Job 22:1-30

The Last Speech of Eliphaz

Job 22:0

There are two interpretations of Scripture. One is the critical and literal, dealing searchingly and usefully with the grammar of the text, seeking to know exactly what each speaker and each writer meant at the very time of his utterance and at the very time of his authorship. That must always be a work of high utility. We cannot, indeed, proceed legitimately until we have settled the grammar of the text. But we should not rest there. There is a second interpretation, which we may call the larger. That interpretation brings up the word to our own time, sets it in direct: reference to our own thought and action not by any violent process, but by a legitimate development. The question which the wise reader will put to himself in perusing the Bible is to this effect: What would these inspired men say were they living now, were they addressing me as they addressed their interlocutors and general contemporaries? This is not forcing meanings into their words; this is not an unnatural and perverting exaggeration of terms: this is what we have described as a legitimate development of the thought and purpose of the men. What Eliphaz said to Job was of the greatest possible consequence to the patriarch, and is of the greatest possible consequence to all ages. But is it not open to us to discover from what Eliphaz has said what he would say under modern circumstances and under our own immediate conditions? Is there not an enlarging faculty, a peculiar power of the mind which attests the operation of the Holy Ghost, by which we can definitely say what the Bible writers would have written now? If we have such faculty, if we enjoy such immediate ministry of God the Holy Spirit, we shall be able to verify it by inquiring how far what we now say, either in reasoning or exhortation, coincides with what is written in the book of inspiration. There must be no difference of quality; there must be no contradiction in moral tone or purpose; conscience must not be disturbed by this larger translation, this widening and brightening of things said long ago the root and the branch are really one; we must not graft anything upon the old trunk, the tree of the Lord's right-hand planting, but we must watch its natural, legitimate, and purposed developments; and thus we shall have an ever-enlarging Bible, a book old as the ink with which it was first written, yet new as this morning's dew, as this day's holy dawn. This is what the Bible is, old and new; coming up from eternity, yet condescending upon every day of time, and leaving behind light and blessing. Never be satisfied, therefore, with the mere interpretation of the scribe. He lives in the letter. He would seem almost to pay homage to the ink. Up to a given point he may be right; but there is a point beyond the large interpretation, the moral meaning, the persistence of thought, by which thought urges its way through all coming days, events, circumstances; proclaims the old commandments, and the old beatitudes, with new force, new sympathy, new considerateness. This is why we go back to the old speakers and old writers. We are not mere superstitious devotees. It is because the present coincides with the past, and the past dignifies the present, and because we perceive that God's providence is an organic whole, a grand beneficent scheme, that we revert to the olden time, and come up to the immediate day, feeling how true it is that God's thought is one, God's love is unchanging, God's mercy endureth for ever. Under the light of this canon, see how Eliphaz the Temanite sits down beside us today, and with what gravity he talks, with what pungent questions he pierces us, with what solemn appeals he challenges our attention. Have no faith in those easy and superficial critics who tell you to attend to the present time and think nothing of Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar, because they lived long ago. They did not in any sense which has rendered them obsolete. There is nothing new that is true; there is nothing true that is new. The Lamb slain for sin was historically crucified on Calvary: but morally, redeemingly, divinely, he died before the foundation of the world. We lose our dignity when we live within the present sunrise and sunset, when we sever the present day from the fountains of history. Eliphaz will come to us, and like a seer will be quiet, like a prophet of the Lord he will burn, like an apostle who grasps the genius and the end of the present time he will flame, and appeal, and exhort, with heavenly eloquence. Let us hear him.

How he rebukes the supposed patronage which men would offer the living God!

"Can a man be profitable unto God?... Is it any pleasure to the Almighty, that thou art righteous? or is it gain to him, that thou makest thy ways perfect?" ( Job 22:2-3 ).

