The people of Israel, trapped in slavery in Egypt, would have been asking God why they were suffering this ongoing bondage; and the book of Job would provide for them a way of thinking about this question. The first half of the book is devoted to the contrast between two answers: (1) the conventional wisdom that declares that suffering comes by the judgment of God against your secret sins (the point of view of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar), and (2) the claim that such suffering comes upon the righteous for some other unfathomable reason (Job’s point of view).

In today’s reading we see Eliphaz insisting that God protects the good and punishes the bad: “Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of his anger they are consumed” (Job 4:7-9).

I get how this “what goes around comes around” sense of things feels quite appealing: yet haven’t we all seen way too many situations where good people suffered and died? Are we really in a position to assert, as an infallible rule, that when something bad happens to you, it’s because God is punishing you for your sins? Eliphaz seems quite confident in that assurance. We are all sinners before the face of God (4:17). People are born to trouble (5:7), so Job should just seek God (5:8) and be glad that God has rebuked him for his sin (5:17).

But wait. If Eliphaz’s conventional-wisdom theology is correct, isn’t he himself just as liable to be feeling God’s punishment? If Eliphaz really believes what he has said, shouldn’t he be desperately confessing his own sins and seeking repentance and forgiveness, rather than smugly acting as if Job was a sinner while Eliphaz himself was not?

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O Holy Lord, we so quickly see the badness of others, and so blindly fail to recognize our own faults. We are ready to tell others what’s wrong with them and how they should fix it. Teach us to be people of mercy toward others, with gratitude for all the mercy you have offered to us.

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