In Job, chapter four, verse seven, the theology that the righteous will not perish and the wicked punished is valid from an eternal viewpoint. Ultimately, justice will be present. However, retribution here on earth does not always occur, and the innocent suffer. Failure to recognize this truth was a fundamental error in the thinking of Eliphaz.
Eliphaz challenges Job’s experience and quotes his own as proof of the universal connection between sin and suffering. In so doing, his object may be to insinuate that Job is sinful or, as seems perhaps more probable and more gracious, to prove to him that if he is what he was supposed to be, that itself is a ground of hope since no innocent person is allowed to perish. Eliphaz utters here a half-truth. However, God will never fail, although He may try those who trust Him.
Eliphaz argues that good men are never in ruin. But there is one event for both the righteous and the wicked, as in Ecclesiastes nine, verse two, both in life and death. The difference is after death. Our worst mistakes are occasioned by drawing wrong views from undeniable truths that wicked men were often in this manner in ruin: for proof of this, Eliphaz vouches his observation. We may see the same every day.
Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? – The object of this question is manifestly to show Job the inconsistency of the feelings which he had within. He claimed to be a righteous man. He had instructed and counseled many others. He had professed confidence in God and the integrity of his ways. It was to have expected that one with such pretensions would have inside resignation in the time of trial and would have sustained by the recollection of his integrity. The fact, therefore, that Job had in this manner “fainted,” and had given way to impatient expressions showed that he was conscious that he had not been altogether what he had professed to be.