Job 4:7

_REMEMBER, I PRAY THEE, WHO EVER PERISHED, BEING INNOCENT? OR WHERE WERE THE RIGHTEOUS CUT OFF?_ No JFB commentary on this verse....

7-11 Eliphaz argues, 1. That good men were never thus ruined. But there is one event both to the righteous and to the wicked, Ecclesiastes 9:2, both in life and death; the great and certain difference is after death. Our worst mistakes are occasioned by drawing wrong views from undeniable truths. 2. That wicked men were often thus ruined: for the proof of this, Eliphaz vouches his own observation. We may see the same every day....

Verse Job 4:7. _REMEMBER, I PRAY THEE_] Recollect, if thou canst, a single instance where God abandoned an innocent man, or suffered him to perish. Didst thou ever hear of a case in which God abandoned a righteous man to destruction? Wert thou a righteous man, and innocent of all hidden crimes, would God abandon thee thus to the malice of Satan? or let loose the plagues of affliction and adversity against thee?...

REMEMBER, I PRAY THEE, WHO EVER PERISHED, BEING INNOCENT? - The object of this question is manifestly to show to Job the inconsistency of the feelings which he had evinced. He claimed to be a righteous man. He had instructed and counselled many others. He had professed confidence in God, and in the integrity of his own ways. It was to have been expected that one with such pretensions would have evinced resignation in the time of trial, and would have been sustained by the recollection of his integrity. The fact, therefore, that Job had thus “fainted,” and had given way to impatient expressions, showed that he was conscious that he had not been altogether what he had professed to be. “There must have been,” is the meaning of Eliphaz, “something wrong, when such calamities come upon a man, and when his faith gives way in such a manner. It would be contrary to all the analogy of the divine...

EXPOSITION Job having ended his complaint, Eliphaz the Temanite, the first-named of his three friends (Job 2:11), and perhaps the eldest of them, takes the word, and endeavours to answer him. After a brief apology for venturing to speak at all (verse 2), he plunges into the controversy. Job has assumed that he is wholly guiltless of having given any cause for God to afflict him. Eliphaz lays it down in the most positive terms (verses 7, 8) that the innocent never suffer, only the wicked are afflicted. He then passes on to the description of a vision which has appeared to him (verses 12-21), from which he has learnt the lesson that men must not presume to be "more wise than their Maker." JOB 4:1 THEN ELIPHAZ THE TEMANITE ANSWERED AND SAID (see the comment on...

REMEMBER, I PRAY THEE, WHO EVER PERISHED, BEING INNOCENT?.... Here Eliphaz appeals to Job himself, and desires him to recollect if ever anyone instance had fallen under his observation, in the whole course of his life, or it had ever been told him by credible persons, that an "innocent" man, by whom he means not one entirely free from sin original or actual, for he knew there was no such persons in the world, since the fall of Adam, but a truly good and gracious man, who was not guilty of any notorious and capital crime, or did not live a vicious course of life; if he ever knew or heard of any such persons that "perished", which cannot be understood of eternal ruin and destruction, which would be at once granted, that such as these described can never perish in such a sense, but have everlasting life; nor of a corporeal death, which is sometimes the sense of perishing, since it is notori...

CHAPTER S 4-5 THE FIRST ADDRESS OF ELIPHAZ _ 1. He rebukes Job (Job 4:1)_ 2. The righteous are not cast off (Job 4:6) 3. An awe-inspiring vision (Job 4:12) 4. Experience and exhortation (Job 5:1) 5. Happy is the man whom God correcteth (Job 5:17) With this chapter the long and tedious controversy between Job and his three visitors begins. His pitiful lamentation brings forth the addresses of his friends. Eliphaz and Bildad speak thrice, each answered by Job, and Zophar twice with corresponding rebuttals by Job. Job delivers his last word, the length

Eliphaz is provoked to reply, in spite of his unwillingness, by the tone of Job's speech, which seems to him altogether irreverent. He wonders that Job, who had comforted so many others in trouble, should fall into such despair, when trouble has come to himself. Eliphaz assumes that Job is a righteous man; Job 6 is not meant as sarcasm. Eliphaz would suggest simply that Job's trouble has caused him to leave the standing-ground of religion. His complaint (ch. 3) was unsuitable. Eliphaz does not see that Job had been occupied with the problem of God's behaviour to him, a problem which is quite outside the circle of the ideas in which Eliphaz, like the rest of the friends, moves. For them religion has no concern with God's behaviour to man, but only with man's behaviour to God. Eliphaz, therefore recalls Job to the fear of God, whence he has fallen by his unsuitable complaints. He should kn...

WHO... ? Figure of speech _Erotesis._ App-6....

First, Eliphaz wonders that Job, who had comforted so many in trouble, and who was a righteous man, should fall into such despair under his afflictions, forgetting the great principle that the righteous never perish under affliction. Calamity destroys only the wicked; the affliction of the righteous is designed to have a very different issue. 12 5:7. Second, proceeding with deeper earnestness he must advert to Job's murmurs against Heaven and warn him from them. For can any man have right on his side in complaining of God? Only the ungodly resent the dealing of God with them. By their impatience under affliction they bring down God's final anger upon them, so that they perish. Ch. Job 4:1-11. Eliphaz wonders that Job, who had comforted so many in trouble, and was a righteous man, should fall into such despair under his afflictions Eliphaz would gladly have kept silence in the