If Anyone Thinks He Is Wise... (Eliphaz 1)

[Sung Psalm: 1]

So what do we do with Eliphaz? At the end of the book of Job, God will say that Job's three friends have not spoken rightly about God. And Job (whom God says does speak rightly of him) contradicts them. So perhaps we need to be a little suspicious of Job's friends!

And yet, it is notoriously difficult to pin down where Eliphaz goes wrong. Job's friends represent the best of the wisdom tradition – rooted in Deuteronomy and Proverbs.

The introduction to Job paints him as the blessed man from Psalm 1. Job's friends know Job has been such a man.

But Job's circumstances would suggest that he is not a blessed man!

Then again, there was a day when our Lord Jesus did not exactly look like a blessed man! Hanging on the cross – crying out like a derelict, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Any attempt to deal with “the problem of evil” that does not take the cross into account will fall short. It is only when the blessed man of Psalm 1 is hung on a cross that we can begin to make sense of suffering.