Eliphaz the Careless
On Job and Grief
Introduction: Job’s Integrity
There was a man once in the land of Uz whose name was Job.
That man was perfect (tam) and upright,
one who feared God and turned away from evil.
This is how the biblical book of Job opens. The Hebrew word tam, here rendered “perfect,” is a difficult word to translate. It could be understood in a moral sense (pious, ethical, blameless, having integrity) but can also be understood as “complete” or “whole.” A few characters in the Bible are described as tam (or the related tammim): Noah, Abraham, Jacob, and one of the lovers in Song of Songs (“my dove, my perfect one”; 5:2, 6:9). It is also used in the Psalms to describe the “upright” or “innocent.” It is used to describe the way of God (Psalm 18:31), and those who may enter God’s tent (Psalm 15:2). And it is paired with “without blemish” to describe an acceptable animal sacrifice, for example in Leviticus 22:21: “When a person offers up a sacrifice of peace-offering to the LORD, to perform a vow or for a free-will offering, from the herd or from the flock, it must be perfect (tammim) for acceptance—no defect must be in it.”
Just how might we understand the tam of Job? Or rather, how might we understand Job to be tam? I like the idea of “having integrity.” It captures the sense of moral uprightness we often mean when we say “integrity,” but it also implies “wholeness,” “completeness,” “unity of self.”
But I also want to complicate this meaning.
Let’s look at all the ways Job might be understood as tam at the beginning of this story:
Morally: He is upright, fears God, and turns away from evil.
Familialy: He has ten children, whom he prays for regularly. He probably feels that his “quiver” is full (cf. Psalm 127:4–5).
Economically: He is wealthy, wants for nothing (he is “complete”), has thousands of sheep, camels, oxen, donkeys, and servants. His children hold rotating feasts. He is described as “the greatest of all the people of the east.”
Religiously: He regularly prays for and offers sacrifices on behalf of his children, in case his children “have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” It is also implied later that (before the disaster) Job had sound theology.
Wisdomly: (Sorry, had to keep the adverb pattern!) We later learn that Job is sought out for his wisdom, that his words have helped many others.
Physically: While it is not stated outright, it is implied that Job is in good health.
“Have you considered my servant Job?
There is no one like him on earth,
a perfect and upright man
who fears God and turns away from evil.”
God describes Job (1:8) the exact same way the narrator does (1:1). So now we have divine confirmation of Job’s integrity. The Adversary (Hebrew “the satan”) proposes a test. “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face” (1:9–11). God allows the Adversary to carry out the test.
The Disaster
So Job loses his material wealth:
Oxen and donkeys and servants (1:15) - the Sabeans steal the animals and kill the servants “with the edge of the sword.”
Sheep and servants (1:16) - “the fire from God fell from heaven” and consumed them.
Camels and servants (1:17) - the Chaldeans steal the animals and kill the servants “with the edge of the sword.”
Remember these events. Remember what was lost and how it happened. Remember the violence of it. Remember the horror of it.
Then a fourth messenger arrives.
“Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking in their eldest brother’s house,
and suddenly a great wind came across the desert,
struck the four corners of the house,
and it fell on the young people,
and they are dead.”
Remember this event. Remember who was lost and how it happened. Remember the violence of it. Remember the horror of it.
Job tears his robe, shaves his head, falls on the ground “and worships” (1:20). He says, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (1:21). The narrator tells us that, “In all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing” (1:22).
We may be tempted to think that this verbal declaration demonstrates Job’s integrity. Indeed, when God and the Adversary meet again, God repeats the “noble quartet” of “perfect, upright, fearing God, turning away from evil” to describe Job and then says, “He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him without reason” (2:3).
What integrity does Job have left? His economic integrity has been dissolved; he’s lost all his assets. His familial integrity has been destroyed; he’s lost all ten of his children.
It’s unclear if his wisdom integrity is still intact, though he laments his losses and blesses the name of the Lord. Should we say this demonstrates wise action, actions which befit the nature of the disaster?
He does not accuse God of wrongdoing (even though these disasters are suspiciously close together), so we might argue he still has religious/theological integrity. But if God deliberately allowed these things to happen, then is Job’s theology wrong?
