three friends to speak, and Job 22 is his third and last speech, the harshest of them all. The friends had come to mourn with Job and comfort him (Job 2:11–13). In his first speech Eliphaz only hinted at hidden sin (Job 4–5). Job has just argued in Job 21 that the wicked often prosper while the righteous suffer, and now Eliphaz answers by naming sins outright: oppressing the poor, withholding water from the weary and bread from the hungry, and oppressing widows and orphans (Job 22:5–11). Earlier in the chapter he asked whether a man’s righteousness is any profit to God (Job 22:2–3), and after these verses he calls Job to return to God and be restored (Job 22:21–30).

Behind all of this lies the belief that Job’s friends shared: righteousness brings prosperity and wickedness brings suffering, at once and in plain sight. Israel’s covenant did set blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28), given to a whole nation. The friends apply the rule rigidly to one man’s suffering, and so Job’s losses become, in their eyes, proof of his guilt. The reader knows better. The book opens by calling Job “perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil” (Job 1:1), and God says the same of him to Satan (Job 1:8). God’s own speeches at the end of the book (Job 38–41) answer the friends’ narrow view, and God tells Eliphaz that he and his friends have failed to speak of him the thing that is right, as Job has.

The story is set in the land of Uz, perhaps in Edom or northern Arabia, and most likely in the age of the patriarchs.

Eliphaz opens with a question that expects the answer yes: “Is not God in the height of heaven?” The word for height, gôbahh, means loftiness or grandeur, and shâmayim is the usual word for heaven or the sky, which Scripture often names as the place of God’s throne. Then he points to the night sky: “behold the height of the stars, how high they are!” The English word “height” comes twice in verse 12, and it translates two different Hebrew words. The second is rôʼsh, the word for head, and the word for stars, kôwkâb, simply means star. The stars are as high as anyone can see, and God is higher still.

All of this is true, and Scripture says it often. “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1), and “the LORD hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom ruleth over all” (Psalm 103:19). God’s ways and thoughts are as far above ours as the heavens are above the earth (Isaiah 55:8–9), and Paul cries out at the depth of his wisdom and his unsearchable judgments (Romans 11:33).

Eliphaz uses this truth as a springboard. God is so high, he suggests, that Job must think he is too far off to look down. The verb behind “behold”, râʼâh, is the same verb as “seeth” in verse 14 and “see” in verse 19. Eliphaz tells Job to look up at the stars, claims that Job thinks God sees nothing, and then says that the righteous see the wicked fall.

“And thou sayest, How doth God know? can he judge through the dark cloud?” The verb ʼâmar is the ordinary word for saying, and it can also mean to think, so Eliphaz is describing what he supposes Job believes in his heart as much as anything Job has said aloud.

The two questions belong together. yâdaʻ, “know”, is the common word for knowing, properly to find something out by seeing, and shâphaṭ, “judge”, means to pronounce sentence for or against someone. Justice depends on knowing the facts, so whoever doubts God’s knowledge doubts his justice as well.

The dark cloud is ʻărâphel, thick darkness or gloom, as of a lowering sky. Elsewhere this darkness marks God’s own presence: at Sinai, “Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was” (Exodus 20:21). Eliphaz turns that picture around and makes the darkness a screen between God and the earth.

Verse 14 carries on the speech he puts in Job’s mouth: “Thick clouds are a covering to him, that he seeth not; and he walketh in the circuit of heaven.” The thick clouds are ʻâb, dense cloud, the word God used when he told Moses, “Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud” (Exodus 19:9). A psalm speaks of God as the one who “maketh the clouds his chariot”. The circuit is chûwg, a circle or compass, used of the vault of the heavens and of the horizon. Wisdom was present when God marked out a circle on the face of the deep (Proverbs 8:27). Heaven here is shâmayim again, the same word as in verse 12. In Eliphaz’s picture, God walks around the great dome of the sky, busy with his own realm and too far away to concern himself with people below.

“Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden?” The KJV’s paragraph mark stands at the head of verse 15, where Eliphaz turns from Job’s supposed thoughts to his supposed path. “Marked” is shâmar, a verb whose root sense is to hedge about or guard, and so to watch, keep or take heed. Eliphaz asks whether Job has paid close attention to this path and kept to it, and the question is really an accusation.

