Job 22
About JobWritten by AI
Job is a long poem framed by a short story. A good man loses his wealth, his children, and his health, and no one tells him why. The writer and the date are unknown: the story is set in the age of the patriarchs, but the book may have been written much later, and Christians hold different views on when. Some Jewish tradition credits Moses.
After two prose chapters, Job and three friends trade speeches in rounds. The friends insist suffering must be punishment for sin; Job insists he is innocent and pleads for God to answer him. A younger man, Elihu, speaks next. Then the LORD Himself answers out of the whirlwind, and the story closes in prose.
Read the friends with care. They say many true things about God, but they apply them wrongly, and at the end God says they have not spoken of Him accurately as Job has (42:7). Watch for Job's flashes of hope in the dark: “I know that my Redeemer lives.”
Before you read Job 22Written by AI
Eliphaz opens the third round and goes further than before. He accuses Job of specific sins: taking from the poor, stripping the naked, refusing water to the weary, sending widows away empty. There is no evidence for any of it. He then urges Job to make peace with God, and good will come.
Eliphaz: Can a Man Be of Use to God?
Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:
“Can a man be of use to God?
Can even a wise man benefit Him?
Does it delight the Almighty that you are righteous?
Does He profit if your ways are blameless?
Is it for your reverence that He rebukes you
and enters into judgment against you?
Is not your wickedness great?
Are not your iniquities endless?
For you needlessly demanded security from your brothers
and deprived the naked of their clothing.
You gave no water to the weary
and withheld food from the famished,
while the land belonged to a mighty man,
and a man of honor lived on it.
You sent widows away empty-handed,
and the strength of the fatherless was crushed.
Therefore snares surround you,
and sudden peril terrifies you;
it is so dark you cannot see,
and a flood of water covers you.
Is not God as high as the heavens?
Look at the highest stars, how lofty they are!
Yet you say: ‘What does God know?
Does He judge through thick darkness?
Thick clouds veil Him so He does not see us
as He traverses the vault of heaven.’
Will you stay on the ancient path
that wicked men have trod?
They were snatched away before their time,
and their foundations were swept away by a flood.
They said to God, ‘Depart from us.
What can the Almighty do to us?’
But it was He who filled their houses with good things;
so I stay far from the counsel of the wicked.
The righteous see it and are glad;
the innocent mock them:
‘Surely our foes are destroyed,
and fire has consumed their excess.’
Reconcile now and be at peace with Him;
thereby good will come to you.
Receive instruction from His mouth,
and lay up His words in your heart.
If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored.
If you remove injustice from your tents
and consign your gold to the dust
and the gold of Ophir to the stones of the ravines,
then the Almighty will be your gold
and the finest silver for you.
Surely then you will delight in the Almighty
and lift up your face to God.
You will pray to Him, and He will hear you,
and you will fulfill your vows.
Your decisions will be carried out,
and light will shine on your ways.
When men are brought low and you say, ‘Lift them up!’
then He will save the lowly.
He will deliver even one who is not innocent,
rescuing him through the cleanness of your hands.”