His moral integrity seems to be intact, which is emphasized by God. And his physical integrity remains—at least his health. He does shave his head in mourning, a physical “dis-integration” that symbolizes his familial dis-integration.
God declares that Job “persists in his integrity.” So the Adversary ups the ante and covers Job in “loathsome sores.” His physical health is now dis-integrated. He sits “among the ashes” and scrapes himself with a shard of pottery (a broken pot = another dis-integration).
Job’s Wife, the Catalyst
His wife confronts him: “You still persist in your integrity. Curse God and die” (2:9). It can be easy to dismiss or rebuke Job’s wife here. Commentators and preachers have been doing it for centuries. But remember, Job’s wife has just lost all the same things Job has: wealth, servants,
and her ten children.
Job’s (unnamed) wife is going through the same grief Job is, yet in this biblical book, the focus is on Job’s experience. Why? Why does his wife get nothing more than a line people use to accuse her of blasphemy?
In the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament, often abbreviated LXX), Job’s wife gets a much longer speech, where she pours out her grief.
How long will you persist, saying, “Behold, I wait a little longer, expecting the hope of my deliverance”?
Because, behold, your memorial is destroyed from the earth, sons and daughters, the birth-pangs and pains of my womb, whom in vain I labored with toils.
You are seated in the decay of worms, passing the night in the open air, and I am a wanderer and a servant, going from place to place and house to house, expecting when the sun will set so I can rest from my toils and pains which now confine me.
But say some word to the Lord, and die.
Notice that in this version “your integrity” and “curse God” are absent. Job’s wife reminds him of the reality of their situation: Their children are dead. Their wealth is gone. Job’s wife seeks work “place to place” while Job just sits in the ashes “persisting” in his hope for deliverance. What “hope of deliverance” could there possibly be? It would be better to die and find rest.
In the LXX version, Job’s wife becomes the catalyst for Job’s speech in chapter 3. There are many verbal parallels between the two speeches, as if Job is inspired by what his wife has said: he recycles her words into his own lament. In the Hebrew version—from which our English versions are translated—Job’s wife gets two phrases. They do not foreshadow Job’s speech in chapter 3 (aside from perhaps the “and die” sentiment), but they echo something else: the debate between God and the Adversary.
“You still persist in your integrity” (often translated as a question, though not technically indicated as such in Hebrew) is a verbatim reiteration of God’s claim that “He still persists in his integrity.” “Curse God” is similar to the Adversary’s claim that Job will “curse you to your face.”
(Side note: the word translated “curse” in Job chs. 1–2 is actually b-r-k, the Hebrew word for “bless.” So every time in chs. 1 and 2 it says something about “cursing” God, the actual Hebrew is “blessing” God. I won’t get into the interpretive problems and possibilities of this here, but just want to point it out.)
So Job’s wife isn’t telling Job what to do. Job’s wife is presenting the options to Job. His choice will determine which divine being wins the bet. Job can persist in his integrity (God wins) or curse God (the Adversary wins). Either way, he will (at some point) die.
Job’s Answer
Job’s friends—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar—arrive and spend one week of speechless solidarity with him.
They met together to go and console and comfort him.
When they saw him from a distance,
they did not recognize him,
and they raised their voices and wept aloud;
they tore their clothes
and threw dust in the air upon their heads.
They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights,
and no one spoke a word to him,
for they saw that his suffering was very great.
Finally, Job opens his mouth. He curses (actual cursing this time, Heb q-l-l) the day of his birth. Job 3:2 is one of my favorite verses because in most English translations, it simply is: “Job said.” Isn’t that technically shorter than “Jesus wept”? But in the Hebrew, it actually says, “And Job answered, and he said,” which is interesting because no one has said anything. So what is Job answering? Who is Job responding to?
Here are some possibilities, moving from most immediate to most distant:
Job is “answering” the silence of his friends. They’ve come to “console and comfort” him, but it cannot be done. It’s as if Job is saying, “You cannot comfort me, I am beyond consolation. I just need to die. Only in death can I find rest and peace.”
Job “answers” his wife. She showed him the options: persist in integrity or curse God. But he chooses neither by wishing for death. He choose the “third option” she presented in her speech: “and die.”
