Using truth to tell lies
Interpretation of scripture requires more than lexicons, grammars, historical and cultural knowledge and an understanding of the latest literary theory. Somewhere, in all our getting, we've got to get the big picture! It isn't enough to know many specific truths and be able to exegete correctly many specific verses and spit them out as if they stood unrelated to God and his over-arching purpose. How are these specific truths to be used within the context of the Big Picture and to serve his over-arching purpose so as to be true to God? That's part of the interpretive obligation.The book of Job teaches us many things—some of them we can easily see. I’m of the opinion that commentators abuse the book of Job as surely as Job’s friends—in the end—abused Job. But you can’t help being impressed with how much truth his friends spoke and yet at the conclusion of the matter God said to those friends (42:7), "I am angry with you...because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has."
Is that not a kick in the head? Job is the one that now and then screams slander against God and the friends say things like this. "Is not God in the heights of heaven? And see how lofty are the highest stars! Yet you say, ‘What does God know?’...Submit to God and be at peace with him...Accept instruction from his mouth and lay up his words in your heart." So said Eliphaz in 22:12-13, 21-22. And God is angry at those words?
Earlier (22:2-3) Job’s friend and God’s defender said, "Can a man be of benefit to God? Can even a wise man benefit him? What pleasure would it give the Almighty if you were righteous? What would he gain if your ways were blameless?" God is so exalted, Eliphaz said, that he needs humans like he needs a hole in the head. The man is glorifying God and stressing his eternal majesty—how can that be wrong?
The same wise man said (4:17): "Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can a man be more pure than his Maker?" Is he not right? Of course he’s right; so how can God be angry with him for not speaking what is right? Listen to Eliphaz as he continues to extol and proclaim the majesty of God. "If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error, how much more those who live in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust...?" Psalmists and prophets and NT apostles spoke like that and we glory in it! So how come God scathed Eliphaz and his friends for bearing witness on his behalf?
He scathed them because of what they did with truth! It’s possible to take truth and make points with it that are clearly false (compare 13:7 and the anguished man’s protest). It’s possible, of course, to take truth and use it to maim and destroy but there’s no reason to think Job’s friends were not friends even to the end. The reverse is true (42:10).
To take truth about God and to use it so that it reflects badly on God is folly. Those who took the truth of God’s utter holiness, his utter majesty and his complete self-sufficiency and in the name of that God buried a man that floundered in faith and ignorance—they committed folly (42:8).
(You might be interested in my little book on Job: Life on the Ash Heap. In The USA, call toll free 877-792-6408)
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, theabidingword.com.