Week 33 Job
One of the basic differences of opinion between Job and Eliphaz Bildad & Zophar was this:
Job thought he wasn’t guilty of offending the Lord.
EB&Z thought he was.
Job and EB&Z all agreed that Job was suffering.
What they couldn’t agree about was why.
The big question: Why Is Job Suffering?
It’s possible that before chapter one ever happened Job and EB&Z might have agreed with the idea that if you did bad things then you’d suffer. It might have been a pretty common idea.
If EB&Z had started with that idea – that when a person was suffering he was suffering because he was an evil person – then even though they couldn’t discover in any evidential way whether Job actually was an evil person made no difference. Since Job was suffering and since evil people suffered therefore Job was evil.
Eliphaz was so sure that Job was an offender that he said things like this:
You must have lent money to your friend and then kept the clothing he gave you as a pledge
You must have refused water for the thirsty
You must have sent widows away without helping them
Eliphaz floated these scenarios about Job as being most likely true because he knew that only evil people suffered.
Meanwhile Job was wracking his brain trying to make sense of this common assumption that – at least in his case – couldn’t possibly be true.
Note: quotes from Job 22:6, 7, 9 (NLT)