Job 4:7 - Meaning and Application

Eliphaz now adds another argument to support his claim that Job is a hypocrite. He says Job’s impatience under suffering is evidence against him, and so are the sufferings themselves, since they are so great and unusual, with no sign of relief. To make his case, he puts forward two principles that sound reasonable at first.

First, he says that good people were never ruined like this. To prove it, he asks Job to think back over all he has seen, heard, or read, and name one innocent and righteous person who ever perished this way and was cut off (Job 4:7). If he means final, eternal ruin, the claim is true. No one who is truly innocent and righteous is lost forever, only the man of sin, the son of destruction (2 Thessalonians 2:3). But this does not fit Job, because Job had not perished in that sense, nor been cut off. A person is not truly undone until he is in hell.

If Eliphaz means any temporal trouble, his claim is not true. The righteous do perish (Isaiah 57:1), and the same events happen to both the righteous and the wicked in life and death (Ecclesiastes 9:2). The great and certain difference comes after death. Even before Job’s time, there were enough examples to contradict Eliphaz. Did not righteous Abel perish, even though he was innocent? Was he not cut off early in life? Was not righteous Lot driven from his home and forced to live in a lonely cave? Was not righteous Jacob, a wandering Aramean, ready to perish? (Deuteronomy 26:5). No doubt there were other such examples that are not recorded.

Second, Eliphaz says that wicked people were often ruined in this way. He appeals to what he has seen himself: those who plow evil and sow trouble reap the same harvest. By the blast of God they perish (Job 4:8-9). He says this happens often enough that Job’s suffering must mean Job has done the same. In other words, “As I have seen in others, so I see in you.”

He is speaking first of sinners in general, busy sinners who work hard at sin, like a farmer plowing a field and expecting a crop. But what do they get? They reap the same kind of thing they sowed. They will reap corruption and ruin from the flesh (Galatians 6:7-8). Their harvest will be a heap of grief and hopeless sorrow (Isaiah 17:11). They reap the proper result of their own seed. The sinner sows what he thinks will bring profit, but God gives it a body, the body of death, the end that comes from those actions (Romans 6:21).

Some understand iniquity and wickedness here as wrong done to others. Those who plow and sow that kind of evil will reap the same, meaning they will be paid back in their own kind. Troublemakers will be troubled (2 Thessalonians 1:6; Joshua 7:25). The spoilers will be spoiled (Isaiah 33:1), and those who led others captive will themselves go into captivity (Revelation 13:10).

Eliphaz then describes their ruin. By the blast of God they perish. The plans they work so hard on are defeated. God cuts the cords of those who plow evil (Psalm 129:3-4). They themselves are destroyed, and that is the just punishment for their sin. They perish, meaning they are ruined completely, and they are consumed, meaning the ruin comes gradually. This happens by the blast and breath of God, that is, by his wrath, and by his word. His anger brings sinners down, and his breath is said to kindle the fire of judgment (Isaiah 30:33). Who can know the power of his anger? (Psalm 90:11). He speaks, and it is done, easily and fully. God’s Spirit, working through his word, destroys sinners. With it he puts them to death (Hosea 6:5). With God, speaking and doing are not two separate things. The man of sin is said to be destroyed by the breath of Christ’s mouth (2 Thessalonians 2:8; compare Isaiah 11:4; Revelation 19:21).

Some think Eliphaz is also pointing to the wind that struck Job’s children’s house down, as if they must have been greater sinners than others because they suffered that way (Luke 13:2). If so, he was drawing a cruel and unfair conclusion.

Eliphaz also speaks especially about tyrants and cruel oppressors, using lions as a picture (Job 4:10-11). The Hebrew language has several words for lions, and all of them are used here to show the fierce tearing power of proud oppressors. They roar, tear, and prey on everyone around them, and they raise their young to do the same (Ezekiel 19:3). The devil is a roaring lion, and such people share his nature and do his will. They are strong as lions and sly as lions (Psalm 10:9; Psalm 17:12), and wherever they rule, they leave destruction behind.

He also describes their downfall, both in power and in person. They will be stopped from doing more harm and held accountable for the harm they have done. God will take effective action so that they cannot keep terrorizing others. The voice of their roaring will be silenced. They will not be able to tear and destroy, because God will take away their strength to hurt. Their teeth will be broken, as in Psalm 3:7. In this way, the rest of wrath will be restrained.

They will also be kept from enriching themselves by robbery. Even the old lion will starve and die for lack of prey. Those who have lived by plunder and violence may end up so poor that they die hungry. They will not, as they hoped, leave behind a strong family line. Their cubs will be scattered, forced to search for food on their own, instead of being fed by the old lion (Nahum 2:12). The lion tore food for his cubs, but now the cubs must fend for themselves.

Eliphaz may have meant this as a veiled attack on Job, as if Job, the greatest man among the people of the east, had gained his wealth by plunder and used his power to oppress his neighbors. If so, then it was a shameful abuse of a man whom God had praised.