ao:eng_webu
Job 4
1Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered,
2“If someone ventures to talk with you, will you be grieved? But who can withhold himself from speaking?
3Behold, you have instructed many, you have strengthened the weak hands.
4Your words have supported him who was falling, you have made the feeble knees firm.
5But now it has come to you, and you faint. It touches you, and you are troubled.
6Isn’t your piety your confidence? Isn’t the integrity of your ways your hope?
7“Remember, now, who ever perished, being innocent? Or where were the upright cut off?
8According to what I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble, reap the same.
9By the breath of God they perish. By the blast of his anger are they consumed.
10The roaring of the lion, and the voice of the fierce lion, the teeth of the young lions, are broken.
11The old lion perishes for lack of prey. The cubs of the lioness are scattered abroad.
12“Now a thing was secretly brought to me. My ear received a whisper of it.
13In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men,
14fear came on me, and trembling, which made all my bones shake.
15Then a spirit passed before my face. The hair of my flesh stood up.
16It stood still, but I couldn’t discern its appearance. A form was before my eyes. Silence, then I heard a voice, saying,
17‘Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his Maker?
18Behold, he puts no trust in his servants. He charges his angels with error.
19How much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before the moth!
20Between morning and evening they are destroyed. They perish forever without any regarding it.
21Isn’t their tent cord plucked up within them? They die, and that without wisdom.’
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Questions this passage answers
Why does God allow suffering?
Scripture never gives one tidy reason for all suffering. It says that pain entered a good world through sin, that God is neither its author nor its prisoner, that he uses it without approving of it, and that he entered it himself in Christ rather than explaining it from a distance. The Bible answers the question with a person before it answers it with an argument.
Why does God seem silent?
God's apparent silence is felt by some of the most faithful people in Scripture, not only by the weak in faith. David, Job and Habakkuk all cried out into what felt like empty air. Scripture never rebukes them for asking. It records their words as prayer, answers them in its own time, and teaches that God's silence is never his absence.