Job 5:4

Job has just cursed the day he was born and longed for death (Job 3), after losing his children, his goods and his health. Eliphaz comes from Teman in Edom, a place known for its wisdom (Jeremiah 49:7), and he speaks out of the wisdom of the men of the east. His speech fills Job 4–5. Its starting point is a question: “Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off?” (Job 4:7–9). He tells of a vision that showed him how impure man is before a holy God (Job 4:12–21), and later in chapter 5 he urges Job to seek God’s favour.

Behind all of it lies one belief: God prospers the righteous and punishes the wicked, so great suffering must mean great sin. Eliphaz leaves Job unnamed in these verses, yet every picture of the fool is aimed at him. The book has already let its readers into what is hidden from Eliphaz. Job is “perfect and upright” from its first verse (Job 1:1), God himself calls him “a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil” (Job 1:8), and his losses in Job 1:13–19 come for reasons kept from Job and his friends.

God answers Job himself at the end of the book (Job 38–41), and then he tells Eliphaz, “My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath” (Job 42:7). So these verses are read in two lights at once. Taken as sayings of wisdom, much of what Eliphaz says is true, and other Scriptures say the same things. Laid on a suffering man as a verdict on his life, they become the counsel God condemned.

Verse 1 opens with a challenge: “Call now, if there be any that will answer thee.” To call, qârâʼ, is to call out, cry aloud or summon, and to answer, ʻânâh, is the ordinary word for answering or responding. Eliphaz invites Job to appeal to someone, sure that the appeal will meet silence, and there is an edge of sarcasm in the invitation.

Then he narrows the field: “and to which of the saints wilt thou turn?” His reasoning runs like this. If Job were righteous, the holy ones would take his side. Since Job is suffering, he must be guilty, and so every holy one will keep away from his cause. The question leaves Job more alone than before, at the very moment he needed a friend to stand with him.

Job’s own longing runs toward God himself. Later he says, “Surely I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God” (Job 13:3), and he wishes for someone to stand between him and God who could lay his hand on both (Job 9:33).

Verse 2 is a proverb: “For wrath killeth the foolish man, and envy slayeth the silly one.” Its two lines say one thing in two ways, as Hebrew poetry often does.

Wrath, kaʻaç, covers vexation, anger, grief, indignation and spite. Here it is the resentment a fool keeps feeding until it ruins him. Envy, qinʼâh, means jealousy, envy or zeal. The same word can name a right zeal in a person, and here it is the bitter envy that resents what another has. Both are pictured as killers. “Killeth” is hârag, the common verb for killing or slaying, and “slayeth” is mûwth, the everyday verb for dying, which also covers putting to death. The one they kill is the man who carries them inside him.

The foolish man is ʼĕvîyl. The fool of Hebrew wisdom is known by his character: he lacks the fear of God and refuses to listen to advice, and his folly harms himself first. The silly one comes from pâthâh, to be simple, easily persuaded or deluded. The fool has set himself against wisdom, while the simple man is open to whatever leads him astray, and wrath or envy can destroy either of them.

In verse 3 Eliphaz speaks from experience: “I have seen the foolish taking root.” The fool here is ʼĕvîyl again, the same word as in verse 2. To take root, shârash, is a picture from farming. The fool is like a well-rooted tree, settled, secure and prosperous, and for a while he truly does well.

Then comes the turn: “but suddenly I cursed his habitation.” Pithʼôwm, suddenly, means at once and unexpectedly, and the fool’s fall comes on him in the middle of his prosperity. The verb for cursed, nâqab, means literally to pierce or puncture, and in a wider sense to specify, designate or speak against. Eliphaz is speaking of a judgment from God, which he recognised and declared as it fell on the fool’s home. That home, his habitation, is nâveh, a dwelling or abode, a word also used of a pasture or of the haunt of wild creatures. Verses 4 and 5 show how far the curse reaches, to the man’s children and to his harvest and goods.

Scripture speaks often of the fool and his end. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7), and “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Psalm 14:1). The righteous have often been troubled to see the wicked take root. Jeremiah asked, “Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper?” and said to God, “thou hast planted them, yea, they have taken root” (Jeremiah 12:1–3). The psalmist struggled with the prosperity of the wicked “Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end” (Psalm 73:1–20). Proverbs says, “As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more: but the righteous is an everlasting foundation” (Proverbs 10:25).

Jeremiah and the psalmist brought their question to God and waited for his answer. Eliphaz has the question settled, and he reads a man’s sudden fall as proof of his sin. Job was a perfect and upright man whose household fell suddenly, so this verse, true of the fool, becomes a false charge when it is pointed at him.

Verse 4 turns to the fool’s family: “His children are far from safety, and they are crushed in the gate, neither is there any to deliver them.” Eliphaz says this to a man whose children have all just died (Job 1:13–19), and the hint is hard to miss.

Safety, yeshaʻ, is often translated salvation or deliverance elsewhere, and here it means security and welfare. The children are beyond the reach of any protecting hand. Crushed, dâkâʼ, means broken, beaten down or oppressed. The gate, shaʻar, is an opening, a door or gate, and the city gate was the centre of public life, where cases were judged, business was settled and people gathered. To be crushed in the gate is to be condemned in the open, before the whole community, with nobody to take up the case. The last words take away every hope of rescue: “neither is there any to deliver them.”

