Eliphaz Denies that Human Righteousness Benefits God

Eliphaz opens the third round by making God unneedful

Eliphaz the Temanite answers again, and his first move is a set of questions: can a man be profitable to God? Can even the wise be profitable to him? Is it any pleasure to the Almighty that Job is righteous? Does God gain if Job makes his ways perfect?

The implied answer is no. Job's integrity cannot put God in Job's debt. Eliphaz then asks whether God is rebuking Job for Job's fear of him, and whether God enters into judgment for that reason. He is clearing space to say that Job's ruin must come from somewhere else.

Independence is not a license to invent a charge

Scripture elsewhere can say that God does not need human gifts. That claim can guard worship from bargaining. In this speech it becomes a wedge. If God needs nothing from Job, Eliphaz will not have to take Job's integrity seriously, and he will not have to ask whether the world contains undeserved pain.

The prologue has already named Job upright and his losses without cause. Eliphaz's theology of divine self-sufficiency does not cancel that verdict or make Job's conduct irrelevant to the people he has actually helped and harmed.