Job 5:17-21 – Accept Suffering as the Discipline of the Almighty

Summary

Eliphaz suggests that suffering may have a positive value. It may be God's way to exert discipline, gain our attention, or persuade us to change our ways before greater damage is done.

Analysis

Probably the two most common biblical ways to explain suffering are through the law of retribution for sin or by arguing that it is God's way to teach the sufferer something that will be helpful in the long run. Already, in his first speech, Eliphaz has used them both. When one is immersed in the pain of immediate suffering, it may be too difficult to see any greater good that can come from it, but time may show that "it was for your own good." Later in the book, the fourth counselor, Elihu, will also use this interpretation of Job's suffering.

The idea that suffering leads to some greater good occurs elsewhere in the Old Testament, as at the end of the Joseph story (Genesis 50:15-21). It is very common in the New Testament, especially in the epistles, as a way to make sense out of the death of Jesus and the persecution of the early Christians (see Romans 5:1-5 and Hebrews 12:3-11).

• Job 1:1-5
  The Pious and Affluent Job Is Introduced
• Job 1:6-12
  The First Encounter between God and Satan
• Job 1:21
  God Gives and God Takes Away
• Job 2:11-13
  Job’s Well-Intentioned Friends
• Job 3
  Job Curses the Day of His Birth
• Job 4:1-5
  Easy Answers Fade When Reality Contradicts Them
• Job 4:7-8
  Those Who Sow Trouble Reap the Same
• Job 6:14-27
  Job’s Rebuke of His Counselors
• Job 7:1-6
  Nights Are Too Long and a Life Is Too Short
• Job 8:8-10
  Trust the Spiritual Teachings of the Past
• Job 9:13-20
  How Can One Win an Argument with God?
• Job 9:22-24
  God Is Unjust
• Job 10:8-12
  Job Remembers That God Lovingly Created Him
• Job 11:7-12
  God’s Ways Are beyond Human Understanding
• Job 13:1-12
  Do Not Lie for God
• Job 14:7-17
  If Mortals Die, Will They Live Again?
• Job 16:18-19
  My Witness Is in Heaven
• Job 19:20
  Job Escapes by the Skin of His Teeth
• Job 19:23-27
  I Know That My Redeemer Lives
• Job 28
  Only God Knows Wisdom
• Job 29:1-6
  Job Longs for the “Good Old Days”
• Job 31:35-37
  If Only I Knew the Indictment, I Would Wear It Proudly
• Job 33:13-18
  God May Be Speaking to Job through His Suffering
• Job 38:1-18
  God Finally Speaks to Job
• Job 39:1-8
  God Cares Even for the Offspring of Wild Animals
• Job 41:1-11
  Humans Are Helpless before the Ferocity of Leviathan
• Job 42:1-6
  Job Accepts His Limits and Will Not Continue to Protest
• Job 42:10
  Job Receives a Double Restitution