Job 4:1 Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered:² “If one ventures a word with you, will you be offended? But who can keep from speaking? ³ See, you have instructed many; you have strengthened the weak hands. ⁴ Your words have supported those who were stumbling, and you have made firm the feeble knees. ⁵ But now it has come to you, and you are impatient; it touches you, and you are dismayed. ⁶ Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope? ⁷ “Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? ⁸ As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.

In chapter 3 Job cursed the day he was born, talking to the day as if it were a person to blame for his misfortune. One expects he is cursing the day of his birth to avoid cursing God directly. There are also three friends of his who show up to support him and sit with him in his time of need. Having sat with Job in silence for seven days Eliphaz is compelled to speak.

In our passage Eliphaz is saying out loud what the others are thinking – Job must have screwed up somehow and is getting what he deserves as punishment from the Lord:

7 “Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? 8 As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.

“C’mon Job, you must have done something – and an awful something at that!.” But the truth is Job remains blameless. Yet he suffers. There are times when things just don’t make sense. With God. With life. With those who love us.