First up to bat: Eliphaz!

I don’t know why Eliphaz seems to be the ring leader of this self-assigned intervention group. Was he the oldest? The richest? The pushiest? The wisest? The closest to Job? The most eloquent? Was he just that confident personality that everyone looks at when someone needs to take charge? We don’t know much about him except that he was a Temanite, he was the first to speak up, and he was wrong. But more about that last part later.

First, what on earth is a Temanite.

As far as I can discern from the resources I have available, a Temanite is someone from Teman. Congratulations, you may be thinking. Perhaps you worked that much out yourself.

You may also be familiar with the ever-changing nature of political maps and unclear, incomplete, or absent nature of historical records that can make it difficult to place these ancient locations. What we are left with is a lot of likelihoods and educated guesses of questionable reliability, but fortunately for us, where exactly Eliphaz is from will change the meaning of this book very little. So let’s talk likelihoods and probablys and not stress ourselves out too much if they turn out to be incorrect.

Teman was likely a place built by a man named Teman or his descendants. Ancient peoples preferred descriptive over aesthetic names. They were a bit more practical than we are.

So the question becomes who on earth was Teman?

Well, we do actually have a likely answer to this question!

The trouble with saying anything with certainty is ancient peoples tended to be more practical than creative with baby names too, so there were likely a LOT of people named Teman. However. If the man had a whole clan and homeland named after him, he was likely fairly important. Maybe even important enough to be recorded in the extensive genealogies that are included in the Pentateuch. In fact, there is a fairly important Teman there.

Teman was the grandson of Esau, son of Isaac, son of Abraham and Sarah. So to clarify, he is not of the promised line that became God’s chosen nation of Israel. He is descended from another of Abraham’s grandsons, Jacob’s (aka Israel’s) twin brother Esau. He is fifth generation, the same generation as Israel’s grandsons, who, if you remember, were brought to Egypt by their fathers and grandfather at Joseph’s invitation to escape the famine in Canaan (the land God promised Abraham). Some have suggested Job was a contemporary of Abraham. More likely based on the limited genealogy we have of Job’s three friends, this occurred sometime in the 400 years the nation of Israel lived as foreigners in Egypt. Bildad the Shuhite, most likely a descendant of Abraham’s youngest son Shuah via his second wife Keturah, reinforces that this was likely after Abraham’s time. Job and his three friends still seem to accept Abraham’s God as fact, and Job at least continues to follow Abraham’s example of sacrificial worship.

We have a brief mention of the region of Teman in Jeremiah where it is lamented that the wisdom of Teman is gone. Evidently Teman had quite a reputation in those days for being a land of wisdom and understanding. Perhaps Eliphaz spoke up first because of this reputation. Perhaps they looked to him for wisdom because his people were widely regarded as wise, and he was likely an elder among them. Perhaps, to them, he represented the pinnacle of human learning. Perhaps he was the Harvard professor of the bunch. I would want to hear what he had to say.

Remember, he’s been sitting there with Job for seven days and seven nights. He’s covered in dirt, his robes are torn with grief, he probably hasn’t eaten or slept much, and he came a long way for the purpose of comforting and consoling his friend. He’s not a bad guy. But he understands the world a certain way, he likes it the way he understands it, and Job is challenging it. Actually, Job has gone completely nihilistic and determined there is no reason to live at all and now he’s saying he just wants to die.

So Eliphaz says – “Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. I have to say something.”

Will you be patient and let me say a word?
    For who could keep from speaking out? (Job 4:2)

So you know that moment where you know something needs to be said, although you haven’t really figured out what yet, and your thoughts are still forming when somebody hands you a microphone? No pressure, Eliphaz. But go ahead. Let’s hear it. Let’s hear how you’re going to straighten this man and his life right out.

So he starts by appealing to an authority he hopes Job will listen to – Job himself. “Hey now,” he says, “YOU’RE the one who said…”

In the past you have encouraged many people;
    you have strengthened those who were weak.
Your words have supported those who were falling;
    you encouraged those with shaky knees.
But now when trouble strikes, you lose heart.
    You are terrified when it touches you.
Doesn’t your reverence for God give you confidence?
    Doesn’t your life of integrity give you hope? (Job 4:3-6)

I think what Eliphaz is questioning is why Job has abandoned hope when he still has his faith and lifetime of righteous actions. Eliphaz’s next words show he very firmly believes in the scientific notion of cause and effect, of input = output.

