TEXT [Commentary]

black diamond   3.   Evil is the root of trouble (5:1-7)

1 “Cry for help, but will anyone answer you?

Which of the angels[*] will help you?

2 Surely resentment destroys the fool,

and jealousy kills the simple.

3 I have seen that fools may be successful for the moment,

but then comes sudden disaster.

4 Their children are abandoned far from help;

they are crushed in court with no one to defend them.

5 The hungry devour their harvest,

even when it is guarded by brambles.[*]

The thirsty pant after their wealth.[*]

6 But evil does not spring from the soil,

and trouble does not sprout from the earth.

7 People are born for trouble

as readily as sparks fly up from a fire.

NOTES

5:1 Which of the angels will help you? The difficulties in translating this verse are both semantic and contextual. The adjective qadosh [TH6918A, ZH7705] can be used nominatively to refer to God as the Holy One in the singular (6:10) or in the honorific “plural” form (Prov 9:10; 30:3).[19] The plural is also used to refer to the saints as holy people (Ps 34:9) or to members of the divine council (Ps 89:5-7; Zech 14:5). Contextually, it is not clear whom Eliphaz thinks Job is calling on for help. He does, however, sharply contrast Job with himself, for he instead would appeal to God (5:8). Since Eliphaz used the plural to refer to members of the divine council in 15:15, it is likely he also had them in mind here. Perhaps he considered them to be the source of the vision (cf. 4:18) and that Job was using them to justify his situation. It may be possible to translate this as an appeal to turn to God, as Eliphaz himself would do: “To whom other than the Holy One can you turn?” (see Introduction, endnote 14). The syntax for such a translation, however, is not well supported.

5:3 but then comes sudden disaster. This is a paraphrase of a personal pronouncement from Eliphaz that the dwelling of the wicked is under a curse.

5:5 Even when it is guarded by brambles. This difficult Heb. line is usually translated with a reference to thorns (KJV, RSV, NIV, TEV), but the meaning is obscure (cf. NLT mg). The previous line says the hungry eat the harvest of the wicked, and this line is best taken as parallel to it, saying they take away his shriveled sheaf. This involves a redivision of the words in the MT and the addition of repeated letters easily lost in copying. The consonantal text ’l mtsnym (“to thorns”) becomes ’lmym tsnmym (“withered sheaves”); the result is the vocabulary of sheaves found elsewhere in Scripture (cf. Gen 37:7; 41:23).

5:7 People are born for trouble. Habel (1985:117) translates verse 6 to say that trouble surely springs from the soil (taking the negative particle lo’ [TH3808, ZH4202] as the asseverative lu’ [TH3863, ZH4273]), referring to the fact that people are born to the hardship of the hostile ground (Gen 3:17-19). Eliphaz’s point is not that trouble happens to people but rather that people create their own trouble (5:6). The word yalad [TH3205, ZH3528] can be vocalized as a passive or as a causative; in this case it should be the latter: “people beget trouble.”

sparks. Lit. a reference to the mythological “sons of Resheph,” a god of pestilence (cf. Heb. of Deut 32:24; Hab 3:5). The Phoenician god Resheph appears with lightning bolts. The “sons of Resheph” could refer to either the sparks of lightning or the shafts of pestilence. The latter would say, “People make trouble and a plague takes flight.” According to Eliphaz, the actions of humans set free the powers of evil to cause trouble.

COMMENTARY [Text]

Eliphaz has been arguing the case for retribution. He introduced the cause-and-effect relationship of retribution with two analogies from nature. The first was drawn from agriculture (you reap what you sow) and the second from the wilds of nature (even the mightiest of the violent die). After illustrating this self-evident truth, Eliphaz recounted Job’s terrifying vision concerning the mystery of evil (4:12-21). His first response to the revelation of the vision was to assert again that people are the source of their own trouble (5:2-7). Then he declared that God always punishes the wicked (5:8-16) and that if the righteous do suffer it is to correct them so they are blessed in the end (5:17-27).

Two questions face the reader as Eliphaz continues his speech in verse 1: why should Eliphaz imagine that Job would want to appeal to the “holy ones,” and why should such an appeal be futile or wicked? In answer to the first question, the reader might go back to the words of Job’s lament. Clines (1981:186) suggests that Eliphaz has misunderstood Job’s wish for death (3:21-22) and assumes that Job is in reality appealing to the “holy ones” for a calm and peaceful existence, the kind Eliphaz is about to describe (5:19-26). In answer to the second question, Eliphaz would regard such an appeal as futile because he believed Job was responsible for his own sufferings, and no external agency can remove that pain. There is, however, no reason to impute to Eliphaz a misunderstanding of Job’s wish for death.

Job’s appeal to the “holy ones” must refer to what immediately precedes it, namely, the vision he has just reported. His response shows that he learned about the vision from Job. Eliphaz rejects the message of this vision, but Job will affirm it. Job, in his reply to Eliphaz, asserts that he does have a word he received from God (6:10), and he avers that he will not conceal it. This word is painful but true (6:25). The only divine word that has been given is in this vision, and this is the word Job refuses to conceal. Job believes this word is from God, but Eliphaz responds to the vision by denying that it is from God.

The message of the vision is that humans are not pure enough in the eyes of God to determine the destiny of their lives. Eliphaz contested such an assertion; he had already made clear that humans are the cause of their own misery (4:8), a claim that he illustrated in 5:3-5 and reiterated in 5:6-7. Contrary to the claim of the vision, Eliphaz asserted that Job’s fate lay entirely within his own power.

Eliphaz tried to persuade Job not to be a fool (5:2). The fool (’ewil [TH191A, ZH211]) is not simply one who is unwise but one who is morally bankrupt, one who has rejected the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom. Eliphaz did not contend that Job was such a fool, for he had instructed many (4:3), but that his passion could lead him into the irreversible self-destruction of the fool. Eliphaz knew such a person, one who had been well established, but whom he recognized at once to be accursed even while the signs of wealth were present.[20] The children of the fool would never enjoy his wealth; both the court and the needy or greedy would go against them; in short, they would be plundered by others. Eliphaz may have been thinking of the seminomadic plunderers who would ravage the farmers’ crops, as happened in the days of Gideon (Judg 6:3-5). What happened to the fool was not simply the result of natural forces. Evil and trouble do not spring from the soil as an uncontrollable seed; they are a harvest that humans themselves have sown (4:8). People bring about the birth of trouble themselves (5:7); their own actions set free the powers of pestilence and destruction.

Eliphaz was not saying that trouble is the inevitable result of birth. Eliphaz’s argument is that the fool is the cause of his own downfall; he is not the victim of being born into an unfriendly world. In verse 7 Eliphaz seals his argument with this “astounding and provocative generalization” (Clines 1989:141) that presumes he has explained the cause of all human suffering.