Job’s Friends (1 of 3)

In context

Job’s friends now speak in turn, and Job answers each. This first round of speeches runs through Job 14, and two more rounds follow in Job 15–27. Eliphaz the Temanite speaks first. In Genesis, Eliphaz is the name of Esau’s son, whose own son was Teman (Genesis 36:10–11), and Jeremiah asks of Edom, “Is wisdom no more in Teman?” (Jeremiah 49:7). The book of Job doesn’t say whether the names are connected.

Eliphaz begins by reminding Job that he has “strengthened the weak hands” of others (Job 4:3). Then he asks, “Who ever perished, being innocent?” (Job 4:7). But the Lord himself had called Job blameless (Job 1:8). At the end of the book God tells Eliphaz that the friends “have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7), though Paul quotes one line of Eliphaz’s, “He takes the wise in their own craftiness” (Job 5:13; 1 Corinthians 3:19).

Job’s answer is raw. His friends, he says, are like a desert stream, dark with ice and snow in winter and gone in the heat (Job 6:15–17). His days are “swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,” the piece that carries the thread across a loom (Job 7:6). He says plainly that he loathes his life and wishes God would crush him (Job 6:8–9; 7:16).