Job 4:12

"None of these evils would have happened to you; Either these losses, these privations, those bleeding wounds, or the sorrows that have overwhelmed your mind. You could have consoled yourself if your speeches had been sincere.

In the present case Eliphaz wants to suggest, in my opinion, that Job has often spoken such words either, perhaps, to drive others to jealousy or with a different intention. You that ask such questions, see whom you resemble. Indeed, if Eliphaz has spoken so in these circumstances without obtaining forgiveness, it will be the same for us. Our situation will be even worse, because we have views similar to those of Eliphaz. And we have the advantage of the proofs the facts provide. We have been allowed to see the real reasons for the misfortunes that happened to Job. Yet we are just like those who believe they found a reason to blame him and to attack him without waiting for the evidence of the facts.

ON HOW HERETICS MISUSE THIS VERSE. Now a secret word was spoken to me. 'A secret word,' heretics pretend to hear, that they may bring a certain reverence for their preaching over their hearers' minds. And hence they preach with a secret meaning, that their preaching may seem to be holy, in proportion as it is at the same time hidden. Now they are loath to have a common sort of knowledge, lest they should be placed on a par with the rest of their fellow-creatures, and they are ever making out new things, which whilst others know nothing of, they plume their own selves on the preeminence of their knowledge before inexperienced minds. And this knowledge, as we have said, they teach is occult; for, that they may be able to shew it to be wonderful, they affirm that they obtained it by secret means. Hence with Solomon the woman, bearing the semblance of heretics, says, Stolen waters are sweeter, and bread eaten in secret is more pleasant. Whence in this place too it is added; And mine ear as it were by stealth received the veins of the whispering thereof. They 'receive the veins of whispers by stealth,' in that abandoning the grace of knowledge in fellowship, they do not enter thereinto by the door, as the Lord witnesses, Who saith, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber; But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. Therefore he 'receives the veins of divine whispers by stealth,' who, whilst the door of public preaching for receiving the knowledge of His excellency is forsaken, searches out the gaps and chinks of a froward understanding. But because the thief and robber, who enters by another way, both loves the darkness, and abhors the clearness of the light, it is properly added; In the horror of a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men.