Job “answers” his own sorrow and/or the disasters that have caused it. After “persisting” for many days and nights, he has finally collected his thoughts to say what he actually thinks and feels. He gives language to his grief.
Job “answers” (unwittingly) God and the Adversary. He does not curse God, but he does not intentionally persist in his integrity either (more on that below). He wants to die; he does not want to participate in this social experiment set up by these two divine beings. There are some interesting verbal parallels between Job’s first speech and what goes on in the heavenly scenes. For example, the Adversary says that God has “put a fence around him and his house” (1:10), implying that God’s protection and prosperity are the reasons for Job’s integrity. Job, in his lament, cries out, “Why is light given to one who cannot see the way, whom God has fenced in?” (3:23). Job feels trapped because God keeps him alive. In Hebrew, the verbs are the same. Fence of protection, fence of imprisonment.
Job “answers” his former life. Nothing in his life pre-disaster seems worth the suffering he now endures. He wishes he had not been conceived, or that he had died in the womb or at birth. He would rather have died as a baby than lived his life to this point. All the prosperity, the joy of family, the love of friends, the trust in God—none of that carries any weight compared to his present grief. Trauma has made a separation between his former life and his current life—he is psychologically dis-integrated. The only respite he can imagine is death. And it won’t come.
Job “answers” his former wisdom. This becomes more apparent as the dialogue with his friends progresses. The traditional model of wisdom says that righteousness is rewarded with prosperity and wickedness is punished with disaster. Sound familiar? It is biblical. And yet, the Bible also undermines, complicates, contradicts, and qualifies this kind of reward-punishment idea. Job argues that his experience of disaster does not fit the model. His foundation for understanding how the world works, his foundation for understanding God, has been disintegrated by the horrific events that have happened to him. His experience does not fit into his theological worldview. So he must rethink his theology in light of his experience. But right now, he is in a state of disorientation, dis-integration, and he focuses on what seems the most logical path forward: death.
The Answer of So-Called Friends
Job says his piece (chapter 3). And then the true nature of the friends emerges. They came to “console and comfort,” and by gum, they’re gonna do it. And they’re gonna remind him of the model of wisdom and justice and God that they all agreed on pre-disaster. They’re going to squeeze his experience of grief into the box of “good theology.” And they’re going to wrap it—at least at first—in a garment of “care.” They’re telling him their good theology, out of love. They’re reminding him of God’s good promises, out of love. They’re reminding him that only sinners get punished, out of love.
They try to force his grief into the narrow neck of their theological bottle. But Job’s grief explodes their bottles. New wine cannot be stored in old wineskins. Job’s experience bursts his theology, and he ventures into unknown territory. (Eventually, at the end of the dialogue, God shows up and delivers a speech which does not answer the questions raised by Job or his friends, but serves to guide Job into a new understanding of … something—life? God?)
Job’s integrity will be debated by his friends, but Job “clings” to it throughout, and is eventually vindicated by God (cf. 42:7–9).
Here’s one more theory about what Job’s “integrity” might refer to: his response to his own suffering.
What if Job’s “integrity” is less about the soundness of his theology / wisdom, less about his physical wholeness or economic prosperity, less about the purity of his morality, and more about his sincerity in expressing grief? His integrity is not found in his unassailable convictions about God, but in his wrestling with theology in light of disaster.
Job’s integrity does not consist of his theological certainty in the face of loss, but his honest struggle with the uncertainties that trauma and grief bring to theological understanding.
A Piece Composed of Juxtapositions
So that is the introduction. Now, a performance. Job’s friend Eliphaz is the first to answer Job. His speech is full of what might be called by some “theological truth,” but the more he speaks, the further he gets from “comfort and consolation.” Some of the things he says to Job are completely inappropriate, such as, “Your descendants will be many, and your offspring like the grass of the earth” (5:25). Job has just lost all ten of his children. What an insult. But Eliphaz is sincere. The problem is that once he opens his mouth to give his sermon, he seems to forget Job’s actual situation.
So, with some artistic license, I have inserted Job’s response (in italics) to each claim Eliphaz makes, reminding Eliphaz (and us) of the disaster that has just befallen Job. I recommend reading this slowly.
