Explain God's Response To Job In The Book Of Job

In the book of Job, Job is tested by God to see how he deals with experiencing hardships. God allows Satan to kill Job’s animals, his servants, his children and give him sores from head to toe. While Job was experiencing these hardships his friends, Eliphaz, Zophar, Bildad and Elihu, came to his aid and sat with him for seven days and seven nights before they attempted to console Job while he complained about his hardships and God. In this essay I will explain God’s response to Job’s complaints and the counsel of Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar and Elihu. After seven days and seven nights had passed, Job was the first to speak. He made a speech in which he cursed the day he was born. Eliphaz was the first to reply. He heavily believed that only the innocent prosper, so Job must have committed a wrongdoing to be punished so severely. Eliphaz says, “Stop and think! Do the innocent die? When have the upright been destroyed? My experience shows that those who

Eliphaz then says that the reason why Job is being punished the way he is, is because he does not fear God. He says, “Have you no fear of God, no reverence for him? Your sins are telling your mouth what to say. Your words are based on clever deception. Your own mouth condemns you, not I. Your own lips testify against you,” (New Living Translation, Job 15:4-6). To this, Job replied by telling his friends that they were miserable comforters and continuing to pronounce his innocence. Bildad counters Job by telling him that the wicked get punished for their actions. He tells him, “Disease eats their skin; death devours their limbs,” (New Living Translation, Job 18:13). Zophar follows up Bildad’s response saying, “A flood will sweep away that house, God’s anger will descend on them in torrents. This is the reward that God gives the wicked, it is the inheritance decreed by God,” (New Living Translation, Job