Adam Clarke's Bible Commentary Verse 1. Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered ] For seven days this person and his two friends had observed a profound silence, being awed and confounded at the sight of Job's unprecedented affliction. Having now sufficiently contemplated his afflicted state, and heard his bitter complaint, forgetting that he came as a comforter, and not as a reprover, he loses the feeling of the friend in the haughtiness of the censor, endeavouring to strip him of his only consolation, ] the testimony of his conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, he had his conversation among men, ] by insinuating that if his ways had been upright, he would not have been abandoned to such distress and affliction; and if his heart possessed that righteousness of which he boasted, he would not have been so suddenly cast down by adversity.
Matthew Henry Commentary
Verses 1-6 - Satan undertook to prove Job a hypocrite by afflicting him; and his friends concluded him to be one because he was so afflicted, and showe impatience. This we must keep in mind if we would understand what passed. Eliphaz speaks of Job, and his afflicted condition, with tenderness; but charges him with weakness and faint-heartedness. Me make few allowances for those who have taught others. Even piou friends will count that only a touch which we feel as a wound. Lear from hence to draw off the mind of a sufferer from brooding over the affliction, to look at the God of mercies in the affliction. And ho can this be done so well as by looking to Christ Jesus, in whose unequalled sorrows every child of God soonest learns to forget his own?
Original Hebrew ויען6030 אליפז464 התימני8489 ויאמר׃559
