Jobchapter 5
27 verses · BSBJob book hub →
Speaks with:Psalms 91×6Psalms 107×3Job 15×2Proverbs 12×2Psalms 73×2Psalms 37×2
Summary
Chapter summary
Eliphaz finishes his first speech. Call now. Which of the holy ones will answer? Vexation kills the foolish man; affliction springs not from the dust, for 'man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward' (5:7). His counsel is to seek unto God, who does great things past finding out, gives rain, sets the lowly on high, and 'taketh the wise in their own craftiness'. The one line of Job that Paul quotes outright (1 Corinthians 3:19). Then the promise that will curdle in Job's mouth: 'happy is the man whom God correcteth… for he maketh sore, and bindeth up' (5:17-18), with death at a full age like a shock of grain gathered in season.
Context
Poetry · Unknown — Job overview
- A. 1–7 Eliphaz: Man Is Born Unto Trouble
- B. 8–16 Eliphaz: As for Me, I Would Seek Unto God
- C. 17–27 Eliphaz: Happy Is the Man Whom God Correcteth
The outline
A.Eliphaz: Man Is Born Unto Troublevv. 1 to 7
Read vv. 1 to 7 →B.Eliphaz: As for Me, I Would Seek Unto Godvv. 8 to 16
Read vv. 8 to 16 →C.Eliphaz: Happy Is the Man Whom God Correctethvv. 17 to 27
Read vv. 17 to 27 →
The world behind this chapter
Job 5The history
'Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward' uses a Hebrew phrase that literally means 'the sons of flame' — the embers that leap off a fire and are gone. Eliphaz's images are all farm and household: the fool taking root and his sons crushed in the gate with no rescuer, the hungry eating the harvest a rich man stored, the crop the thief swallows up.
His closing section is the standard blessing list of that world, and it is worth reading as a picture of what security meant. Rescue in six troubles and seven; safety from famine and the sword; a covenant with the stones of the field, meaning ground cleared of rock and fit for the plough; peace with the wild animals that killed livestock and children; a tent found intact on return; descendants as many as the grass; and death at a ripe age, coming to the grave 'like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season' — the sheaf carried in exactly when it is ready, the good death of a farmer.
Between the warnings sits a line hearers would have loved and later generations quoted often: God wounds and his hands make whole, he binds up. Eliphaz has hold of a genuine truth about discipline. He has simply decided in advance which category Job belongs in.
He also tells Job that appealing to the holy ones will get him nowhere — no member of the heavenly assembly will take his case. Hearers who remembered chapter 1 knew that the heavenly assembly was precisely where Job's case had been opened.
What it meant to them
Read on its own, this is a beautiful and largely true speech about a God who disciplines in love and restores. Read in place, it is a man telling a bereaved father that his children died because of the family's sin, and that a quick confession will get the farm back.
That gap between good theology and cruel counsel is the lesson the first hearers were meant to take. What is true in general can be a lie when aimed at a particular man.
Sources cited
- John E. Hartley, The Book of Job
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews & Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Job 5. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.