Job22chapter 22

Job 22:1-3

Eliphaz opens with a premise meant to remove any question of divine self-interest from the case, can a man be profitable unto God, as he that is wise may be profitable unto himself. If God gains nothing from Job's righteousness and loses nothing from his sin, then Job's calamity cannot be read as God needing or resenting anything from him, which quietly clears the way for Eliphaz's real conclusion that Job's suffering must trace to Job's own guilt. Gill notes the logic is sound as far as it goes and entirely beside the point the book has already settled in chapters 1 and 2.

Job 22:4-5

Eliphaz asks whether God's dealing with Job could spring from fear of him, dismisses the thought, and moves straight from that dismissal to an outright charge, is not thy wickedness great, and thine iniquities infinite. Nothing between verse 4 and verse 5 supplies any evidence for the leap; the accusation follows from the theology rather than from anything observed in Job's life. Henry marks this as the turn where Eliphaz stops arguing in general terms and starts naming Job specifically as a great sinner.

Job 22:6-7

Eliphaz's charges begin here, thou hast taken a pledge from thy brother for nought, and stripped the naked of their clothing, thou hast not given water to the weary to drink. The phrase for nought is the same word the accuser used of Job at 1:9, doth Job fear God for nought, though Eliphaz has no way of knowing whose vocabulary he has taken up. Nothing in the narrator's account of Job in chapters 1 and 2 supports the charge, and Job answers it directly under oath at 31:16 through 31:22, denying every particular.

Job 22:8-9

The indictment continues with the portrait of a land-grabbing power broker, the mighty man had the earth, and sent widows away empty, the arms of the fatherless broken. This is precisely the figure Job later describes himself as opposing rather than embodying, when he speaks of being eyes to the blind and a father to the poor at 29:15-16. Clarke reads Eliphaz's charges here as a stock description of the oppressor drawn from wisdom tradition and simply attached to Job without any grounding in his actual conduct.

Job 22:10-11

Eliphaz reasons backward from Job's condition to the charges just made, therefore snares are round about thee, and sudden fear troubleth thee, or darkness, that thou canst not see, and abundance of waters cover thee. The suffering is offered as proof of the sin, though the sin itself has no evidence apart from the suffering it is meant to explain, a circle the friends have run before. Barnes notes this is the same reasoning the narrator's frame has already shown to be false, since the reader watched the calamities begin in a heavenly wager Job never caused.

Job 22:12-14

Eliphaz next accuses Job of thinking God too remote to see him, thick clouds are a covering to him, that he seeth not, and he walketh in the circuit of heaven. Job has said nothing of the kind; at 21:22 he affirmed that none can teach God knowledge, seeing he judgeth those that are high, the opposite claim to the one Eliphaz answers here. Gill and JFB both note the charge misses its target, a pattern that runs through the whole speech, an accusation shaped to fit the doctrine rather than the man.

Job 22:15-18

Eliphaz points to a historic example, men cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflown with a flood, which Henry and Gill both read as the generation destroyed in Genesis 7. Verse 17's which said unto God, Depart from us repeats word for word the defiance Job had cited at 21:14, and verse 18's closing line, but the counsel of the wicked is far from me, repeats Job's own disclaimer from 21:16 without change. The speech answers Job partly in Job's own sentences, though no note here settles why the wording recurs.

Job 22:19-20

The righteous see it, and are glad: Eliphaz pictures the righteous watching the wicked's downfall with approval, the innocent laugh them to scorn, and counts his own party among the survivors, our substance is not cut down. Watson notes the irony the reader is left to carry forward: Eliphaz places himself among the righteous who see and are glad, yet it is Eliphaz who stands under God's rebuke at 42:7 for the very speech he is delivering here. The verse states Eliphaz's confidence in his own standing, not the book's verdict on it.

Job 22:21

This single verse holds the book's most quoted wrong counsel, acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace: thereby good shall come unto thee. Henry calls the words good in themselves and entirely sound for a man estranged from God by sin, which is exactly the description that does not fit Job, so the counsel rests on a premise the narrative frame has already shown false. Right words are offered on a false case, and the verse's beauty is no argument for its application here.

Job 22:22-23

Eliphaz calls for repentance and restoration, if thou return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up, language that presumes a departure from God that the narrative never records. Lay up his words in thine heart asks Job to receive correction for a fault the reader has not seen him commit. Barnes notes the call to return only makes sense once the underlying charge is granted, and the whole speech has offered the charge without evidence.

Job 22:24-25

Eliphaz promises material reward for repentance, thou shalt lay up gold as dust, and the gold of Ophir as the stones of the brooks, then shalt thou have plenty of silver. The offer echoes the very transaction the accuser proposed at 1:9 through 1:11, that piety and prosperity are exchanged for one another, though Eliphaz cannot know he is repeating the wager's own terms. Delitzsch reads the promise as sincere on Eliphaz's part and mistaken all the same, built on the assumption the whole book exists to overturn.

Job 22:26-28

delight in the Almighty: Eliphaz describes a restored fellowship in language that is genuinely devotional even sitting inside a false argument, thou shalt make thy prayer unto him, and he shall hear thee, and thou shalt pay thy vows. Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall be established unto thee anticipates, without Eliphaz intending it, the standing Job is given back at the book's close. Davidson notes the passage reads almost as prophecy of chapter 42 once the reader knows how the book ends, prayer heard and a word established, though spoken here on the wrong occasion.

Job 22:29-30

The chapter's closing line carries a disputed Hebrew text: the King James reads he shall deliver the island of the innocent, while Gill and Delitzsch both note the widely discussed alternate rendering, he shall deliver him that is not innocent, by the pureness of thine hands. Either reading is answered at 42:8, where it is Job's prayer and Job's pure hands, not Eliphaz's own, that deliver men who have not spoken rightly of God, Eliphaz himself first among them. Eliphaz promises a deliverance he does not know he will need, and receives it from the very man he has just finished accusing.