Job 5

Job 5:1

That is still a good question. To whom will you turn for help? I’m afraid saints are not able to help you. Apparently the patriarchs had already gone on at the time of Job. Probably Abraham and Isaac had died, possibly Jacob was still living. Abraham wasn’t able to help; Isaac wasn’t able to helpno one who had lived in the past was able to help. Well, which saint are you going to turn to?

Job 5:2

He is saying that he has seen the foolish and the wicked prosper, but finally they are brought down. That, by the way, is true. David was troubled by the prosperity of the wicked and writes, “I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found” (Psa_37:35-36). David wondered why wicked men prospered while the godly men did not. He watched and noted that finally God brought down the wicked men. It seemed like a long time before God brought down Hitler and got rid of him. It seemed long while we were living through it, but it was only a few years. Why doesn’t God move against evil men today? Well, friend, God moves slowly. God will bring down the ungodly in His own time. He has all eternity ahead of Him. Eliphaz is classifying Job as one of the foolish ones who took root and was flourishing before he was brought down.

Job 5:4

We don’t need to pour his last statement into a test tube to find out it is true. Man is born unto trouble. I don’t think it is even debatable that the human family has adversity, calamity, sorrow, distress, anxiety, worry, and disturbance. All one needs to do is pick up the newspaper and read a partial report of the human family: fires, accidents, tragedies, wars, rumors of war. The song says, “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,” but really everyone does know because all people have trouble. We do not all have the same color, we are not all the same size, or the same sex, or have the same blood type, or the same I.Q., but we all have trouble.

No one is exempt or immune or can get inoculated for trouble. Tears are universal. In fact, the word sympathy means “to suffer together,” and that is the human symphony todaythe suffering of mankind. In fact, a Hebrew word for man is enash, meaning “the miserable.” That’s man. There is nothing sure but death and taxes, we are told. We can add to this another surety: trouble. “Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” The sparks fly upward according to a universal law, the law of thermodynamics.

It isn’t by chance or by luck. The updraft caused by heat on a cool night causes the sparks to fly upward. Trouble and suffering and sin are basically the result of disobedience to God. “There is no peace, saith the LORD, unto the wicked” (Isa_48:22). Man is trying to build a Utopia in sin, but it won’t work. We cannot have the Millennium without the Prince of Peace. Man is trying to achieve peace in the world without the Prince of Peace. Therefore trouble comes to man, and the righteous do suffer, and the children of God do have trouble today. Sometimes trouble comes to a child of God because of a stupid blunder. A woman once told me, “My husband is my cross.” Well, no matter how bad he is, he is not her cross. She is the one who said yes. It was her stupid blunder. Your cross is something you take up gladly, my friend. Trouble sometimes is a judgment of the Father upon His child. We are told, “…for if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged” (1Co_11:31). But if we do not judge ourselves, God will have to judge us. Trouble is sometimes a discipline of the Father. We are told in Scripture, “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (Heb_12:6). Moses who was living the life of Riley in the court of Pharaoh, chose “…to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season” (Heb_11:25). It was a discipline for Moses. God could not have used him as a deliverer if he had not had forty years training down in the desert of Midian. Also Saul of Tarsus, the proud young Pharisee, came to know Christ, and God said of him, “For I will shew him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake” (Act_9:16). God really put him through the mill! Trouble is a discipline of the Father. Trouble comes to us sometimes for the purpose of teaching us to be patient and to trust God. Practical James says, “Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience” (Jas_1:3). At other times trouble comes to us because God is putting the sandpaper on us to smooth the rough edges. We will see that Job comes to the realization that God is doing that for him: “But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job_23:10). He saw that God was putting sandpaper on him to smooth him down. Then sometimes God permits trouble to come to us to get our minds and hearts fastened on Him. This is an explanation, I think, for many of us today. There are good reasons, my friend, for trouble coming to a child of God. Therefore Eliphaz is accurate when he says, “Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.”

Job 5:8

What he is saying hereand he is saying it really in a beautiful wayis that God is faithful and God is good and God is just. While this is true, it doesn’t reach the root of the problem of this man Job. Eliphaz actually is not even talking to Job.

Job 5:17

I have heard this verse quoted again and again. Isn’t it true? Of course it is true, but Eliphaz was using it as a personal dig against Job. Chastening is not always the reason that God’s people suffer, as we have seen. Sometimes one can use this verse as a little dagger to put into the heart of a friend. It is a nice way of saying, “You are having trouble because you’ve done wrong and God is correcting you.” Well, that could be, but it may not be.

Who are you to make such a judgment? Do you have a telephone into heaven? Has the Lord revealed some secret to you? There are people who like to speak ex cathedra, and they are not even the Pope! Some people think they have the last word on everything. Listen, friend, you cannot always speak to the problem of someone else, and someone else cannot always speak to your problem either.

Although the statement of Eliphaz is true, it does not apply to Job.

Job 5:18

What a wonderful picture of God that is.

Job 5:19

You will notice this use of seven again in Pro_6:16 and, in fact, quite often throughout the Bible. It is not just a poetic expression. It means sevennot the number of perfectionthe number of completeness. For instance, the seventh day was the completion of one week. Seven is the number of completeness here, as he gives the total spectrum of the trouble of man.

Job 5:20

God will deliver you in these seven troubles: (1) In famine he shall redeem thee from death, (2) in war from the power of the sword, (3) from the scourge of the tongue. During the war in Vietnam we were given a body count in the daily news. I wonder what the body count from gossip would be in this day. The tongue has probably killed more people than war has. We need to pray that God will deliver us from the evil tongue. A woman in a church I served had a very evil tongue.

I remember praying, “Oh God, don’t let her hit me with that tongue.” I found out that she did use her tongue against me. She was mean, but God protected me from being hurt by her. (4) God will deliver from the fear of destruction when it comeththat is the typhoon, the tornado, the storm. When I was a boy it seemed like I spent half my life in a storm cellar in West Texas. God did deliver us, but He expected us to go to the storm cellars.

Job 5:22

(5) He delivers from famine. Have you ever stopped to think that generally wherever the Gospel has gone, whether or not it has been widely accepted, you find one of the prosperous areas of the world? These nations are the “haves.” I do not think that is an accident. I have often thought that with the food we send to “have not” countries should be prizes like we get in boxes of Crackerjacks. And the prize should be the Word of God. Blessing attends the reading of the Word. (6) Neither shalt thou be afraid of the beasts of the earth.

Job 5:23

(7) The last trouble is death. Eliphaz speaks of death, not as an awful hideous monster, but as something welcome. There is a leveling out in death.

Job 5:27

This concludes the first discourse of Eliphaz. It has not met the need of Job. It hasn’t touched him at all. As a matter of fact, Job is dismayed; he is alarmed, and he cries out for pity. He cries out for mercy and for help because Eliphaz was of no help to him at all.