Job 4 Chapter Introduction

Structure and Formatting

In this chapter (and the next chapter), Job’s friend Eliphaz responds to what Job said in chapter 3.

The ULT sets the lines of this chapter farther to the right on the page than the rest of the text because they are poetry.

Religious and Cultural Concepts in This Chapter

Eliphaz’s advice

Eliphaz advises Job to trust that God protects innocent people and punishes wicked people. He says that God corrects good people if they begin to do bad things, and he encourages Job to consider why God is correcting him. Ordinarily this would be very good advice. But Eliphaz does not understand the special circumstances that Job is in. Job himself does not understand them. God cannot explain to Job that he has allowed the adversary to test him to see whether he will still trust God even if he loses his family, possessions, and health, because if God explained this, that would make the test invalid. So this section of the book, in which Job’s three friends speak with him, presents a paradox: What would ordinarily be good advice is not good advice under these special circumstances.

Translation Issues in This Chapter

Rhetorical questions

Eliphaz often uses the question form for emphasis. If you would not use the question form for that purpose in your language, you could translate his questions as statements or exclamations. Notes will offer suggestions at each place where Eliphaz uses the question form in this way. (See: figs-rquestion)