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Eliphaz is the most sympathetic comforter. He initially affirms Job, reminding him of his past involvement with those who suffer (4:3-4) and urging him to practice in his sufferings that which he previously taught others (v.5). In his later presentations he will challenge Job’s integrity, but now he recognizes it (v.6) and suggests that Job need not despair. Job can anticipate a speedy intervention by God.
It is at this point that Eliphaz divulges his theology of suffering. Using the analogy of agriculture, he states that those who suffer have cultivated sin (4:8). Calamities do not happen without a cause. Life is lived in a world of cause and effect, of stimulus and response. Moving from effect back to cause, Eliphaz in subsequent presentations will find it necessary to establish that Job has sinned.
Eliphaz’s source for his theological position was a dream (4:12-13). His reference to and description of the dream produces an expectation of a profound revelation. But it is only a simple truism: A mortal cannot be more righteous than God (v.17).
Eliphaz stresses here a theme common among the comforters—that any success of the fool (in Wisdom Literature the wicked and the fool are equated) is momentary and illusory (5:3-5). This emphasis is followed by an apparent contradiction. In v.6 he argues that suffering is not to be compared to that which grows of its own accord, but rather to that which is deliberately planted. Suffering has a cause! But in v.7 he seems to suggest that suffering is both innate and inescapable. V.6 may be an allusion to Ge 3:17-19, thereby associating human suffering with sin. Vv.7ff. trace human suffering to God. Hence, appeal must be made directly to God (v.8). It is God who is active in nature (5:9-10) and active in human affairs (vv.11-16).
The reference to rain demonstrates both the destructive and beneficial acts of God (Andersen, 120). A sharp contrast is made between God’s treatment of the lowly and needy and his treatment of the crafty and wily. Eliphaz identifies God with the poor as is common in the OT. Given Job’s present lowly condition, Eliphaz may be seeking to offer him hope and guidance relative to the handling of his present sufferings.
Eliphaz seems to anticipate Elihu by recognizing suffering as a form of divine discipline (5:17). The person who accepts suffering as a discipline from God is blessed. This is a truism, but in the light of the prologue it is not appropriate in Job’s case. The blessings that he projects for Job are prosperity (vv.23-24), posterity (v.25), and longevity (v.26). He seems to have forgotten that all of Job’s children are dead, unless he anticipated the new family (42:13). While he does not offer Job hope beyond the grave, he promises a long life with full vigor until death (42:16-17).