Eliphaz – The Noontimes

Job 2:11-13: Great Suffering

Job 2:11-13: Great Suffering

Tuesday, October 28, 2025

Written on June 14 and posted today as a Favorite . . .

At first glance, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar seem to be Job’s intimate friends. When they arrive and see that Job is greatly changed and greatly affected by his new circumstances, they do not accuse Job or offer him platitudes; rather, they join him in grief and abide with him in his great suffering. Once we begin to read the speeches these three offer, we change our thinking. They urge Job to confess the hidden sin which they believe is the root cause of his pain, even though Job has nothing to confess. This is when we realize that these three acquaintances are not able to think much beyond their immediate world and code. They cannot really accompany Job in his great pain.

This week, the first Mass readings have been taken from Second Corinthians and Paul has been reminding his sisters and brothers in Christ that for your sake [Christ] became poor although he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich (8:9) We are rich enough, according to this thinking, that we can afford to love even our enemies, and it is our willingness to enter into suffering with Christ that brings us this wealth.

In the Gospels this week, we have been reading a similar message from Matthew 5: Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn you back on one who wants to borrow . . . You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father. These are difficult reversals to understand, thorny inversions to believe, these are hard lessons to model and to live. Yet they are the fabric of Christian life.

Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar do their best to comprehend and even help Job but they cannot really abide with him because they do not understand the underpinning creed that suffering through and with and in Christ brings about true and lasting serenity. They do not realize that suffering is not always a curse and that great suffering may even be a blessing from God.

A re-post from October 3, 2011.

Image from: https://www.stonegableblog.com/hidden-in-your-heart/

October 28, 2025

2 Corinthians 8, Bildad, Eliphaz, inversion, loving our enemies, Matthew 5, suffering is blessing, Zophar

Job 38-42: Dialog with God

Job 38-42: Dialog with God

*Job with his friends Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar*

Monday, July 28, 2025

We have visited with this portion of Job before during our Noontime reflections and we have spent time thinking about the presence and work of Satan, about arguing with the Almighty, Restoration brought about when living a life of impossible hopes. Today we might pause to think about how blessings arrive in our lives – sometimes with people or events which bring us unexpected problems – and how these experiences often bring us unexpected outcomes.

In looking for something more, I turned to THE ARCHEOLOGICAL STUDY BIBLE and find that, of course, the Babylonians had their own culture and literature dealing with suffering. One Akkadian text from approximately 1000 B.C.E. called The Babylonian Theodicy is a dialog between a sufferer and his friend who present questions much like Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar do with Job. Much of the dialog has to do with the mysterious ways of the gods (page 776). Another text entitled A Man and His God, is found on a broken tablet and is a lament of a young man suffering from a terrible disease. This man recognizes and concedes his guilt, unlike Job who is an innocent sufferer. There is much here to indicate that these ancient cultures spent time thinking and reflecting on the causes of suffering (770).

Ancient Hittite texts often depict their gods as weak and impotent in the face of natural disasters. And they are sometimes seen as dependent as, for example, in a story about the storm god Telepinu who fell asleep under a tree and forgot to make it rain! The other gods could not locate him until at last a tiny bee awakened him with a sting, and then a goddess of magic and a local priest intervened on behalf of those who were starving because of the drought (page 784). All of this is fun and interesting, but lacking the depth and theology of the story of Job.

And so we might ask: What does Job tell us today in our modern and fast moving world when we struggle to dialog with God?

Many advances in technology have been made; much information has been stored in databases, and yet we are not much nearer to understanding the beauty and mystery of God. I asked my granddaughter today what God is if God is not magic. She answered immediately and without wavering – and with much conviction for one so little – God is miracle.

This is what Job knows. This is what Job understands. This is what Job trusts. This is where Job finds power. And this is what makes Job important for us today because when we are in the depths of misery and pain, there is nothing more we need than God’s power, joy and life that we experience in our suffering. Moving through the past, and moving beyond our present ordeal, we find solace in our pain, courage in our fear, comfort in our anxiety, hope in our desperation, and newness in our life. When we most seek relief and restoration we might pray with these chapters from Job today.

We cannot expect a life free of suffering. Indeed, life so often is suffering. But what we can expect, and what we can receive is God’s grace, Christ’s touch, the Holy Spirit’s comfort. And we can expect that joy will rise from our pain when we struggle to dialog with God.

Adapted from a Favorite written on July 29, 2008.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDY BIBLE (NIV). Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2005. 770. 776 & 784. Print.

Image from: https://www.jw.org/en/library/jw-meeting-workbook/april-2016-mwb/meeting-schedule-apr4-10/job-bible-false-accusations/

July 28, 2025

Akkadian texts, Bildad and Zophar, Eliphaz, fear and pain, joy

Job 22: Beyond Human Limits – Part I

Job 22: Beyond Human Limits – Part I

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

When you make a decision, it shall succeed for you, and upon your ways the light shall shine.