The legitimate interpretation of these words, their fair and honest enlargement, leads us to say: no man can confer patronage upon God, upon the altar, upon the cross, upon the church, upon the truth. We get all; we can give but little or nothing so little, that giving it we do not know we are worthy of any honour. It is a matter of fact that some men do suppose they add something to God's greatness by according to him their patronage! They would not say so in words. Men are sometimes afraid of their own voices. Not on any account would they say so in so many sentences or phrases; but is there not working in the human heart that marvellous webwork of mystery some remote subtle thought that by going to church we confer some favour, not only upon the Church, but upon God himself? How curious in its working is the human heart! Some men seem to live to confer respectability upon whatever they touch. The Church is partly to blame for this. The Church is far too eager to put away the common people and bid them be quiet, in order that some uncommon man may come in and take his velvet-cushioned seat in God's temple. There are some who say that if such and such arguments be true, or such and such men have taken a right view, they will give up religion altogether. What a threat! How it makes the sun tremble, and sends a pain to the earth's very heart! A man who can give up religion has no religion to give up. What! Is religion something to be held in the hand, and laid down at will and pleasure? Is it a garment that is worn, and of which the body can be dispossessed? That is not the indwelling Spirit of God, the ever-living, ever-glowing soul of goodness. Herein is true what has often been misunderstood by the expression of "the perseverance of the saints": they must be saints to persevere; if they do not persevere they are not saints. A man can no more give up religion than he can give up breathing; that is to say, when he gives up breathing he commits suicide. Religion is not a set of phrases, something in book form, a mystery that can be written down and cancelled by the hand that wrote it; it is the soul's life, the heart's sympathy with God, identity with Christ: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Who can separate the two? They are not two they are one. When a man threatens to give up his religion, O Church of the living God, quiet thyself! say, as a great philosopher said to a too-excited man, "Why so hot, my little sir?" Really, no intolerable catastrophe will have occurred if such men observe the emphasis upon the word such should perpetrate the impossibility of giving up what they never possessed! There are others again who threaten the State in the same way. Truly we live in. very anxious and solemn times. Some men threaten to abandon the service of the State if such and such a policy is pursued. The State will still go on! There are those who say, If this be done and said, we shall give up public life. By all means give it up; the threat does not make us much afraid. A man can no more give up patriotism than he can give up religion, regard being had to quality and degree. Patriotism is part of the man; it is mixed, so to say, with his very blood; he drew it in with his mother's milk; if he can give it up, he ought never to have avowed it.

To this solemn issue must we come that men must recognise that religion is greater than they are, patriotism is greater than they are, and neither Church nor country ought to be under such obligation to any man as to be unable to do without him. We are honoured by the Church; but honour, how little we can give! We are honoured by living in the country; if we can give any little honour in return, God be praised! There are also some men who occasionally threaten to give up the ministry. Would God they would! If a man can ever threaten to leave the ministry, let him go! It is recorded that in an early Wesleyan Conference Mr. Charles Wesley said that if such and such things were done he would leave the Conference. His elder and greater brother said, "Will some brother be kind enough to give him his hat?" That is not the way to treat great organisations, and sublime policies, and holy altars. What! a man leave the ministry, except through old age, failure of faculty, exhaustion of power? He cannot, if ever he gave himself to it at the cross, under the baptism of blood. We are not called to this ministry by men, nor by men can we be dismissed from it. If we be true ministers, we are the servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, and from him only can we obtain our release. That a man may throw himself out of it by giving Christ the treacherous kiss, by selling his Lord for thirty pieces of silver, that a man may thrust himself out of it thus by unfaithfulness and unworthiness, is the very tragic point of spiritual history: but so long as the man is brokenhearted, penitent, contrite, loving, his whole soul set in the direction of heaven's beckoning hand, he will never think of giving up the ministry; when he dies it will be but to exchange the helmet for the crown. Let us live in the spirit of humility, true, genuine spiritual modesty, knowing that all the advantage of religion is upon our side, and that it is not in our power to add to God's dignity.

Whilst all this may be readily acknowledged, perhaps our consent may be more reluctant to the next point. Were Eliphaz amongst us today he would be what is termed a personal preacher. That preacher is never popular. If a minister would be "popular" whatever the meaning of that word may be he must preach to the absentees; smite the Agnostics, hip and thigh; pour lava upon the Mormons who are thousand miles away: but he must not speak to the man in the nearest pew. Eliphaz comes amongst us like a fire. He is skilful in the cruel art of cross-examination. To Job he said,

"Is not thy wickedness great? and thine iniquities infinite?" ( Job 22:5 ).

