Job 4

This verse is Eliphaz’s speech in a nutshell. Theology students would call the message “salvation by works,” meaning your good behavior is what keeps you on good terms with God and ensures your protection, blessing, and salvation. Eliphaz is reminding Job that he’s a good guy in a tough situation, but if he hangs on and does what is right, God will restore him—and they’ll be on good terms again. Which implies they are no longer on good terms now. For Eliphaz, the evidence of that lies in the ruins of Job’s life—dead children, dead slaves, and grazing fields emptied of livestock.

This is starting to sound like Eliphaz is about to insult Job’s dead children and their families. Eliphaz seems to say that God wouldn’t let innocent people die the kind of tragic death they suffered when a house collapsed on them. This was a common way of thinking in Bible times. Many thought that since God was the creator who could do anything, and since he was righteous, he would not let bad people die like Job’s family did. Even Jesus’s own disciples seemed to believe this because when they came across a man who had been born blind, they asked Jesus who committed the sin that would produce such a punishment. They wanted to know if the man did or if his parents did. Jesus gave them a third option: “He was born blind so people could see” (John 9:3). Then Jesus healed him. This third option seems to be the thesis of the book of Job: sometimes good people suffer when they did nothing wrong to warrant the suffering.

Prophets in the Bible sometimes called vivid dreams “visions of the night.” Many people in ancient times—Jews, Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, and others—seemed to believe that dreams were clues to the future. Many taught that God or gods often communicated to people in dreams. Dream interpreters even wrote handbooks about how to interpret dreams. Parts of one Egyptian dream book from the 1200’s BC, roughly the time some scholars say Moses lived, showed up in the cemetery at Deir el-Medina. That’s at Thebes, a little more than 300 miles (480 km) upriver from Cairo, as the crow flies along the Nile. Written on papyrus, it lists bad dreams (written in red ink) and good dreams. Example of a bad dream: bed catches on fire. It means you’re driving your wife away. Good dream: burial of an old man. It means you’re coming into money. Or, perhaps, sheep—possibly from inheritance.

Well, they can die in the night, too. But some scholars say this odd line might mean the people are going about their daily business, like enjoying a family meal at the home of Job’s oldest son, and suddenly they’re dead. They didn’t see it coming. And now they’re gone. And for them, that’s that. C’est fini.

Wisdom means different things to different people of the Bible. Eliphaz never describes wisdom. But one of Job’s other friends, Elihu, explains his view in Job 36:12. In Proverbs 2:10-12, “Wisdom will find its way inside your head. Knowledge will cheer your soul. Good sense will protect you. Understanding’s got your back. Wisdom is your bodyguard steering you away from danger, And from crooks who lie to get what they want.”