The Book of Job speaks to those who suffer innocently; and thus it prepares us to better understand the great sacrifice that Christ made on our behalf. Today we read the words of Eliphaz who urges Job to admit guilt so that he may prosper, and we understand that Job’s true freedom comes not from avoiding his calamity, but through going beyond human limits, by turning to God in the midst of this personal cataclysm.

Many times we witness God’s hand in turning harm into goodness. We see those who walk in pride fall by their own hands. We listen attentively to the stories people tell of having been saved, converted or transformed. Through these stories, it is easy to fall into the thinking that those who suffer must have somehow brought the negative consequences they endure upon themselves. We have heard – or we have thought – if the poor would only work they would not be poor, if that woman had not worn that dress she would not have been raped, if the people in that country would choose good leaders they would not experience famine, if people would just behave there would be no genocide. This is simplistic, black/white, off/on, binary thinking. Situations are either good or bad; decisions are either yes or no. With this kind of absolutism, there is no room for the in-between-ness that is the reality of human existence. Nor is there much of a reason to invite Christ into our lives because this kind of living follows a rulebook of regulations and checklists that lead us to see life as best lived by following rules; and this stiffness leads us to think of ourselves first. Christ calls us to liberate ourselves from this bondage and it is this kind of “setting free” that is addressed in yesterday’s MAGNIFICAT Meditation from the writings of Father Delp. He died in 1945, condemned to death in a wave of frenzy in Germany during World War II. He writes about the freedom Jesus offers to Levi, the tax collector, in Matthew 5:27-32. Humans need freedom. As slaves, fettered and confined, they are bound to deteriorate. We have spent a great deal of thought and time on external freedom; we have made serious efforts to secure our personal liberty and yet we have lost it again and again. The worst thing is that eventually humans come to accept this kind of bondage – it becomes habitual and they hardly notice it. The most abject slaves can be made to believe that the condition in which they are held is actually freedom.

Tomorrow, Job’s goodness amidst evil, and more from Father Delp.

Adapted from a reflection written on February 21, 2010.

Cameron, Peter John. “Meditation of the Day.” MAGNIFICAT. 21.2 (2010). Print.

Image from: https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2008/01/21/jesuit-martyr-nazis-hitler-wanted-alfred-delp-forgotten-his-way-resistance-still

February 5, 2025

choose divinity, dualistic thinking, Eliphaz, Fr. Alfred Delp, freedom, God turns harm to good, Matthew 5:27-32

Job 40:1-5: Arguing with the Almighty – Part II

Job 40:1-5: Arguing with the Almighty – Part II

Friday, January 31, 2025

When God seems distant to us we might pick up Job’s story, with its human drama of innocent suffering, to see how and where we fit into the tale. Are we the wife who urges her husband to curse God and die (2:9)? Are we the friends Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar who insist that Job repent for some nameless sin even as Job proclaims his innocence, saying that he knows not what he did to incur God’s wrath? Do we act as the Satan does in the opening chapters, do we roam the earth looking for mischief to create? How do we see God? As a sarcastic tyrant or as a faithful creator who only has our good in mind? How do we react when we feel estranged from God? With petulance, or like Job who admits at last that God is great and that God is good? Do we, like Job, finally put our worries aside knowing that God will handle them? Do we intercede when asked, as Job does, for the very friends who tried to lead us astray? Do we rely on God or on ourselves? Do we spend sleepless nights worrying about our own guilt and innocence, or do we move on to pick up the threads of a broken life as best we can? What do we do? How do we pray? Where do we turn for help?

In today’s reading Job agrees to put his hand over his mouth so that he might finally listen to Yahweh, and he does this after having made a full and cogent argument to his maker. If we follow Job’s example, we understand that we are meant to wrestle with God. We are created to think, reflect and re-think. We are created to know God and to serve God; and to do this well we must ask questions. These questions are followed by enigmatic answers from God that we struggle to understand and, at first glance, we see as unsatisfactory. Later, when we practice persistence and fidelity, we begin to understand God’s message. Therefore, as we put our questions to God, we must also remain patient and authentic. For it is with waiting and honesty that we acquire wisdom, a full and nourishing wisdom that comes through lengthy days of listening, reflecting and praying.

Tomorrow, God abides.

Image from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Job_and_his_friends.jpg

January 31, 2025

Bildad and Zophar, Eliphaz, fidelity, Job’s wife, listening, patience, praying, reflecting, Satan

Tag: Eliphaz

Job 2:11-13: Great Suffering

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Job 38-42: Dialog with God

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Job 22: Beyond Human Limits – Part I

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Job 40:1-5: Arguing with the Almighty – Part II

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