The man who could preach so would not vary his method on account of circumstances. He addressed Job personally. The preacher who speaks to thousands of men must bring himself to feel that after all he is only addressing one man. There is only one man, if we could see things in their reality; multitudinous are the details: but address the one man, aim at the one target. The more we become filled with the spirit of preaching, the less shall we care about the mere numbers who listen to us; we do not reject them, or undervalue them, but the more will the value of the one man rise, so that a little child shall be a congregation, one listener worthy of all the resources of learning and eloquence we may be able to control. The young preacher is afraid of the wet day, because he has written a most elaborate discourse which he intended the whole congregation to hear and to admire. He will outgrow that. Be patient with him now. Efflorescence in youth is natural and seasonable. By-and-by he will not know whether it is raining, or shining, or thundering: the whole truth will be in him, and must be uttered to any soul that may be present to hear it.

Eliphaz accuses Job specifically. He says,

"For thou hast taken a pledge from thy brother for bought, and stripped the naked of their clothing. Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink, and thou hast withholden bread from the hungry" ( Job 22:6-7 ).

Do not run off with the devil's suggestion that these are Oriental terms; they are modern words. The colouring may be eastern, but the genius of the accusation is eastern and western, northern and southern, wide as the world, detailed as the varieties of the human species. Is it possible that men may say, What is the meaning of taking a pledge from thy brother for nought, and stripping the naked of their clothing? What is the meaning of not giving water to the weary to drink? Is it possible to grammarise these words, vivisect them, to understand their Oriental allusion, and to escape their immediate and mortal application to ourselves? We have not done this in the letter, yet every day we may be doing it in the spirit. Do we crush the poor? Do we make the poor man feel that his poverty is a crime? Do we snub him and humiliate him because he is poor? whereas we should crouch before the same man were he a millionaire, the same man, without more mental capacity, literary resource, spiritual refinement! It is not enough to find out just what Eliphaz meant in these lines: what he meant in the spirit is what we ought to be in quest of. Have we contemned the weak? Have we turned our poor brother into an occasion of jibing and sneering? Have we been deaf to entreaty? Have we pleaded excess of business, extremity of position, dignity of office, so that we might turn away from him who had a prayer to breathe to our benevolence and clemency? Away with all merely literal orthodoxy, if it be not supported by the broader orthodoxy of love, sympathy, and sacrifice. Eliphaz would not hesitate to remind us of broken vows; he would give us day and date; he would remind us that we told God that if he would save us in a given extremity we would serve Him evermore; and Eliphaz would lay his hand upon us, and look at us as fire only can look, and ask us whether we have redeemed the vow. This is the only preaching worthy of any attention, namely, preaching that goes to the immediate case, the real, actual, concrete experience of the hearer. Nor will it always come with judgment and accusation; it will often come as the rain, as the dew, as a still small voice. We do injustice to God if we suppose that by personal preaching is always and only meant accusatory preaching There is consolatory personal preaching. There are brave men who are fighting hard battles at home, in the marketplace, in their own hearts, in the Church, in the State; and he is the preacher sent of God who will recognise the existence and necessity of such men, and will make them strong by brotherly prayer, and by brotherly sympathy and exhortation. The preacher can never be wrong in speaking to broken hearts. There may be only a few learned men or critics in his congregation, but there are many blighted lives, broken hearts, wounded spirits, men lost in thick fogs, mental and spiritual; souls tormented of the devil by unnamable temptations. Therefore in our personal preaching we must not always play the part of impeachment, but must remember the part of consolation and sympathy, sweet advice and generous comfort; then they that are ready to perish will bless us, and souls that came into the sanctuary weary and overborne, will return to their work nerved, and strengthened, and blessed.

Eliphaz, then, were he amongst us, would avail himself of history in support of the exhortation:

"Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden? which were cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflown with a flood: which said unto God, Depart from us: and what can the Almighty do for them?"( Job 22:15-17 ).