Occasionally, I have included (in quotation marks) a comment or song lyric I have heard (usually in church) since my own son died in 2017. The words of Eliphaz echo in these modern iterations. Oblivious, harmful good intentions. Perhaps we should change Eliphaz’s name from Eliphaz the Temanite to Eliphaz the Oblivious. Eliphaz the Careless.
As the proverb goes, “Like a thornbush brandished by the hand of a drunkard is a proverb in the mouth of a fool” (Proverbs 26:9). Perhaps we might amend it to, “Like a thornbush brandished in the hand of a drunkard is allegedly good theology in the mouth of someone oblivious to the sorrows of another.”
So now, the piece.
Eliphaz the Careless
Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered: If one ventures a word with you, will you be offended?
I have just lost ten children. I don’t always know what will trigger me.
But who can keep from speaking?
I have just lost ten children. Is now really the best time to offer your opinion?
See, you have instructed many;
you have strengthened the weak hands.
Your words have supported those who were stumbling,
and you have made firm the weak knees.
“God allowed your child to die so that you could comfort others who have lost children.”
I have just lost ten children. I am covered in loathsome sores. What makes you think I have any strength left?
But now it has come to you,
and you are impatient;
it touches you,
and you are dismayed.
“Shouldn’t you be over it by now?”
What do you think the “it” is? My world is destroyed. My children are dead.
Is not your fear of God your confidence,
and the integrity of your ways your hope?
I have just lost ten children. What was the point of fearing God and having integrity in my ways if this is the result?
Think now, who that was innocent ever perished?
Let me name for you my ten children.
“Children are resilient. They always bounce back.”
Mine didn’t.
As I have seen,
those who plow iniquity and sow trouble
reap the same.By the breath of God they perish
and by the blast of his anger they are consumed.
Are you implying this is why MY children died? Why my sheep and shepherds died?
The roar of the lion,
the voice of the fierce lion,
and the teeth of the young lions
are broken.The strong lion perishes for lack of prey,
and the whelps of the lioness are scattered.
I have just lost ten children. What are you suggesting by your metaphor?
Now
a word came stealing to me,
my ear received the whisper of it.
Amid thoughts and visions of the night,
when deep sleep falls on mortals,
dread came upon me and trembling,
which made all my bones shake.A spirit glided past my face;
the hair of my flesh bristled.
It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance.
A form was before my eyes.There was silence,
then I heard a voice:“Can mortals be righteous before God?
Can human beings be pure before their Maker?
Even in his servants he puts no trust,
and his angels he charges with error;
how much more those who live in houses of clay,
whose foundation is in the dust,
who are crushed like a moth.
I have just lost ten children, crushed under rubble. Why waste your breath telling me a dream in which you hear only what you already believe?
Between morning and evening they are destroyed;
they perish forever without any regarding it.
Their tent-cord is plucked up within them,
and they die devoid of wisdom.”
I have just lost ten children between morning and evening.
Call now:
is there anyone who will answer you?
To which of the holy ones will you turn?
I have just lost ten children. Is this what you call “comfort and consolation”?
Surely vexation kills the fool,
and jealousy slays the simple.
I have just lost ten children. How can I be anything but vexed, angry, confused? How can I be anything but jealous that other parents get to watch their children grow up?
I have seen fools taking root,
but suddenly I cursed their dwelling.
“So I know you’re sad right now, but can I cheer you up? Here’s a video of someone almost dying because they did something stupid. It’s okay, though; they survived.”
I have just lost ten children. Why are you telling me this?
Their children are far from safety
Remember I have just lost ten children.
they are crushed in the gate,
I have just lost ten children.
and there is no one to deliver them.
I have just lost ten children.
The hungry eat their harvest,
and they take it even out of the thorns;
and the thirsty pant after their wealth.
Remember I have just lost all my livestock and servants to raiders.
For misery does not come from the earth,
nor does trouble sprout from the ground;
but human beings are born to trouble
just as sparks fly upward.
I have just lost ten children.
I have just lost my sheep and shepherds to the fire of God from heaven.
As for me,
I would seek God
and to God I would commit my cause.
“All God’s promises are Yes and Amen.”
Good for you. I have just lost ten children and all my wealth. What cause do I have left except to die?
He does great things and unsearchable,
marvelous things without number.
“How great is our God, sing with me how great is our God.”
