Albert Barnes Commentary Job 22:3

"Is it any pleasure to the Almighty, that thou art righteous? Or is it gain [to him], that thou makest thy ways perfect?" — Job 22:3 (ASV)

Is it any pleasure to the Almighty that thou art righteous?—This is the same sentiment which was advanced in the previous verse. The meaning is that it can be no advantage to God that a man is righteous. He is not dependent on man for happiness and cannot be deterred from dealing justly with him because He is in danger of losing anything. In this sense, it is true. God has pleasure in holiness wherever it is and is pleased when people are righteous; but it is not true that He is dependent on the character of His creatures for His own happiness, or that people can lay Him under obligation by their own righteousness. Eliphaz applies this general truth to Job, probably because he understood him as complaining of the dealings of God with him, as if he had laid God under obligation by his upright life.

He supposes that it was implied in the remarks of Job, that he had been so upright and of so much consequence, that God ought to have continued him in a state of prosperity. This supposition, if Job ever had it, Eliphaz correctly meets and shows him that he was not so profitable to God that God could not do without him. Yet, do people not often feel this way? Do ministers of the gospel not sometimes feel this way? Do we not sometimes feel this way in relation to some man eminent for piety, wisdom, or learning? Do we not feel as if God could not do without him, and that there was a sort of necessity that God should keep him alive? Yet, how often are such people cut down in the very midst of their usefulness, to show:

1. That God is not dependent on them; and
2. To keep them from pride, as if they were necessary to the execution of the divine plans; and
3. To teach His people their dependence on Him, and not on frail, erring mortals.

When the church places its reliance on a human arm, God very often suddenly knocks the prop away.