That also is practical preaching. Eliphaz claims all history as his book of anecdotes. Why invent stories, when the whole experience of mankind goes to show that wickedness never comes to a good end, and that the way of transgressors is hard? Let us keep to history, and then we cannot be dislodged from our position. Stand by the realities of life not as seen within any given five minutes, but as spreading themselves through the length and breadth of history and we shall find written upon all the pages of the past the fact that God is against the wicked man, the stars in their courses fight against wickedness, and that only judgment and fiery indignation can be the portion of those who violate the spirit of obedience and defy the spirit of law. Blessed be God, we need not trust to our invention in the discharge of this solemn ministry: all facts are ours, all history is our book of evidences; we do not bandy opinions with men equally able or still more skilful than we are; if they have discovered laws, so have Christian thinkers, and one of those laws is that God punishes iniquity with everlasting punishment, if the man guilty of it do not repent and seek the sanctuary of the cross. If any man had said so only yesterday, we should have said, Let time try him. It is not yesterday, as the last day gone, that speaks to us, but all time's yesterdays, the thousands multiplied by thousands and millions, they all stand, as it were, upon the horizon, and say, Preacher, speak up, fear not; tell the wicked man that all God's omnipotence is against him, and he must perish in the tremendous conflict. And is there not another side also to this? Has history nothing to say about the good, the true, the pure, the wise? Is not God a sun and a shield? Will he withhold any good thing from them that walk uprightly? Has he not promised them an exceeding great reward? And yet has he not wrought in them a miracle of grace that without thinking of the reward they would die for the cross of his Son? This is our mission. If we cannot preach as Eliphaz preached, we ought to vacate the pulpit, and leave stronger men to occupy it. We want no new inventions, no curiously coloured hypotheses; we want the old revelation spoken with the modern accent eternal truth offered to men in language they can understand the awful affection of God for the human race, represented in the cross of Christ, preached as a sweet gospel, always ending with a loving invitation, such as, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest;" "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink." Speak these words; the men may not be thirsting now, but when the fire burns them, memory will be awakened, they will say, Where heard we words about water that could quench this thirst? and when they ask the question, your opportunity will have come.

Note

The law of Moses did not contemplate any raising of loans for the purpose of obtaining capital, a condition perhaps alluded to in the parables of the "pearl" and "hidden treasure" ( Mat 13:44-45 ). Such persons as bankers and sureties, in the commercial sense (Proverbs 22:26 , Neh 5:3 ), were unknown to the earlier ages of the Hebrew commonwealth. The Law strictly forbade any interest to be taken for a loan to any poor person, either in the shape of money or of produce, and at first, as it seems, even in the case of a foreigner; but this prohibition was afterwards limited to Hebrews only, from whom, of whatever rank, not only was no usury on any pretence to be exacted, but relief to the poor by way of loan was enjoined, and excuses for evading this duty were forbidden (Exodus 22:25 ; Leviticus 25:35 , Leviticus 25:37 ; Deuteronomy 15:3 , Deuteronomy 15:7-10 , Deu 23:19-20 ). The instances of extortionate conduct mentioned with disapprobation in the Book of Job probably represent a state of things previous to the Law, and such as the Law was intended to remedy (Job 22:6 , Job 24:3 , Job 24:7 ). As commerce increased, the practice of usury, and so also of suretiship, grew up; but the exaction of it from a Hebrew appears to have been regarded to a late period as discreditable (Proverbs 6:1 , Proverbs 6:4 , Proverbs 11:15 , Proverbs 17:18 , Proverbs 20:16 , Proverbs 22:26 ; Psalms 15:5 , Psalms 27:13 ; Jeremiah 15:10 ; Ezekiel 18:13 , Eze 22:12 ). Systematic breach of the law in this respect was corrected by Nehemiah after the return from captivity. In later times the practice of borrowing money appears to have prevailed without limitation of race, and to have been carried on on systematic principles, though the original spirit of the Law was approved by our Lord (Matthew 5:42 , Matthew 25:27 ; Luke 6:35 , Luk 19:23 ). The money-changers ( κερματισαί , and κολλυβισταί ), who had seats and tables in the Temple, were traders whose profits arose chiefly from the exchange of money with those who came to pay their annual half-shekel ( Mat 21:12 ). The documents relating to loans of money appear to have been deposited in public offices in Jerusalem. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.