02_Burnight-co_347_370 28/10/14 10:35 Pagina 366 366 JOHN BURNIGHT Eliphaz as being kindly disposed toward Job. In addition, nowhere in chapter 3 has Job advanced the argument that the wicked prosper or somehow avoid punishment (though he will do so later in the dialogue); indeed, the only mention of wrongdoers made by Job at this early stage is in 3,17, where they are listed as one among sev- eral groups who are at peace in the grave. Eliphaz could hardly comfort Job by promising that they — and not he — will experi- ence the fate for which he himself longs. VIII. Job 4,8: Eliphaz’s view of the relationship between sin and suffering Instead, Eliphaz’s words in 4,8 can be viewed as a sharp re- sponse to one of the central themes of Job’s opening poem in chap- ter 3. As many scholars have noted, 4,8 appears to be a paraphrase or imitation of an agricultural metaphor like that found in Hos 10,13 (“You have plowed wickedness, you have reaped injustice”) or Prov 22,8 (“He who sows iniquity will reap vanity”) 52. Eliphaz, though, uses a term not found in these other proverbial expressions, lm[: 4,8 According to what I have seen, those who plow iniquity And those who sow trouble harvest it. The occurrence of the term here creates two instances of distant repetitive parallelism with Job’s opening speech: Eliphaz claims that he “has seen” (ytyar) the relationship between wickedness and suffering, while Job has previously lamented in 3,10 that lm'[' had not been “hidden from his eyes”, and has asked in 3,20 “why light is given” to the lme['53. Dhorme calls Eliphaz’s use of lm[ here “in- sulting” in that it strongly implies that Job has caused his own mis- 52 Also Hos 8,7 (“For they sow the wind, and they reap the whirlwind”) and Joel 3,13. 53 Cf. BEUKEN (“Job’s Imprecation”, 49), who writes: “The fact that Eli- phaz takes over and exploits a term, which Job uses to typify his situation, in an expression which actually condemns him, might be explained either as a striking lack of sensitivity for what Job has said, or as an intentional correc- tion of Job’s outlook on life. In any case the term constitutes a line of corres- pondence between Job’s complaint and Eliphaz’s reply”.