“Old” is ʻôwlâm, time out of mind, ancient or long-lasting. The word for “way”, ʼôrach, means a well-trodden road, and “trodden” is dârak, to tread or walk. Together they describe an ancient road that wicked men have walked for generations. Eliphaz has in mind a long line of the ungodly who came under God’s judgment in the past, and he suggests that Job has joined them.

Scripture does speak of two ways. “For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish” (Psalm 1:6). Proverbs warns, “Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away” (Proverbs 4:14–15), and Jesus speaks of the broad way that leads to destruction and the narrow way that leads to life (Matthew 7:13–14). Eliphaz is right that such a road exists. His mistake is in placing Job on it. There is irony in the charge as well, because the rigid thinking of Eliphaz and his friends is itself an old and well-worn way, and the book of Job exposes it.

“Which were cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflown with a flood”. “Cut down” is qâmaṭ, a verb meaning to pluck off or destroy, which can also mean to fill with wrinkles. “Out of time” means before their time. ʻêth is the ordinary word for time, and these men were snatched away before their days had run their natural course. Eliphaz describes a sudden, early end that came on them as the fruit of their wickedness.

Their foundation, yᵉçôwd, is the base on which their lives rested: their security, their wealth, perhaps their family line. “Overflown” is yâtsaq, to pour out, and the flood is nâhâr, the usual word for a stream or river. A river poured over the foundation, and all that stood on it was carried away. The picture recalls the great flood of Noah’s day, when God judged a wicked generation (Genesis 6–9), and the prophets use the same image, as when Isaiah describes the Lord’s judgment coming “as a flood of mighty waters overflowing” (Isaiah 28:2).

Proverbs puts it in one line: “As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more: but the righteous is an everlasting foundation” (Proverbs 10:25). The psalmist who had envied the wicked came to see that God had set them in slippery places and cast them down into destruction (Psalm 73:18). Jesus told of the foolish man who built his house on the sand: the rain descended, the floods came, and it fell, while the house of the wise man who heard his sayings and did them stood firm on the rock (Matthew 7:24–27).

“Which said unto God, Depart from us: and what can the Almighty do for them?” “Said” is ʼâmar again, the same verb as “sayest” in verse 13. In verse 13 Eliphaz put words in Job’s mouth, and here he gives the words of the wicked, and the two speeches sound much alike.

“Depart” is çûwr, to turn off or turn aside, here a command for God to go away. A subject who ordered his king out of his presence would be openly defying him, and these men say it to God. They want to live with no divine guidance, rule or judgment at all.

The second line scoffs at God’s power. “The Almighty” is Shadday, one of the oldest names of God and a favourite in the book of Job, where it is used 31 times. Its exact meaning is uncertain, and it may mean “the All-Sufficient One”. To ask what the Almighty can do for them is to call the all-powerful God useless.

The psalmist describes the same pride: “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts” (Psalm 10:4). Paul writes of people who knew God yet glorified him not as God, until their foolish heart was darkened (Romans 1:18–23). Jeremiah gives the answer to their question: “Ah Lord GOD! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee” (Jeremiah 32:17), and the LORD himself asks, “is there any thing too hard for me?” (Jeremiah 32:27). What the LORD asks of us is humility before him, to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8).

“Yet he filled their houses with good things: but the counsel of the wicked is far from me.” “He” is God, so the men who asked what the Almighty could do for them lived in houses God himself had filled. The word for good, ṭôwb, is a broad one, covering what is pleasant, agreeable and prosperous, and here it means wealth and plenty.

Eliphaz admits what Job argued in chapter 21: the wicked do sometimes prosper. The psalmist wrestles openly with the same sight in Psalm 73:1–12: “I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” Jeremiah asks, “Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper?” (Jeremiah 12:1–4). Scripture is honest that the wicked thrive for a season, and God’s justice runs on a longer timeline than one lifetime.

Then Eliphaz distances himself: “the counsel of the wicked is far from me.” Counsel, ʻēṣāh, is advice and, by extension, a plan or purpose, so he rejects their whole way of thinking and planning. The wicked, rāšâʻ, are those who are morally wrong and guilty, actively bad people. Keeping wicked counsel far away is wisdom: the blessed man “walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly” (Psalm 1:1), and “he that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed” (Proverbs 13:20).

