Getting Everything Backward

Sometimes when we read the Old Testament, we forget that the people living then did not have the New Testament with the full revelation of God that we have in Jesus. Still less did Job and his contemporaries, who did not even live in Israel and were probably not Jewish. There is no evidence that they had access to any of the Old Testament. So, how did they know about God?

Job’s three “friends” lived in the world of the Ancient Near East and shared in the beliefs that were in circulation at the time. We have quite a lot of information from sources outside the Bible. They believed that they could know they were doing right when the gods showed their approval by blessing them, and vice versa. Since mortals wanted good things in life, they lived as best they could in accordance with what the gods wanted.

Eliphaz lives totally within this way of thinking. So, when disaster hits Job, his only explanation is that Job has offended God. And he catalogues the kinds of sin that were conventional.

And Job had not committed any of them, as he declares later on.

Eliphaz has reasoned backwards from a faulty theology. He is stuck in conventional ideas. If Job is suffering, it is because Job has sinned.

Job will have none of it. It’s all irrelevant. And Job is wrestling with the theology itself, which makes no sense to him.

The message is the same across the centuries and across the miles. When a friend is suffering, don’t hammer them with the logic of your theology. Rather, listen as they grapple with their situation.

Respond in Prayer

Dear loving Father, we thank you for your love for us, which goes beyond anything we deserve and any theology we can reason out. Thank you for showing it to us in the life and death of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Annabel Robinson

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version® (NIV®).