'Can human kind be righteous before God?
can man be pure before his Maker?
Behold, he trusts not his own servants,
and imputes error to his angels[1]' (iv. 12-18).
There is no such weird passage in the rest of the Old Testament. It did not escape the attention of Milton, whose description of death alludes to it.
If shape it could be called that shape had none,
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed.
(Par. Lost, ii. 266.)
A single phrase ('a murmuring voice,' ver. 16) is borrowed from the theophany of Elijah (1 Kings xix. 12), but the strokes which paint the scene, and which Milton and Blake between them have more than reproduced, are all his own. The supernatural terror, the wind betokening a spiritual visitor, the straining eyes which can discern no form, the whispering voice always associated with oracles[2]—each of these awful experiences we seem to share. Eliphaz himself recalls his impressions so vividly that he involuntarily uses the present tense in describing them.
But why should Eliphaz imagine that because Job had not had a revelation of this kind he is therefore ignorant of the truth? He actually confounds the complaints wrung from Job by his unparalleled mental and bodily sufferings with the 'impatience' of the 'foolish man' and the 'passion' of the 'silly' one, and warns him against the fate which within his own experience befell one such rebellious murmurer against God—an irrelevant remark, unless he has already begun to suspect Job of impiety. Then, as if he feels that he has gone too far, he addresses Job in a more hopeful spirit, and tells him what he would do in his place, viz. turn trustfully to God, whose operations are so unsearchable, but so bene-*
