A note of Encouragement

 

Job 4:1-9

 

“Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied: “If someone ventures a word with you, will you be impatient?  But who can keep from speaking?  Think how you have instructed many,
 how you have strengthened feeble hands.  Your words have supported those who stumbled; you have strengthened faltering knees.  But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged; it strikes you, and you are dismayed.  Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope?  “Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished?  Where were the upright ever destroyed?  As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it.   At the breath of God, they perish; at the blast of his anger they are no more.”

 

Eliphaz, is reminding Job of all the help he has been to many and the instruction he has given that has been very helpful.  His council does have traditional wisdom and truthful observations, he like Job has no understanding of the reason for Job’s condition.  In verse four it seems to be referring to the psychological and not the physical part of suffering.  In the book of Ezekiel 21:6-7, the LORD has instructed His prophet Ezekiel to do the following; “As for you, son of man, groan; with breaking heart and bitter grief, groan before their eyes.  And when they say to you, ‘Why do you groan?’ you shall say, ‘Because of the news that it is coming.  Every heart will melt, and all hands will be feeble; every spirit will faint, and all knees will be weak as water. Behold, it is coming, and it will be fulfilled,’” declares the Lord God.”  

 

As we look at verses six through nine, Eliphaz is trying to encourage Job reminding him that he is a man of integrity, but he seems to imply that his children got what they deserved.  He tells Job the innocent never perish, only those who do evil. 

 

From the Back Porch,

 

Bob Rice