Verse 5 strips away the man’s wealth: “Whose harvest the hungry eateth up, and taketh it even out of the thorns, and the robber swalloweth up their substance.” Harvest, qâtsîyr, means the crop, the reaping and the harvest time, and the same word has a separate sense, a bough or branch. The hungry, râʻêb, are the needy, and they eat what the fool worked to grow. The robber, tsammîym, comes from a root linked to a noose, and some take it as “the thirsty” or “the greedy”. He swallows up, shâʼaph, a verb for inhaling eagerly, devouring or consuming. What he swallows is the man’s substance, chayil, his strength, ability and wealth. In a land where wealth was the crop in the field, always open to theft, famine and war, a lost harvest meant a lost living.

These pictures hold as general truths. “The wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just” (Proverbs 13:22), evil pursues sinners (Proverbs 13:21), and “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). The psalmist saw the wicked in great power and then saw him gone (Psalm 37:35–36). God is Lord over every possession and can take away wealth gained unjustly or held in defiance of him. Eliphaz’s error is again the use he makes of it. Job had just lost all he owned, for reasons God kept hidden from him.

Verses 6 and 7 belong together: “Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground; Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.”

Affliction, ʼâven, comes from a root of emptiness and futility, and covers trouble, vanity, wickedness, iniquity and sorrow. It often names suffering tied to moral evil. Trouble, ʻâmâl, is toil and wearing effort, with the worry and misery that come with it. Dust, ʻâphâr, and ground, ʼădâmâh, the ground, soil or land, are where plants grow. To come forth, yâtsâʼ, is to go or come out, and to spring, tsâmach, is to sprout, spring up or grow. Weeds come up out of the soil by themselves, and Eliphaz says that trouble is unlike them. It has a cause.

Verse 7 names where it comes from. Man, ʼâdâm, means a human being and mankind together, a word that takes in every person. He “is born unto trouble”, and the word for trouble is ʻâmâl, the same word as in verse 6. The sparks are resheph, a word for a live or burning coal, for sparks and even for flashing arrows, and here the glowing bits that leap up from a fire. Every household with a hearth saw sparks rise, and Eliphaz uses that common sight to make his saying sound as sure as a law of nature.

Put together, the two verses say that trouble comes from somewhere, and that it belongs to man himself, who is born to it as surely as sparks rise from a fire. With his vision of man’s impurity behind him, Eliphaz finds the root of trouble in human sin, and he wants Job to find it in his own.

Eliphaz asked which of the holy ones Job could turn to, and Job longed for someone to stand between him and God. Isaiah tells of the LORD, who “wondered that there was no intercessor” and brought salvation himself (Isaiah 59:16), and the New Testament names the one Job longed for. Jesus is the Holy One of God (Mark 1:24) and the one mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5). He ever lives to make intercession for those who come to God by him (Hebrews 7:25), he is our advocate with the Father (1 John 2:1), and he is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, having been tempted in all points as we are (Hebrews 4:15). The Spirit also intercedes for us “with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26–27). Christ is “the faithful and true witness” (Revelation 3:14), and when his people call, there is one who answers.

Verse 3 spoke of a curse on the fool’s home, and the cross answers it. “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). The preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who perish (1 Corinthians 1:18), yet Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24). Those who trust him are given a dwelling that lasts, for in his Father’s house are many mansions, and he has gone to prepare a place for them (John 14:2–3).

Verse 4 left the fool’s children crushed with nobody to deliver them. Isaiah says of the Servant, “he was bruised for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5), and Paul says that the Father “hath delivered us from the power of darkness” (Colossians 1:13).

Verse 5 pictured a man’s wealth swallowed up. Christ, though he was rich, became poor for our sakes, that we through his poverty might be rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). God made him to be sin for us, “who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21), and he has given believers an inheritance “incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven” (1 Peter 1:3–5), kept safe from every hungry man and robber. Paul counted all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord (Philippians 3:7–8).

Verse 7 said that man is born unto trouble. Jesus was born into that trouble too, “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4), and on the cross he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). He suffered for sins that were ours. For those who are his, trouble still comes, and our “light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17). God promises a day when “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain” (Revelation 21:4).

These verses give us real wisdom. Wrath and envy destroy the one who holds on to them. The fool may take root, but his prosperity lasts only until God’s judgment falls, and it can fall suddenly. Trouble is the common lot of everyone born into this world, from the first breath.

They also show what happens when true sayings are used to judge a suffering man. Eliphaz knew a great deal about God’s justice, and he still spoke wrongly of God, because he made a formula of it and laid it on Job. God’s ways are larger than the friends’ formula, and in the end he answered Job himself.

Eliphaz asked whether anyone would answer Job’s call, and the whole of Scripture says that God does. He heard Job and spoke to him, and in Christ he has given us a Holy One who intercedes, a Deliverer for those crushed with nobody to help, and an inheritance kept beyond the reach of every robber. Whoever is born unto trouble, as every one of us is, may call on him, and he answers.