Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden?
The question asks if the listener has taken note of the old path that wicked people have walked. It comes from Eliphaz in his third speech accusing Job. That speech belongs to the extended debate between Job and his three friends in Job 3-31 over the cause and purpose of human suffering, and it was uttered from human wisdom and observation.
The fact that these words stand in an inspired book establishes that Eliphaz actually spoke them, not that his accusation against Job was correct. As part of Eliphaz's speech, the statement is not to be accepted as dependable truth about Job or about God unless inspired Scripture elsewhere confirms it. The friends' broad principle that evil is at last punished and good at last rewarded is true, yet they misapplied it to Job because they had never seen a thoroughly good man so afflicted and therefore took adversity as evidence of God's displeasure.
Affliction, adversity, and suffering do not prove that a person lies under God's displeasure and give no cause for discouragement, for whom the Lord loves He chastens and Jesus the Son of God was the prince of sufferers, so that suffering entrusted to God advances His glory and man's highest good. The same chapter's assertion that divine favor produces abundance of gold and silver is to be rejected, since the apostles and the faithful portrayed in Hebrews 11 show that godly people may be poor and afflicted.
The question asks if the listener has taken note of the old path that wicked people have walked. It comes from Eliphaz in his third speech accusing Job. That speech belongs to the extended debate between Job and his three friends in Job 3-31 over the cause and purpose of human suffering, and it was uttered from human wisdom and observation.
The fact that these words stand in an inspired book establishes that Eliphaz actually spoke them, not that his accusation against Job was correct. As part of Eliphaz's speech, the statement is not to be accepted as dependable truth about Job or about God unless inspired Scripture elsewhere confirms it. The friends' broad principle that evil is at last punished and good at last rewarded is true, yet they misapplied it to Job because they had never seen a thoroughly good man so afflicted and therefore took adversity as evidence of God's displeasure.
Affliction, adversity, and suffering do not prove that a person lies under God's displeasure and give no cause for discouragement, for whom the Lord loves He chastens and Jesus the Son of God was the prince of sufferers, so that suffering entrusted to God advances His glory and man's highest good. The same chapter's assertion that divine favor produces abundance of gold and silver is to be rejected, since the apostles and the faithful portrayed in Hebrews 11 show that godly people may be poor and afflicted.