Bible Commentaries
Job 15

Verses 1-34

(See the Job Book Comments for Introductory content and general conclusions and observations).

VI

THE SECOND ROUND OF SPEECHES

Job 15-21.

In this chapter we take up the second round of speeches, commencing with the second speech of Eliphaz. This speech consists of two parts, a rejoinder to Job’s last speech and a continuation of the argument.

The main points of the rejoinder (Job 15:1-16) are as follows:

1. A reflection on Job’s wisdom (Job 15:1-3). A wise man would not answer with vain knowledge, windy words, nor reason with unprofitable words.

2. An accusation of impiety (Job 15:4-6). Job is irreverent, binders devotion, uses a serpent tongue of craftiness whose words are self-condemnatory. (Cf. what Caiaphas said about Christ, Matthew 26:65.)

3. A cutting sarcasm (Job 15:7-8). Wast thou before Adam, or before the creation of the mountains, and a member of the Celestial Council considering the creation, that thou limitest wisdom to thyself?

4. An invidious comparison (Job 15:9-10). What knowest thou of which we are ignorant? With us are the gray-headed, much older than thy father.

5. A bigoted rebuke (Job 15:11-16). You count small the consolation of God we offered you in gentle words [the reader may determine for himself how much "comfort" they offered Job and note their conceit in calling this "God’s comfort," and judge whether it was offered in "gentle" words]. Your passions run away with you. Here a quotation from Rosenmuller is in point: Quo te tuus animus rapit? – "Whither does thy soul hurry thee?" Quid oculi qui tui vibrantes? – "What means thy rolling eyes?" It turns against God; this is presumptuous: A man born of woman, depraved, against God in whose sight angels are imperfect and the heavens unclean. How much more an abominable, filthy man drinking iniquity like water.

The points in the continuation of the argument are as follows:

1. Hear me while I instruct thee (Job 15:17). I will tell you what I have seen.

2. It is the wisdom of the ancients handed down (Job 15:18-19). Wise men have received it from their fathers and have handed it down to us for our special good.

3. Concerning the doom of the wicked (Job 15:20-30). This is a wonderful description of the course of the wicked to their final destruction, but his statements, in many instances, are not true. For instance, in his first statement about the wicked (Job 15:20), he says, "The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days," which is in accord with his theory, but does not harmonize with the facts in the case. The wicked does not travail with pain "all his days." They are not terrified "all the time" as Eliphaz here pictures them. In this passage Eliphaz intimates that Job may be guilty of pride (Job 15:25) and of fatness (Job 15:27).

4. The application (Job 15:31-35). If what he said about the wicked was true, his application here to Job is wrong. It will be seen that Eliphaz here intimates that Job was guilty of vanity and self-deception; that he was, perhaps, guilty of bribery and deceit, and therefore the calamity had come upon him.

The following is a summary of Job’s reply (Job 16-17) :

1. Your speech is commonplace. I have heard many such things. Ye are miserable comforters (Job 16:2).

2. You persist when I have urged you to desist. It is unprovoked. Your words are vain, just words of wind (Job 16:3).

3. If our places were changed, I could do as you do, but I would not. I would helo and comfort you (Job 16:4-5).

4. You ask me to cease my complaint, but whether I speak or forbear, the result is the same. I have not ensnared my feet, but God has lassoed me (Job 16:6).

5. He gives a fearful description of God’s assault (Job 16:7-14): (1) as a hunter with hounds he has harried me; (2) he has abandoned me to the malice of mine enemies; (3) as a wrestler he has taken me by the neck and shaken me to pieces; (4) as an archer he has bound me to the stake and terrified and pierced me with his arrows; (5) as a mighty conqueror he opened breach after breach in my defenses with batteringrams; and (6) as a giant he rushes on me through the breach in the assault.

6. As a result, I am clothed in sackcloth and my dignity lies prone in the dust; my face is foul with weeping, my eyelids shadowed by approaching death, although no injustice on my part provoked it and my prayer was pure (Job 16:15-17).

7. I appeal to the earth to cover my blood and to the heavenly witness to vouch for me. Friends may scorn my tears, but they are unto God. (See passages in Revelation and Psalms.) Note here the messianic prayer, "that one might plead for a man with God, as a son of man pleadeth for his neighbor." But my days are numbered and mockers are about me (Job 16:18-17:2).

8. The plea for a divine surety (messianic) but God has made me a byword, who had been a tabret. Future ages will be astonished at my case and my deplorable condition (Job 17:3-16).

There are several things in this speech worthy of note, viz: 1. The messianic desire which finds expression later as David and Isaiah adopt the words of Job to fit their Messiah. 2. Job is right in recognizing a malicious adversary, but wrong in thinking God his adversary; God only permitted these things to come to Job, but Satan brought them.

There are two parts of Bildad’s second speech (Job 18), viz: a rejoinder (Job 18:1-4) and an argument (Job 18:5-21). The main points of his rejoinder are:

1. Job hunts for words rather than speaks considerately.

2. Why are the friends accounted as beasts and unclean in your sight?

3. Job was just tearing himself with anger and altogether without reason.

4. A sarcasm: The earth will not be forsaken for thee nor will the rock be moved out of its place for thee (Job 18:1-4).

The argument (Job 18:5-21) is fine and much of it is true, but it is wrong in its application. The following are the points as applied to the wicked:

1. His light shall be put out.

2. The steps of his strength shall be straightened.

3. His own counsel shall be cast down.

4. There shall be snares everywhere for his feet.

5. Terrors of conscience shall smite him on every side.

6. He shall be destroyed root and branch and in memory.

There are also two parts to Job’s great reply: His expostulation with his friends (Job 19:1-6) and his complaint against God (Job 19:7-29). The points of his expostulation are:

1. Ye reproach me often without shame and deal hardly with me.

2. If I have sinned, it is not against you but my error remains with myself.

3. The snares you refer to are not because of my fault but they are from God, for he has subverted me and compassed me with his net.

