Satan’s Strategy

Eliphaz Speaking in chapter 4 of Job
I heard a voice; a distinct articulate voice or sound of words, very audibly delivered by the spirit or image that stood before him:
15-16 Eliphaz saw: – Evil spirit, speaking words of apparent piety and partial truth, they were deceptive and misleading words. Job was entirely on his own, except for his three friends, and the devil had deceived them into trying to press Job beyond the limits even of his great faith
1. An image was before his eyes; he plainly saw it; at first it passed and re-passed before his face, moved up and down, but at length it stood still to speak to him. If some have been so knavish as to impose false visions on others, and some so foolish as to be themselves imposed upon, it does not therefore follow but that there may have been ghost of spirits, both good and bad.
2. That it was indistinct, and somewhat confused. He could not discern the form thereof, so as to frame any exact idea of it in his own mind, much less to give a description of it. His conscience was to be awakened and informed, not his curiosity gratified. We know little of spirits; we are not capable of knowing much of them, nor is it fit that we should: all in good time; we must shortly remove to the world of spirits, and shall then be better acquainted with them.
3. That it puts him into a great dismay, so that his hair stood on end. Ever since man sinned it has been terrible to him to receive an express from heaven, as aware to himself that he can expect no good tidings thence; spirits therefore, even of good spirits, have always made deep impressions of fear, even upon good men. How well it is for us that
G-d sends us His messages, not by spirits, but by men like ourselves, whose terror shall not make us afraid! Daniel 7:28, 10:8, 9.]
17-21 Part of Satan’s strategy with Eliphaz was to include much truth in his message, but it became a lie when the essential truth was omitted.
1. Mortal man would be thought unjust and very impure if he should thus correct and punish a servant or subject, unless he had been guilty of some very great crime: "If therefore there were not some great crimes for which G-d thus punishes thee, man would be more just than G-d, which is not to be imagined."
2. Is only a reproof of Job's murmuring and discontent. Those that quarrel and find fault with the directions of the Divine Law, the dispensations of the Divine Grace, or the disposals of the Divine Providence, make themselves more just and pure than G-d; and those who thus reprove G-d, let them answer it. Shall the clay contend with the potter? What justice and purity there is in man, G-d is the author of it, and therefore is himself more just and pure. Psalms 94:9, 10.]Without all doubt, this refers to those angels who foolishly and wickedly fell from G-d. Imperfection is to be attributed to the angels, in comparison with Him. The holiness of some of them had given way (2 Pet. 2:4), and at best is but the holiness of a creature.
Folly is the want of moral consideration.
1. He shows how little the angels themselves are in comparison with G-d. Angels are
G-d's servants, waiting servants, working servants; they are His ministers (Ps. 104:4); bright and blessed beings they are, but G-d neither needs them nor is benefited by them and is himself infinitely above them, and therefore,
1. He puts no trust in them, did not repose a confidence in them, as we do in those we cannot live without. There is no service in which he employs them but, if he pleased, he could have it done as well without them. He never made them his confidants, or of his cabinet-council, Matt. 24:36. He does not leave his business wholly to them, but His own eyes run to and fro through the earth, 2 Chron. 16:9. See this phrase, Job 39:11. Some give this sense of it: "So variable is even the angelical nature that G-d would not trust angels with their own integrity; if He had, they would all have done as some did, left their first estate; but He saw it necessary to give them supernatural grace to confirm them."
2. He charges them with folly, vanity, weakness, infirmity, and imperfection, in comparison with Himself. If the world were left to the government of the angels, and they were trusted with the sole management of affairs, they would take false steps, and everything would not be done for the best, as now it is. Angels are intelligences, but finite ones, though not chargeable with iniquity, yet with imprudence. He will put no trust in His saints; nor will He glory in His angels or make His boast of them, as if their praises, or services, added any thing to Him: it is His glory that He is infinitely happy without them. The sense is, what strange presumption then is it for a foolish and mortal man, to make himself more just than G-d.
In them - Who though they have immortal spirits, yet those spirits dwell in mortal bodies, which are great block, and hindrance, and snares to them.
These are called houses, (because they are the receptacles of the soul, and the places of its settled abode) and houses of clay, because they were made of clay, or earth, and to note their great frailty and mutability; whereas the angels are free spirits, unconfined to such carcasses, and dwell in celestial, and glorious, and everlasting mansions.
1. Angels are pure spirits; the souls of men dwell in houses of clay: such the bodies of men are. Angels are free; human souls are housed, and the body is a cloud, a block, to it; it is its cage; it is its prison. It is a house of clay, mean and moldering; an earthen vessel, soon broken, as it was first formed, according to the good pleasure of the Potter. It is a cottage, not a house of cedar or a house of ivory, but of clay, which would soon be in ruins if not kept in constant repair.
2. Angels are fixed, but the very foundation of that house of clay in which man dwells is in the dust. A house of clay, if built upon a rock, might stand long; but, if founded in the dust, the uncertainty of the foundation will hasten its fall, and it will sink with its own weight. As man was made out of the earth, so he is maintained and supported by that which cometh out of the earth. Take away that, and his body returns to its earth. We stand but upon the dust; some have a higher heap of dust to stand upon than others do, but still it is the earth that stays us up and will shortly swallow us up.
3. Angels are immortal, but man is soon crushed; the earthly house of his tabernacle is dissolved; he dies and wastes away, is crushed like a moth between one's fingers, as easily, as quickly; one may almost as soon kill a man as kill a moth. A little thing will destroy his life. He is crushed before the face of the moth, so the word is. If some lingering distemper, which consumes like a moth, be commissioned to destroy him, he can no more resist it than he can resist an acute distemper, which comes roaring upon him like a lion. Hosea 5:12-14. Is such a creature as this to be trusted in, or can any service be expected from him by that G-d who puts no trust in angels themselves?