As we dig into the comments of Job’s friends, we need to keep one thing in mind: They are passing judgment on Job’s words, as if a private complaint among friends is tantamount to defaming God. Meanwhile, they ignore his sorrows, adding to them instead. An underlying theme here was hinted at in the error of Job’s wife, and one of the oldest heresies still plaguing believers today — the mythology of Words of Power. It’s one thing to recognize that something you said could defame God’s name, but it’s altogether different from the wild imagination that every word falling from the lips is some kind of incantation. The Spirit Realm does not work that way. Human words cannot conjure anything more than human imagination. What makes a difference is genuine divine authority by divine commission.
During their time of silence, Job’s comforters were waiting for him to repent of something. Instead of empathy, they were already judging him. This is a subtle arrogance from a misplaced sense of self-importance. Eliphaz is the eldest and by custom speaks first. He jumps immediately into telling Job he needs to take his own medicine. Had not Job often told others how to receive or recover God’s favor? Was it not always a matter of repentance? Then Eliphaz states the false premise, as if to imply God would never confuse people by letting them suffer for no good reason. He builds his theology from observation, not from revelation. Eliphaz recognizes that Job is generally righteous, but assumes loudly that Job must have done something wrong.
The banter about lions seems aimed at dismissing Job’s complaints, that Job’s suffering isn’t nearly so bad as he claims. We are treated to a very dramatic image Eliphaz uses to reinforce his claim to speak for God by special revelation. In essence he says Job has proposed a logical impossibility. He holds up a false dichotomy: Either Job has sinned and earned this sorrow, or he sins by falsely accusing God of injustice. Eliphaz cannot imagine how God can do things that men aren’t allowed to understand, even as he roars about God’s ineffable greatness. He rattles on about how angels suffer for sin, and that men are surely lesser than angels.
Even long before encountering the Greek philosophers, we see there has always been a thread in the eastern wisdom that God has to be reasonable on a human level.
