Job 4:7-11 and eliphaz's mind and eliphaz's fears and communication

One of the most striking things upon examining Eliphaz's speech closely is the double-meaning of many of his words. I have already spoken of this regarding the verb "venture/pick a fight/test" in 4:2, "instruct/discipline" in 4:5 and "confidence/foolishness" in 4:6. What is significant to me is that this ambiguity continues in 4:7-11. Eliphaz's words are laced with double significance. To a person in Job's condition they are likely to be construed in a judgmental and negative way, even though Eliphaz probably meant them in a positively. David Clines, the leading contemporary Job interpreter, stresses the positive approach of Eliphaz. Clines believes that Eliphaz makes very clear that Job is not among the wicked because Job still has hope. Indeed, Clines argues, Job has not yet perished, and so cannot be seen as a wicked person (cf.4:9).

But Clines misses the point, I believe. The issue is not whether we should conclude either that Eliphaz believes or does not believe that Job is among the wicked; rather, the reality is that Eliphaz speaks ambiguously and that this ambiguity points to something deeper. It is that "something deeper" which is the focus of my concern. This essay, then, will reflect for a moment more about the "something deeper" behind Eliphaz's words. The next essay will point out several more ambiguities in his speech in 4:7-11.

Probing Eliphaz's Mind

Job concludes early that his friends reaction to him is motivated by fear (6:21). I have also argued previously that Elihpaz's words to Job might be motivated by a desire to put Job on the defensive. I will argue here that Eliphaz's desire to fill up the unoccupied space between him and Job emerges from the common human inability to know how to deal with a person in great distress.

Let's illustrate this by positing that the process of communication consists not so much of breaking down barriers between people but of occupying a naked and vacant empty space between people. Each one of us is an island, filled with our own fears and joys, with a tendency to sink into the private world of our own heart. Our past experience is unique and our way of applying this unique past experience to our present reality is also distinctive. Every communication with someone is an attempt to occupy the vacant space and potentially yawning gap between people. When you realize how much we are shaped by unique pasts and our own particular "take" on the past and present, it is amazing that any true communication ever takes place.

Lots of things tend to emphazise that the gap between people is more like an abyss than an open field which we can easily traverse. For example, linguistic and cultural differences, to say nothing about socio-economic disparity, makes communication strained and, at times, impossible. But what happens in the Book of Job is that communication has been made difficult by someone's new situation. The person you thought you knew is now unrecognizable. Job's physical disfigurement is only symbolic of the interior dishevelment that he experiences. What once was an easily traversed "field" between Job and his friends in order to establish communication has now become something like an impassable gulf.

Rushing into the Middle

I suppose it is more accurate to say that before the friends began to speak to one another it was uncertain how wide the gap was between the two. Was it still that easily-traversed field? Was it a field that had been sliced up by combat? Was it a field that had been blown apart? Was it a field that had been so hollowed out that no one could walk across to the other side? Job's speech in ch.3 emphasizes the potentially unbridgeable nature of the gap. Nothing but trouble now greets him. He wishes that he had never been born. The very thing he feared has now come upon him. His life, healthy, family and have been obliterated.

Job's first conversational gambit, then, does not try to remove he meaning gap that naturally exists between people. He attempts to enlarge it, to place walls around himself and to mine the fields between them. His speech in Job 3 warns the friends that in order to get to him they really have to enter into his world and completely share his intellectual space.

But Eliphaz is not willing or able to do that. Instead of responding to Job by agreeing with Job's assessment of things, he wants to build a bridge over the unoccupied space between the two by constructing common ground. Both Job and Eliphaz, then, can be seen as builders: the former erects walls and the latter wants to build a bridge. But there is clumsiness in Eliphaz's effort because he doesn't know who exactly is on the other side of the bridge. Or, to put it in the language of engineering, you only construct the middle of the bridge after you know the two end points of it and have put up the stanchions and piers between the two shores. Eliphaz is trying to construct the bridge between the two by drawing Job out of himself in chs.4-5, but he uses language that is potentially inflammatory and insensitive.

Eliphaz's Mind

So, what might Eliphaz's ambiguity reveal about his mind, other than that he might be afraid or he might want to put Job on the defensive? I think it shows that his skills in relating to Job in one context (the context of health and leadership) are not transferable. He just doesn't know how to construct a middle space, a bridge, between the two. And, isn't this a fully accurate depiction of life? Many people who are tigers on the field of play, whether that field is the athletic arena or the academy or the business world, are at a loss in the hospital. You just don't know what to say or do.

I had such an experience once when I was a pastor in 1988. A member of the congregation requested that I visit one of her relatives who was dying of AIDS in a local hospital. AIDS was a relatively new disease at that time, and was greatly feared. I tried to learn some things about the young man from my congregant and then, after visiting a few church members who were in the hospital, stopped in on the young man. I have never experienced such a "meaning gap" in my life. He was lying on the bed, looking wan and removed. His partner was with him, sitting quietly by the bed. A palpable air of tension filled the room. What could I say? What could I do? I felt fully helpless in that situation, and did not know what to say. It was certainly my most uncomfortable hospital visit, as I didn't know how to bridge the gap, and the two people I was visiting didn't not want to let down the drawbridge, and so nothing happened, other than an awkward silence which I occasionally broke. Then, I retreated. I will never forget the eerie distance, the unbridgeable gulf, I felt.

This, then, is how Eliphaz must have felt as he spoke to Job in chs. 4-5. Let's return, now to the language he uses in 4:7-11.