Job 5:25 - Exposition

Thou shalt know also that thy seed shall be great . Little by little Eliphaz passes from a general description of the blessedness of those faithful ones who "despise not the chastening of the Almighty" ( Job 5:17 ) to a series of allusions which seem specially to touch Job's case. Without claiming prophetical inspiration, he ventures to promise him in the future "the exact reverse of all that he had experienced" in the past—"a safe home, flocks untouched, a happy and prosperous family, a peaceful old age" (Cook). The promises may have sounded in Job's ears as "a mockery" (ibid.); but it is creditable to the sagacity of Eliphaz that he ventured to make them. And thine offspring as the grass of the earth. The ordinary symbols for multitudinousness—the sand of the sea, and the stars of heaven—are here superseded by an entirely new one, "the grass of the earth." Undoubtedly it is equally appropriate, and perhaps more natural in a pastoral community.