Job5chapter 5

Job 5:1-3

Eliphaz challenges Job to find any holy one who will take his side, call now, if there be any that will answer thee, and to which of the saints wilt thou turn, framing appeal to heaven itself as futile for a man under judgment. Wrath killeth the foolish man, and envy slayeth the silly one restates his doctrine that violent passions, not innocent suffering, are what destroy a life. Henry notes Eliphaz has already decided which category holds Job before he finishes the sentence. Gill reads I have seen the foolish taking root as Eliphaz's own eyewitness claim, offered as proof though it answers only for the cases he happened to observe.

Job 5:4-5

Eliphaz presses the doctrine into the next generation, his children are far from safety, and they are crushed in the gate, an accusation that lands with particular cruelty on a man who has just buried ten children. Whose harvest the hungry eateth up pictures a ruined estate stripped even to what grew among the thorns, poverty following judgment as surely as harvest follows planting. Barnes observes that Eliphaz speaks in general maxims about the wicked while every hearer in the room knows exactly whose children he means.

Job 5:6-7

Eliphaz denies that suffering is random, affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground, insisting trouble has a moral cause rather than growing wild like a weed. Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward states the general rule so memorably that it has outlived the argument it was built to serve. Delitzsch notes the proverb is true of fallen humanity at large even where Eliphaz misapplies it to one particular case. Wesley reads the sparks rising as nature's own picture of trouble's certainty, as fixed as fire's upward motion.

Job 5:8-9

Eliphaz now gives counsel that is right in itself though wrong for the case at hand, I would seek unto God, and unto God would I commit my cause, advice any reader of the book could follow. Which doeth great things and unsearchable, marvellous things without number opens a hymn to providence that will run through verse sixteen. Henry notes that the counsel is sound and would serve Job well if only the diagnosis beneath it were not mistaken, since Job has never stopped seeking God even while protesting to him. Gill reads the language of unsearchable and marvellous things as drawn from the same vocabulary the whirlwind speeches will use of God's works in chapters thirty-eight through forty-one, Eliphaz reaching for truth greater than his own argument.

Job 5:10-11

The hymn continues with two workings of providence held together, who giveth rain upon the earth, and sendeth waters upon the fields, and the reversal of fortune, to set up on high those that be low, that those which mourn may be exalted to safety. Clarke reads the rain as the commonest mercy made to prove the greatest point, that the God who governs weather also governs the raising and lowering of men. JFB notes the exaltation of mourners is offered as a general promise that Eliphaz will apply to Job's own case only later in the chapter, once repentance has been assumed.

Job 5:12-13

Eliphaz's hymn turns from nature to human schemes, he disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise, and then states the one sentence of this book the New Testament quotes word for word, he taketh the wise in their own craftiness. Paul cites it at 1 Corinthians 3:19 with it is written, canonizing Eliphaz's line even though the chapter that carries it is a speech God will later say did not speak of him the thing that is right. Gill holds the two facts together without softening either: the sentence is true and belongs to Scripture, and the man who first said it used a true word to build a false case against an innocent sufferer. Barnes notes the craftiness undone here is exactly what will happen to the friends' own arguing by the book's final chapter.

Job 5:14-16

The hymn's reversal completes itself, they meet with darkness in the daytime, and grope in the noonday as in the night, the crafty stumbling in broad light while he saveth the poor from the sword, from their mouth, and from the hand of the mighty. So the poor hath hope, and iniquity stoppeth her mouth closes the section with the silencing of wrongdoing rather than its punishment. Henry reads the whole hymn as true doctrine about God's ordinary providence, offered here as an argument it was never built to carry against one righteous man's case. Wesley notes the image of iniquity stopping her own mouth as wickedness silenced by its own exposure rather than by any human argument.

Job 5:17-18

Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth, therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty stands beside Proverbs 3:11 through 12, the text Hebrews 12 later quotes on the same subject, a parallel the bench draws though the two passages address different situations. Eliphaz means the words as diagnosis, that Job's suffering is corrective discipline for a fault yet to be found and confessed. He maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole states a true pattern of God's dealing that the book's own ending will vindicate in a different way than Eliphaz intends. Davidson notes the verse is right about God's character and wrong, in this mouth, about which of God's dealings is actually in view.

Job 5:19-23

Eliphaz catalogues deliverance in a rising number, six troubles and a seventh where no evil shall touch, covering famine, war, slander, destruction, wild beasts, and the stones and beasts of the field turned to allies rather than threats. Clarke notes the six-and-seven pattern as a Hebrew idiom for completeness rather than a literal count, promising total safety rather than protection from exactly seven named dangers. The promise is offered as a guarantee attached to Job's repentance, which is the friends' whole method: name a sweeping future blessing and let it argue backward for a present hidden sin. Wesley reads the peace with the stones and beasts of the field as language the book itself will answer literally in Job's own restoration, when the created order stands at peace with him again.

Job 5:24-26

Eliphaz's promised future, thou shalt know that thy tabernacle shall be in peace, and thou shalt visit thy habitation, and shalt not sin, along with a great seed and a grave in a full age like a shock of corn gathered in its season, will come true almost word for word at 42:12 through 17. Henry notes the irony the friends never see: what Eliphaz predicts as the reward of Job's repentance for a hidden sin instead comes to Job after God rebukes Eliphaz's own speech as wrong. Barnes reads the shock of corn image as the patriarchal ideal of a long life ended in season rather than cut off, the very picture Job's restored years will fulfill.

Job 5:27

Eliphaz closes with a claim of collective authority, lo this, we have searched it, so it is, hear it, and know thou it for thy good, presenting his speech as tested wisdom rather than personal opinion. Gill notes the plural we as Eliphaz speaking for the received wisdom of his own tradition, the accumulated observation he takes as settled fact. Delitzsch reads the closing exhortation as typical of the sage's rhetoric of the age, appealing to tradition's weight where argument alone might not persuade.