The items of his complaint against God are as follows:

1. He will not hear me, though I am innocent; surely there is no justice.

2. He has walled me up and set darkness in my path.

3. He has stripped me of my glory and he has broken me down on every side.

4. He has plucked up my hope like a tree and his fiery wrath is against me.

5. He has counted me an adversary and I am besieged by armies round about.

6. He has put away from me my brethren, friends, kindred, family, servants, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.

7. I appeal to you, O ye my friends, for pity instead of persecution.

8. Oh that my words were written in a book or were engraved with a pen of iron in the rock forever, but I know that my redeemer liveth and will at last stand upon the earth, and I shall behold him in my risen body, then to be vindicated by him.

9. Now I warn you to beware of injustice to me lest the sword come upon you, for there is a judgment ahead. Here it may be noted that Job 19:23-24 refer to the ancient method of writing and that Job expresses in Job 19:25-27 a great hope for the future. Compare the several English translations of Job 19:26 with each other and the context and then answer:

1. Does Job intend to convey the idea that he will see God apart from his body) i.e., when death separates soul and body?

2. Or does he mean that at the resurrection he will see God from the viewpoint of his risen body?

3. If you hold the latter meaning, which version, after all, is the least misleading, the King James, the Revised, the American Standard Version, or Leeser’s Jewish translation? The answer is, Job here means that he will see God from the viewpoint of his risen body, as the King James Version conveys.

Zophar’s second speech is harsher than his first, and consists of a rejoinder (Job 20:1-3) and an argument (Job 20:4-29).

The points of his rejoinder are:

1. Haste is justified because of his thoughts;

2. The reproach of Job 19:28-29, "If ye say, How may we pursue him and that the cause of the suffering is in me, then beware of the sword. My goel [redeemer] will defend me," he answers thus: "Thus do my thoughts answer me and by reason of this there is haste in me; I hear the reproof that puts me to shame and the spirit of my understanding gives answer.

The points of his argument are:

1. Since creation the prosperity of the wicked has been short, his calamity sure and utter, extending to his children.

2. The very sweetness of his sin becomes poison to him.

3. He shall not look on streams flowing with milk, butter, and honey.

4. He shall restore and shall not swallow it down, even according to all that he has taken.

5. In the height of his enjoyment the sword smites him and the arrow pierces him,

6. Darkness wraps him, terrors fright him, and heaven’s supernatural fires burn him.

7. Heaven reveals his iniquity and earth rises up against him. This is the heritage appointed unto him by God. Certain other scriptures carry out the idea of milk, butter, and honey, viz: Exodus 3:8; Exodus 13:5; Exodus 33:3; 2 Kings 18:32; Deuteronomy 31:20; Isaiah 7:22; Joel 3:18, and several classic authors refer to them, also, as Pindar, Virgil, Ovid, and Horace. It will be noted that Zophar intimates that Job might be guilty of hypocrisy (Job 19:12), of oppressing the poor (Job 19:19) and of greediness (Job 19:20).

Job’s reply (Job 21) is more collected than the former, and the points are as follows:

1. Hear me and then mock. This is only fair and may afterward prove a consolation to you.

2. Do I address myself to man for help? My address is to God and, because I am unheard, therefore I am impatient?

3. Mark me and be astonished. What I say even terrifies me.

4. The prosperity of the wicked who defy God is a well known fact.

5. How seldom is their light put out. They are not destroyed as you say.

6. Ye say God visits it on his children. What is that to him?

7. Here are two cases, one prosperous to the end and the other never so. The grave is sweet to both.

8. God’s reserved judgment is for the wicked. Do you not know this?

9. In conclusion I must say that your answers are falsehoods.

In this second round of speeches we have observed that Job has quieted down to a great extent and seems to have risen to higher heights of faith, while the three friends have become bolder and more desperate. They have gone beyond insinuations to intimations, thus suggesting certain sins of which Job might be guilty. While Job has greatly improved in his spirit and has ascended a long way from the depths to which he had gone in the moral tragedy, the climax of the debate has not yet been reached. Tanner says, "While the conflict of debate is sharper, Job’s temper is more calm; and he is perceptibly nearer a right attitude toward God. He is approaching a victory over his opponents, and completing the more important one over himself."

QUESTIONS

1. Of what does the second speech of Eliphaz consist?

2. What the main points of the rejoinder (Job 15:1-16)?

3. What the points in the continuation of the argument?

4. What summary of Job’s reply Job 16:16-17)?

5. What things in this speech are worthy of note?

6. What the two parts of Bildad’s second speech Job 18:18)?

7. What the main points of his rejoinder?

8. What can you say of his argument and what the points of it?

9. What the two parts to Job’s great reply?

10. What the points of his expostulation?

11. What the items of his complaint against God?

12. Explain Job 19:23-24,

13. What great hope does Job express in Job 19:25-27?

14. Compare the several English translations of Job 19:26 with each other and the context and then answer: What great hope does Job express in Job 19:25-27?

15. How does Zophar’s second speech compare with the first and what the parts of this speech?

16. What the points of his rejoinder?

17. What the points of his argument?

18. What scriptures carry out the idea of milk, butter, and honey, and what classic authors refer to this?

19. What can you say of Job’s reply (Job 21) and what his points?

20. What have we found in the second round of speeches?