Tag: Is God Too Removed From Our Lives - Job 22

Job 22:12-14

“Is not God high in the heavens?

See the highest stars, how lofty they are!

But you say, ‘What does God know?

Can he judge through the deep darkness?

Thick clouds veil him, so that he does not see,

and he walks on the vault of heaven.’

Tag:  Is God Too Removed From Our Lives

Eliphaz, one of Job’s friends, is, again, waxing eloquent about Job’s dilemma.    He, like Job’s other friends, has interpreted Job’s events as sin in Job’s life.   Eliphaz has listened to Job’s discourse (especially chapter twenty-one) and believes Job is saying that God is not acting on what He knows; and, in fact, that God is not “able” to even see what man’s wickedness has amounted to.   Eliphaz believes that Job is limiting God’s knowledge of Job’s condition.   Hence the above passage.   Eliphaz is, of course, off on both his interpretation of what God is doing and what Job was saying in the previous discourse.   In his attempt to correct Job, however, Eliphaz has expressed a theological truth:  God is NOT hidden in the clouds and CAN see what is happening with mankind.   Job, in the previous chapter, had stated that the wicked act as though God is not concerned about their lives ... therefore free of judgment: 

Job 21:9-14

Their houses are safe from fear,

and no rod of God is upon them.

Their bull breeds without fail;

their cow calves and does not miscarry.

They send out their little boys like a flock,

and their children dance.

They sing to the tambourine and the lyre

and rejoice to the sound of the pipe.

They spend their days in prosperity,

and in peace they go down to Sheol.

They say to God, ‘Depart from us!

We do not desire the knowledge of your ways.

Mankind likes to think that God is passive about their lives. They believe, IF there is a God, He is not concerned about their internet searches, entertainment choices, or their lustful bents.   The believe that God is far removed from their lives, they can do what they want with their lives.   Eliphaz is wrong about the application to Job, but right on the point of this truth.  God does see what we do and will act, soon.   We must never think that God is not “pondering” our path:

Proverbs 5:21

For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and He ponders all his paths.  

God is, indeed, pondering our paths.   He is not in the dark clouds above or have His head in the sands.   He sees all and will act accordingly.