Комментарий к Ийова 23:1

The Fifteenth Speech - Job’s Reply to Eliphaz’s Third Speech

Elphaz's new approach had offered separate solutions to each of the issues being discussed.

1. To the suffering of a righteous person. That he had not worshiped with sincerity, for the sake of God alone, but had had other considerations in mind, such as the hope of reward and fear of punishment. Therefore, God refines him with suffering (Psalms 105:19), in order to humble him; to test him out; ultimately to benefit him (Deuteronomy 8:16) in the world to come.

2. To the prosperity of the wicked. That it obtains so that human beings should have free-will, to do good or to refrain from so doing. For if punishment was immediate, people would be terrified of doing evil and so would have no choice. Moreover, worship would not then be for the sake of Heaven.

Job now presents a vigorous rebuttal of these propositions, dealing with each separately....

• Regarding the first, Job asks how God could possibly have afflicted him with such terrible suffering because, when he prayed, the improper thought that he might thereby attain some advantage might have passed through his mind? However, he had at all times kept the charge of His commandments and laws (Deuteronomy 11:1) and nothing he had done was so wrong that it justified such a severe punishment (Ch.23:6-7).
Moreover, if he could converse with God, who knows the truth, the fact that his worship had not been motivated by any extraneous considerations, but had been for the sake of God alone, would become clear. For though, during his devotions, the thought of how much he depended on God for the procurement of his needs and all his other concerns had sometimes entered his mind, momentarily, he would immediately take hold of himself and return to them, without expectation and just for His sake. And from this he proves that his righteousness had been apportioned and foreordained from the very first, by Paramount foreknowledge. And so he had received no reward for it, but had been left to the happenstance of the stars and to the suffering that the fortune of his nativity prescribed (Ch.23:10-17).

• As regards the second proposition, he dismisses Eliphaz's ideas about the prosperity of the wicked. He points to the existence of those evil-doers who destroy civilized society, disrupting the tranquillity of mankind, but whom God does not have it in mind (Job 4:18) to destroy in order to be rid of their evil, thus preventing them from devastating the world. For if there was Divine Governance, it would be proper for it to protect the general public from such scourges and destroyers of civilization. Furthermore, these wild-men live in remote deserts or on islands in the sea and it is from there they make sorties from time to time to plunder, to murder and to destroy many souls. And if God were to exterminate them in their hide-outs, no-one would know about it and so no damage would be done to the concept of worship or free-will. Therefore, they should be wiped out from under God’s heaven (Lamentations 3:66), by reason of the Divine Governance of man.

And so he returns to his original argument that God does not govern individuals and everything depends on the stars. He cries out bitterly against this (Genesis 27:34): Why was he not cut off by darkness (Job 23:17), his non-existence being preferable to his existence (Ch.26:16-17)?¹Since he considers himself to be blameless, Job does not see why he has to repent as suggested by Eliphaz. He wishes to approach God as he is. Eliphaz is convinced that the answer to Job's affliction is to be found in an understanding of the workings of Governance. In his opinion, Job is not a special case but just another person who is not quite as righteous as his own estimate of himself. But Job insists that he is a special case. He really is righteous and wants God to explain why he has been picked out for such harsh and undeserved treatment.