Not great or marvelous enough to keep my children from dying.
He gives rain on the earth
and sends waters on the fields.
“Look on the bright side…”
What good is rain to me? I have just lost all ten of my children.
He sets on high those who are lowly,
and those who mourn are lifted to safety.
I have just lost ten children. Safety is an illusion.
He frustrates the devices of the crafty,
so that their hands achieve no success.
He takes the wise in their own craftiness;
and the schemes of the wily
are brought to a quick end.
They meet with darkness in the daytime,
and grope at noonday as in the night.But he saves the needy from the sword of their mouth,
from the hand of the mighty.
So the poor have hope,
and injustice shuts its mouth.
I have just lost ten children. I have just lost all my livestock and servants to raiders. My servants were killed by the sword.
How happy is the one
whom God reproves;
Happy? Happy!? All ten of my children are dead.
therefore do not despise
the discipline of the Almighty.
All ten of my children are dead. You call that “God’s discipline”?
For he wounds, but he binds up;
he strikes, but his hands heal.
I have just lost ten children. God has wounded me and struck them down. How can that be bound up? How can that be healed?
He will deliver you from six troubles;
in seven, no harm shall touch you.
Let me name for you each trouble and harm that has touched me. Do you not see these sores on my body? Do you not understand how my wealth is completely gone? Do you not remember I have just lost ALL TEN OF MY CHILDREN?
In famine he will redeem you from death,
and in war from the power of the sword.
Do you not remember the swords of the Sabeans? The swords of the Chaldeans? My wealth is gone, my personal famine has begun.
You shall be hidden from the scourge of the tongue,
Not the scourge of YOUR tongue.
and shall not fear destruction when it comes.
I have just lost ten children. All my wealth is destroyed. The only destruction I do not fear is my own death—and I long for it more than I long for treasure.
At destruction and famine you shall laugh,
and shall not fear the wild animals of the earth.
For you shall be in league with the stones of the field,
and the wild animals shall be at peace with you.You shall know that your tent is safe,
you shall inspect your fold and miss nothing.
Do you not remember that EVERYTHING I once had is missing? My flocks, my herds, my FOLD, and my children? My tent is safe because there is nothing left to destroy.
You shall know that your descendants will be many,
and your offspring like the grass of the earth.
“Don’t worry, you’ll have other children.”
All of my children are dead. All of them. How can you speak of descendants and offspring?
You shall come to your grave in ripe old age,
as a shock of grain comes up to the threshing floor in its season.
Do you not remember I just said I would rather be dead? There is no future I want here.
See,
we have searched this out;
it is true.
Hear,
and know it for yourself.
I, too, once believed as you did. I have just lost ten children. My old beliefs have cracked. I do not yet know if they will fall.
The End
You can continue to read through the dialogues of Job and his friends with this in mind: Job has just lost all ten of his children. Remember this sorrow for every line you read in Job. It’s easy to get caught up in what seems like intellectual debates about God and suffering, sin and evil, hope and justice. But read through the lens of sorrow, and you notice that Job is defending his grief experience against his friends who want to explain it away.
In the end, God vindicates Job. The friends must seek forgiveness from Job and from God. And then, “the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, … and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. … The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys” (42:10, 12). So Job’s wealth returns. The text does not mention servants, although we can assume he had at least four (cf. 1:13–19).
And Job and his wife have ten more children: seven sons, three daughters. The daughters are named in the text (Jemimah, Keziah, and Keren-happuch), and they receive an inheritance along with their brothers.
It may seem like Job gets everything back, but we have to remember that Job is still a bereaved father. He still grieves his first ten children. His second set of ten children does not “replace” the first. He has twenty children, ten of whom are dead.
The text also says nothing about Job’s health. There is no indication that Job’s body has been healed of his sores. Perhaps he has been healed, but there is likely physical scarring from the sores and from where he scratched them. Either way, Job has a reminder in his body of the disaster, his misfortunes, and his grief. The wound persists, just as Job persists in his integrity.
Job’s integrity remains, but it is different. How? How has Job changed as a result of his grief? How has his theology changed? How has his understanding of God’s presence and deliverance changed? How has his understanding of love and suffering, life and death changed? Questions to ponder as you read the book of Job. Let me know what you notice!