How Eliphaz Explains Job’s Adversity

Big Idea: Eliphaz explains Job’s adversity as a standard case of God’s retribution for sin.

Understanding the Text

Job’s three friends, who arrived on the scene in 2:11–13, wait until after Job’s opening lament in chapter 3 before they speak. From chapter 4 through chapter 27, the friends and Job speak alternately, as they all try to explain Job’s adversity. Eliphaz is the lead speaker in each of the three cycles of speeches, and his words introduce the key points that are developed later by Bildad and Zophar. For this reason, in the epilogue Yahweh specifically addresses Eliphaz and tells him that his explanation is wrong (42:7–8).

The three friends represent the major teaching of traditional wisdom, which is often called the retribution principle or retri…