It is probably not wise to interpret the book of Job until one has clawed his way to sympathy for Job’s companions. Contrary to much glib exposition, they are not straw men.
If, in the end, they turn out to be fools, it is not because they did not have their claws into worthy wisdom but rather because they had lost the personalistic context in which such wisdom longs to sink its roots. To paraphrase Martin Buber, they exercised formidable mastery over the content of a conversation but were tone deaf to the I-Thou relationship that should have linked the participants.
In the heat of what then can be seen not so much as an ideological conflict as a battle for one bleeding man’s soul, words become sharp. How could it be otherwise? Job offers this unflattering profile of his companions:
As for you, you whitewash with lies;
all of you are worthless physicians.
If you would only keep silent,
that would be your wisdom!
In the mix, Eliphaz is moved to comfort pus-drenched Job with similar compliments:
Should the wise answer with windy knowledge,
and fill themselves with the east wind?
Should they argue in unprofitable talk,
or in words with which they can do no good?
But you are doing away with the fear of God,
and hindering meditation before God.
For your iniquity teaches your mouth,
and you choose the tongue of the crafty.
And in the midst of such affable small talk, Eliphaz proffers a stunning claim about the otherness of God.
What are mortals, that they can be clean?
Or those born of woman, that they can be righteous?
God puts no trust even in his holy ones,
and the heavens are not clean in his sight;
how much less one who is abominable and corrupt,
one who drinks iniquity like water!
Absolutizing God’s majestic righteousness as he does and so relegating even creation’s most splendid exemplars to worthlessness, Eliphaz locates himself with those religionists of all ages who find it convenient to level all relationship with God to one plane. In so doing, they subvert the biblical insistence upon relationship between persons.
Ironically, they gain for themselves enormous appeal.
Canter Bridge 
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