Job22chapter 22

Eliphaz finally does what the friends have been circling for twenty chapters: he invents specific charges. And the charges he picks are a checklist of the recognised social crimes of the ancient Near East, the exact list a wealthy landholder would be measured against.

Taking a pledge from a brother for nothing means seizing security on a loan from a man who owed little — and stripping the naked of their clothing points at the commonest pledge of all, the outer cloak, which was also a poor man's only blanket at night. Withholding water from the weary and bread from the hungry violated the most basic law of hospitality in a desert country, where refusing water could kill. Sending widows away empty and breaking the arms of the fatherless names the two groups every ancient law code, from Hammurabi's to Israel's, claimed to protect.

Eliphaz then attributes to Job an argument Job never made: 'Is not God in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the stars, how high they are! And thou sayest, How doth God know? can he judge through the dark cloud?' That is the ancient version of saying the high God is too far away to notice — a real position in that world, and a slander here.

His warning example is the old world destroyed by the flood: wicked men cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflown with a flood. And his closing appeal is genuinely tender — acquaint now thyself with him and be at peace; lay up gold as dust and the gold of Ophir as the stones of the brooks, and the Almighty shall be thy treasure. Ophir was a real gold source reached by sea trade, and its gold was the byword for the finest.