“His sons are far from safety, They are even oppressed in the gate, And there is no deliverer.

Job 5:4

This release from Eliphaz in Job’s conversation with his visitors is both realistic and pessimistic. He was slamming the foolish persons in his generation, intimating that justice is rare.  Was it really? Abraham, who probably lived in the same era, seemed certain that God makes no mistake in this arena. He felt that God does not allow the innocent to be condemned alonged with the evil people. Eliphaz was obviously referring to human endeavours.  He was outrageously wrong about the nonexistence of a deliverer.

Eliphaz knew little or nothing about the Exodus, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, the death of Moses or the carreers of the judges.

We might see the same thing as we examine record of the first century or the twentieth.  He would be totally convinced that justice and deliverance were absent- perhaps impossible- if he saw the persecution and murder of Christ.

Just because the courts in  the modern era deliver convictions of (even commonly despised) defendants we cannot say our society is safe for our children we cannot say that deliverance from oppression is certain.  That, we can be sure, was Eliphaz’ conviction.  He observed oppression in the gate – in the local courts.

My world, supporting the world of technological wizardry, virtual reality and extreme fantasy creations, is a lot like Eliphaz’, a lot like the topsy turvy intellectual world of the citizens who persecuted the church in its infancy.