Day 17, January 17

Job 15-17 Eliphaz and Job debate II

Job 15

15:2-6 Eliphaz is back, casting aspersions on Job’s intelligence. At least Eliphaz acknowledges that he was still a wise man, howbeit one who filled himself with the east wind. “Are you gassy Job, full of hot wind?” He said Job is not praying.
15:7-13 Now Eliphaz is asking if Job had some inside track into the way God works and thinks. Was he the first man born? Was he made before the hills? How come Job thinks he knows more stuff than I Eliphaz, who is older than him, and in fact much older than your father. As a note some say that Eliphaz was Esau’s son and Job’s father was Zerah, who was Eliphaz nephew, which would make Eliphaz much older than Job’s father.

15:14-16 Eliphaz is now challenging the notion that any man could really be pure, as Job claims, as man is “abominable, and filthy, who drinks iniquity like water!” What a statement. This is not true. However many Christians hold to that today that men are automatically despicable and God cannot deal with us. This is wrong.
15:17-35 Eliphaz ends his treatment by outlining the wicked man will always be in pain, be punished, be in trouble and anguish, may act defiantly against the Almighty, may even experience fatness, but futility will be his ultimate reward. Again not completely true.

16:1-5 Job rails against their chosen method of “comfort”. If he was in their place, he would have strengthened them with his mouth instead of heaping words against them.
16:6-8 Job expresses that he feels worn out, shriveled up and the company is no good
16:9-17 “He tears me in His wrath, and hates me; He gnashes at me with His teeth;” What a description of how Job feels that he has been targeted by God. He even says that “He hates me.” You can feel Job’s anguish of his soul. He feels abandoned by God now, using very graphic language - “He pours my gall on the ground. He breaks me with wound upon wound. On my eyelids is the shadow of death”. He still maintains that no violence is in his hands and his prayer is pure. What do you think?
16:18-22 Job calls on the earth to not cover his blood, his soul, so that he will always have a cry upon the earth, for he is sure he has a witness in heaven and his evidence is on high. Doesn’t this remind you of Abel, whose blood also cried out? He cries out for a man to plead for a man with God, as a man pleads for his neighbor. What a beautiful picture of the man Christ Jesus making intercession for us. Little did Job know that such a Man will come on the earth, to plead on all our behalf.

17:1-5 His spirit is broken. The mockers do not help. He asks God to put up bail for Him in court, because he does not have anyone to shake hands, strike an agreement for him to be his lawyer.
17:6-9 Job stated he has become one that is a byword, ine that people will spit in his face. Yet Job has a sense of prophetic defiance - “The righteous will hold his way, And he who has clean hands will be stronger and stronger”
17:10-16 His defiance continues. He tells his detractors to come back again. No matter what you say, there is not one wise among you, and my days are past even though you try to falsely change my night into day or say “the light is near” in the face of darkness. I have resigned to my fate. Job ends by rhetorically asking if he says that corruption is his father, and the worm is his mother as a resignation of fate, does that mean he has no more hope? Does hope go down with him to the gates of Sheol? Shall he rest with hope together in the dust?
We know the answer to this today. Christ has the keys to Death and Sheol/ Hades. The Gates of Sheol does not prevail against His Church. We have hope beyond the dust in Christ.