Is not this thy fear, thy confidence, thy hope, and the uprightness of thy ways?
Job 4:6 belongs to Eliphaz's speech to Job, forming part of his argument that affliction proves sin and that Job should confess his sins. That counsel was sound only as a general principle and was wrongly applied to Job. Statements about Job and God in that speech cannot be treated as reliable merely because they appear in the book of Job, but must be tested against other inspired Scripture.
In the verse Eliphaz questions whether Job's reverence for God, confidence, hope, and upright conduct should sustain him in his trial. By it he presses the claim that suffering evidences wrongdoing, urging Job not to despise God's chastening but to acknowledge his sins. The verse thus stands in the part of the book that sets out the great problems of overruling providence and of sin and suffering.
There God is disciplining Job by bringing him through the fire of affliction, while his three friends charge him with sin and declare his sufferings are because of that sin. That misjudging of a sufferer is a way people still misjudge one another. The friends' general claims about good and evil were often true as a general principle, but they misapplied them to Job, for his suffering did not prove that God was displeased with him or that his integrity was false.
Job 4:6 belongs to Eliphaz's speech to Job, forming part of his argument that affliction proves sin and that Job should confess his sins. That counsel was sound only as a general principle and was wrongly applied to Job. Statements about Job and God in that speech cannot be treated as reliable merely because they appear in the book of Job, but must be tested against other inspired Scripture.
In the verse Eliphaz questions whether Job's reverence for God, confidence, hope, and upright conduct should sustain him in his trial. By it he presses the claim that suffering evidences wrongdoing, urging Job not to despise God's chastening but to acknowledge his sins. The verse thus stands in the part of the book that sets out the great problems of overruling providence and of sin and suffering.
There God is disciplining Job by bringing him through the fire of affliction, while his three friends charge him with sin and declare his sufferings are because of that sin. That misjudging of a sufferer is a way people still misjudge one another. The friends' general claims about good and evil were often true as a general principle, but they misapplied them to Job, for his suffering did not prove that God was displeased with him or that his integrity was false.