On Eliphaz’s lips the words carry irony. He declares himself far from wicked counsel in the middle of giving Job counsel that God later condemns. And the line sets Eliphaz apart from Job, as though Job belonged among the wicked whose plans he rejects.

“The righteous see it, and are glad: and the innocent laugh them to scorn.” “It” is the downfall of the wicked in Job 22:15–18. The righteous, tsaddîyq, are the just, and the innocent, nâqîy, are the clean and guiltless, those cleared of wrong. The second line repeats the first and makes it stronger. The righteous are glad, and the innocent go further and laugh them to scorn, for lâʻag means to deride or mock. In Eliphaz’s mind, the fall of the wicked proves that God’s order holds, and the upright greet it with joy.

Verse 20 gives what they say: “Whereas our substance is not cut down, but the remnant of them the fire consumeth.” Eliphaz speaks for himself and those he counts righteous. The word the KJV renders “substance” here, qîym, ordinarily means an adversary, one who rises up against another. “Cut down” is kâchad, which means to hide or, more strongly, to destroy, and it shares the English with the different verb of verse 16. The remnant is what is left over, and the fire, ʼêsh, consumes it. The verb ʼâkal is the everyday word for eating, used here of fire devouring. Scripture tells of such judgment when the LORD rained fire on Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24).

The contrast lands squarely on Job. The friends still have their goods, while Job’s wealth, children and health are gone, so by Eliphaz’s reasoning Job stands with the wicked.

Eliphaz pictured a God hidden behind the clouds. In Christ the God of the height of heaven has made himself known. He is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), the Word who was with God and was God (John 1:1), who was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14), Emmanuel, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). Being in the form of God, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:6–8). Now he is seated at God’s right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power (Ephesians 1:20–21), and from that height he ever lives to make intercession for his people (Hebrews 7:25).

The question “How doth God know? can he judge?” has its fullest answer in him. Jesus “knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man” (John 2:24–25). The Father has committed all judgment to the Son (John 5:22), who shall judge the quick and the dead (2 Timothy 4:1).

The old way of wickedness goes back to Adam’s disobedience in Eden (Genesis 3), and “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10–12). Christ was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). He is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), and by his blood he has opened a new and living way to God (Hebrews 10:19–20). Those who were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ (Ephesians 2:13), so in him we draw near to the God whom the wicked of verse 17 told to depart. Revelation gives the title “the Almighty” to the one who is Alpha and Omega (Revelation 1:8), and his power is used to save.

Against the flood of verse 16, Christ is the one sure foundation: “other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:11). He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and being justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him (Romans 5:9). He bore the judgment due to sinners: God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). “He was wounded for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:5), and he suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18). He left us an example in his suffering, and he bore our sins in his own body on the tree (1 Peter 2:21–24).

The perfectly righteous one suffered and died, and that overturns the friends’ rule that suffering marks the guilty. Job, a righteous man in deep suffering, foreshadows him. Christ’s resurrection is the firstfruits of the resurrection of all who are his (1 Corinthians 15:20–22). Whoever believes has passed from death unto life (John 5:24), and “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). The substance that is never cut down is our inheritance in him, “incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven” (1 Peter 1:4), in a kingdom which cannot be moved (Hebrews 12:28). In the world we have tribulation, and he has overcome the world (John 16:33), so we seek first his kingdom and his righteousness (Matthew 6:33). He is made unto us wisdom and righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30), and in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3), a counsel far wiser than anything Eliphaz offered.

Eliphaz meant his words as a charge, and yet the truth at their centre was Job’s hope. God is in the height of heaven, and no cloud hides the earth from him. He saw Job’s integrity when his friends could see only his losses, and in the end he vindicated his servant and rebuked the men who had condemned him.

The same truth reaches us in two ways. Every hidden sin lies open to God, and that is why the call to turn from the old way of the wicked is urgent. Every faithful act and every unseen grief lies open to him too, so a believer who is misjudged by others is still known by the Judge of all the earth. This passage also shows us the danger of reading another person’s suffering as proof of their sin. Eliphaz held sound doctrine and used it without love, and God was displeased.

The God whom the wicked told to depart has come near in his Son, and the righteous have their gladness in him.