Stop and think! Do the innocent die?
    When have the upright been destroyed?
My experience shows that those who plant trouble
    and cultivate evil will harvest the same. (Job 4:7-8)

Can’t you just hear a professor voice saying, “Let’s analyze this situation and compare and contrast it to our body of evidence. The studies I have conducted show you reap what you sow.” So in Eliphaz’s mind, one of two things has happened here: either Job has falsely represented his faith and been a full-blown hypocrite all along, and that’s why he has now openly abandoned all hope, or he’s made a mistake and is blowing the consequences way out of proportion. Eliphaz, a loyal friend, leans into the second. He talks about this vision he once had:

A spirit^[a] swept past my face,
    and my hair stood on end.^[b]
The spirit stopped, but I couldn’t see its shape.
    There was a form before my eyes.
In the silence I heard a voice say,
‘Can a mortal be innocent before God?
    Can anyone be pure before the Creator?’ (Job 4:15-17)

So what is he really saying here? Well, his insinuation becomes clearer and clearer as he goes on:

But consider the joy of those corrected by God!
    Do not despise the discipline of the Almighty when you sin.

For though he wounds, he also bandages.
    He strikes, but his hands also heal. (Job 5:17-18)

Ergo, allow me to translate Eliphaz’s “comfort” and “consoling” how I hear it: “Hey, buddy, it’s all right, we all mess up sometimes, you’re only human. We know God’s punishment sucks, but you’re really a good guy, it’ll get better soon!”

Hmm.

What does that imply? Oh, Job picks up on it right away. His buddies all think he deserves this. In fact – everyone who sees him thinks he deserves this (except maybe his wife!). Underneath those merciful words lies a self-righteous accusation – you’re suffering because you deserve to suffer, and we’re not because we don’t. Oof, that little twist of arrogance. Of self-sufficiency. Of self-satisfaction, the snake. Anybody else wanna hit him? I kinda wanna hit him.

Here’s the thing about this input = output belief: most of the time, it’s true. You get out what you put in. That is more than worldly wisdom, it is a mathematical fact. Even in science where a little of the energy “spills” into friction or whatnot and the output may *seem* a little less than the input, there’s still the law that says input = output, even if the output is not of the intended kind. Everything you put in is coming out somewhere, somehow. You get out what you put in.

The Bible expresses it like this:

Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. (Galatians 6:7-8)

And straight from the mouth of Jesus, who is NOT WRONG:

A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. A tree is identified by its fruit. Figs are never gathered from thornbushes, and grapes are not picked from bramble bushes. A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart. (Luke 6:43-45)

So what the heck. How is Eliphaz wrong?

Well, first of all, like most of the rest of us, he’s fallen into the converse fallacy, which is to say he’s assumed the reverse is true. If you always harvest what you plant, then what you’ve harvested you must have planted. This is like saying that because a square is a rectangle, a rectangle is a square. Eliphaz has decided that because sinners get punished with difficult circumstances, if someone is in difficult circumstances, they must have sinned. He is following the logic backward to determine cause from effect. That is sometimes accurate, but sometimes effects can have a variety of causes, and determining exactly which one led to this effect is impossible without more information. You might say, “this shape is a four-sided polygon; therefore, it is a square,” because a square is a four-sided polygon. There are too many four-sided polygons for that statement to be true. Mathemetically, it’s a problem. (Bwaha.)

Okay, but! I might argue. Sometimes the reverse IS always true as well. If you’re out for a walk in the woods and you pick an apple from a tree, then the tree is an apple tree. It grew from an apple seed. It could not have grown from anything else! What makes this different? Well, because Jesus said so. The disciples and the Pharisees used this converse fallacy, too, in John 9, when they assumed a young man’s blindness from birth was the result of someone’s sin.

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. “Rabbi,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?”

“It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him. (John 9:1-3)

Based on the book of Job and based on John 9, I think it’s safe to say God has more reasons than we know of for allowing what he allows to happen. Just because you picked an apple from an apple tree that grew from an apple seed doesn’t mean you planted the apple tree, see. You might have. Someone else might have. Or God might have in a myriad of ways for a myriad of his own reasons! So Eliphaz’s first error is not accounting for the limitation of his study: he is assuming that the observation he has made that sin causes the effect of trouble fully explains the existence of trouble. A human hand planting an apple tree fully explains the existence of apple trees. It’s an easy error to make, to stop looking after the first cause is found. People do it all the time. He has probably taken too small a sample size.

So his advice to Job would be sound, if his conclusion had not been erroneous:

If I were you, I would go to God
    and present my case to him. (Job 5:8)

If input = output, Job’s sin, whatever it was, surely would not outweigh the lifetime of integrity he’s put in. Surely God’s mercy would be swift, and in no time at all, Job’s life would be right side up again and all would be well. Eliphaz needed to believe this. Because his ultimate error, the underlying mistake in his belief system, the underlying mistake in almost every human belief system, is agency.

But first, shh – Job’s balling his verbal fist. Incoming!