Bible Commentary - Job 22

In this chapter, Eliphaz accuses Job of committing evil and pleads for him to return to God.

Reading through this chapter, I mentally divide it into three parts.  The first part is verses 2-11, the second part is 12-20, and the third part is 21-30.

The overall flow of this chapter is relatively straightforward.  Eliphaz is doubling down on the idea that Job is suffering because he is wicked.  In fact, Eliphaz goes further than any of the friends so far by directly accusing Job of wickedness.  That is the contents of the first section; Eliphaz is saying that Job is personally responsible for withholding food and water from the needy, oppressing widows and orphans, and committing the litany of crimes that we find regularly chastised in OT moral prohibitions.  It is a deep concern for social justice that is commonly tied to the notion of “ungodliness”.  The reasoning being, it is ungodly men who are unconcerned with the justice of the Almighty, that commit crimes against other people and thus incur the wrath of God.

This is a persistent theme of Job that we have seen many times previously, though I have not previously commented on it.  One example is Job 18:21, which confirms a poetic equivalence between “the dwellings of the wicked” and “the place of him who does not know God”.  Chapter 20 also lays out a strong social justice concern, with the central evil of a wicked man being “he has oppressed and forsaken the poor” (Job 20:19).  This logical connection between godlessness and wickedness is an unquestioned assumption throughout the OT, to the point that godless and wicked are treated as virtual synonyms, and while it is present in Job it is not unique to Job.

Injustice is viewed as a derivative product of godlessness inasmuch as fear of God is the primary motivator of righteousness, whether because of a fear of punishment or because of an innate desire to do “what is right”.  Godless people are considered “unrestrained” in the bible, freely choosing to do whatever evil things they want out of an indifference to God’s commands or threats.  It is another unquestioned assumption that “unrestrained” people naturally tend towards doing what is evil, as an inevitable byproduct of human nature.  Righteousness in the bible is the restraint of those natural impulses due to a greater concern for God’s law.

As far as righteousness is concerned, the usual hallmarks of righteousness in the OT are a dedicated religious life (i.e. devotion to God), concern for the defenseless people of society, and fairness or justice (i.e. treating other people the way they deserve; impartiality).  Eliphaz is challenging Job primarily on the basis of his concern (or lack of concern) for helpless members of society (v. 7, 9).

This is the first time any of the friends have accused Job directly, while they have been implying it nonstop.  Given everything we know about Job, I suspect that these accusations are baseless.  Or more to the point, Eliphaz is accusing Job of wickedness only because Job is suffering and Eliphaz views this as evidence of immorality.  My suspicion is that Eliphaz is, shall we say, letting his imagination run wild and free, while he tries to construct what evils could have possibly landed Job in such a tough situation, and is not speaking out of any affirmative knowledge of such evils.

The middle portion of this chapter has a couple of thoughts, but a large part of it is Eliphaz trying to imagine the thought process of evil men.  Once again we see an equivalence between wickedness and godlessness, with the defining characteristic of such men being the rejection of God (v. 17).

The third and final section is the logical conclusion of Eliphaz’s argument, which is that Job should return to God, cease committing these putative evil deeds that Eliphaz blames him for, and thereafter accept restoration to his former glory.

The third section is easily defined by its opening verse, v. 21.  Eliphaz is petitioning Job to “yield now” to God, “thereby good will come to you.”  This whole chapter has been yet another restatement of the same thing the friends have been saying over and over, which is that God punishes sinners, therefore Job must be a sinner, and if he repents and returns to God then God will restore him.  There is nothing about this that is different from e.g. chapter 5.

In the next chapter, Job responds once more to Eliphaz.