Job 5:17

"Blessed is the man whom the Lord takes again. Here Eliphaz is mistaken, he thinks that Job suffers because of his sins: on the contrary, Job is blessed; because if he is condemned in this life, he can purify himself.

Since holy Job was dejected because of the misfortunes that befell him against his hope, Eliphaz now says that after his calamity Job must not despair about God being propitious again. Indeed, the restraint of sin's dissoluteness through scourging testifies to the divine love. "How happy is the one whom God reproves." Because he had enumerated different kinds of miseries that beset sinners, they did not want to appear to be guilty in anything or obtain forgiveness through the confession of their iniquity. He says that a person, when he is led through severity and the scourge to his correction and admission of guilt, must not consider himself as a man who is in misery.

Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth. Therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Lord. The highest virtue is to avoid sins, that they should never be done, and second to that, at least to amend them when they have been committed. But for the most part we not only never at all avoid sins that threaten, but we do not even open our eyes to them, when committed. And the mind of sinners is enveloped in the deeper darkness, in proportion as it does not see the deficiency of its own blindness. Hence it is very often brought to pass, by the bountifulness of God's gift, that punishment follows upon transgression, and stripes unclose the eyes of the transgressor, which self-security was blinding in the midst of evil ways. For the inactive soul is touched with the rod, so as to be stimulated, in order that he, that has lost, by being self-secure, the firm seat of uprightness, may mark, upon being afflicted, where he is laid prostrate; and thus to him the very sharpness of the correction becomes the source of light; and hence it is said by Paul, But all things that are proved, are made manifest by the light; for proof of saving health lies in the force of the pain. Hence it is that Solomon saith, For healing will cause great offences to cease. Hence again he saith, For whom the Lord loveth He correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth. Hence the Lord addresses John by the voice of the Angel, saying, As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Hence Paul saith, Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous, nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness, unto them that are exercised thereby. Although therefore grief and happiness can never meet together, yet it is rightly said here, Happy is the man whom the Lord correcteth. For by this means, that the sinner is straitly visited with the pain of correction, he is sometimes trained to happiness, which knows no intervention of pain. Whosoever is smitten for a fault and lifted up in murmuring against the stroke, 'reproves the chastening of the Lord.' For he lays to His charge, that he has this put upon him unjustly. But they that are stricken, not for the cleansing of guilt, but for the testing of their fortitude, when they inquire into the causes of the stroke, must by no means be said to 'reprove the correction of the Lord;' for their aim is to…