Bible Commentaries
Job 15

Verses 1-35

JOB - CHAPTER 15

SECOND ADDRESS OF ELIPHAZ

Verses 1-35:

SUPERIOR EXPERIENCE AND TRADITION

Verses 1-3 recount Eliphaz’s sharp rebuke of Job, in his second discourse against him. He rhetorically inquires whether or not a wise man should spout vain knowledge, blow out a belly full of east wind, of destructive wind. He should not, should he? is the idea. He thus asserts that Job’s speeches have been empty of knowledge, violent with bombast, amounting to nothing; and he concludes that Job’s words were of no good, Job 6:26; Job 8:2; Ecclesiastes 1:14; Isaiah 27:8; Proverbs 18:8.

Verses 4, 5 continue to charge Job with casting aside fear or showing lack of reverence for God, Job 4:6; Psalms 2:11. He further charged that Job was restrained or detracted from real prayer to God, Psalms 104:34; Psalms 119:97; Psalms 119:99. Eliphaz reasons that if Job’s views were right, that God often disregards afflictions of the righteous and causes the wicked to prosper, all devotions would stop, Job 9:22; Job 12:6. He added that the utterance of Job were words of iniquity and he chose through sophistry to make his friends to appear as enemies and "forgers of lies," Job 13:4-7.

Verse 6 asserts that Job’s own mouth condemned him and his own lips testified against him, in the opinion of Eliphaz the Temanite. He held that no pious man would talk as Job had talked.

Verse 7 ironically asks Job if he were the first man ever born? or if he was made before the hills, to have such sage wisdom and knowledge as he had claimed to give. The farther back one could go the wiser he was considered. Was he before Adam? asks Eliphaz, Job 38:4; Psalms 90:2; Proverbs 8:25. This is the only previous Bible character mentioned in Job.

Verse 8 adds to the inquiry of Eliphaz to Job. Have you heard the secret of God, or are you a member of the secret council of God? to take away or retain wisdom from it for yourself? he inquires, Deuteronomy 29:23; Psalms 25:14; Proverbs 3:32; Romans 11:34; 1 Corinthians 2:11. For God’s servants are admitted to His secrets, Genesis 18:17; John 15:15.

Verse 9 further challenges Job just what he knows that the three of the self­-esteeming wise friends did not know, or what wisdom did he have that was not in them, Job 13:2.

Verse 10 continues the claim of Eliphaz for the three friends that where with them (closely associated) were both the gray-headed and the very aged men, much elder than Job’s father. The Arabs are proud of fullness of years; They ail appeared to be older than Job, except perhaps Elihu who speaks later, Job 12:12; Job 32:6; Deuteronomy 32:7; Job 8:8-10; Job 12:20; Proverbs 16:31.

Verse 11 is a direct inquiry of Eliphaz, whether or not the consolations or revelations that he had given were invalidated in the mind of Job by some secret (inside) knowledge that he had from God. Else he wonders why Job would ignore his bits of wisdom and recommendations, Job 4:12; Job 4:17; Job 5:7-26.

Verse 12 inquires of Job why his heart carried him away from his three friends’ advice and just what his eyes winked at? or why did his eyes reflect so much pride, Proverbs 6:13; Psalms 35:19.

Verse 13 adds that he turned his spirit against God, using rash words, fretting against God. He let such words (hot air-east wind words of passion) fly from his mouth; Eliphaz asked, why? as charged Job 5:2-6.

Verse 14 inquires just what is man that he should be clean? so morally clean as Job claimed to be, turning Job’s own words against him, Job 4:17; Job 14:1. For all are imperfect and unclean by nature. But Job’s premise was that he did not suffer either for anti overt act of wickedness or any neglect to honor or worship God. See 1Kg 8:46; 2 Chronicles 6:36; Psalms 14:3; Psalms 51:3; Proverbs 20:9; Ecclesiastes 7:20; Romans 7:18; Galatians 3:21; 1 John 1:8.

Verse 15 asserts that the Lord puts "no abiding trust in His saints," so that even the heavens are not clean in His sight. His "saints" in this instance is a repeat from Job 4:18 where His servant-angels, holy angels, and moon and stars of heaven, are referred to as saints, a holy colleague of heavenly servants to the Lord, not wholly clean in His sight, Job 25:5. For all had been tainted by sin, and await even yet, the regeneration, Acts 3:21; Romans 8:21-23.

Verse 16 continues to assert that even more corrupted, or soured from his original purity. The mouth of the wicked is said to drink, gulp down, iniquity continually, Psalms 14:3; Psalms 53:3; Proverbs 19:28; Psalms 73:10. See also Romans 1:28-30; Titus 3:3.

Verses 17, 18 recount Ellphaz’s challenge for Job to just listen to him and he would show him matters that wise men had told and affirmed from their fathers, from olden times, had not concealed, that would contradict what Job had said, Job 12:6; that the lot of the wicked was prosperous, Genesis 18:19.

Verse 19 states that to those wise men alone the earth was given, to the seed of Abraham, not to the wicked. And they had not wickedly mixed with foreigners who passed through, he contends, in opposition to Job 9:24; Genesis 10:5; Genesis 10:25; Genesis 10:32; Joel 3:17.

Verse 20 declares that the wicked one trembles with fear all the days of his life, is never at ease or peace; He is a self-tormentor all his days of wickedness, Isaiah 57:20-21. He is oppressed in spirit because he knows not when his days will end and he comes face to face with God, Psalms 90:12; Hebrews 9:27-28.

Verse 21 adds that even in prosperity a dreadful sound is in his ear, when there exists no real danger; His conscience, monitor of the soul, brings this sense of guilt and fear, like an alarm clock, so that he is inexcusable in his wickedness, 1 Thessalonians 5:3; Romans 2:1-2; Romans 2:14-15. Ones conscience bears witness of sin continually.

Verse 22 charges further that a wicked man, like Eliphaz believed Job to be, would never escape the darkness of calamity for his sins, in this life, would never be restored to health, as he seemed to glance at or point an accusing finger at Job. This, he contended, had come on Job in contrast with health that righteous men had. Job looked toward the sword, as if a sword were against him in the night time, with no hope of escaping death. Eliphaz held Job had no hope, unless he confessed great hidden sin that caused his suffering and affliction, a thing Job denied, see? Micah 7:8-9; John 9:2-3.

Verse 23 states that this conscience-stricken, wicked, afflicted person wandereth abroad, in anxious search for bread, asking where is it? Famished, as a judgment for sin, Isaiah 5:13; In contrast with the righteous man, he is always filled with fear, Romans 5:1; Psalms 50:15; Job 18:12.

Verses 24, 25 declare that trouble and anguish of body and spirit break forth suddenly and prevail against the wicked one, as a king absolute who goes hastily and furiously into battle, Proverbs 6:11. This, according to Eliphaz, is how God had angrily, justly, sent the plague upon him, as a wicked rebel against God, Job 9:4; Isaiah 27:4.

Verses 26, 27 add that the God-King fell upon Job’s stiff neck because he was a rebel against God, Psalms 75:5. His bucklers, coverings of protection, could not shield him from Divine chastening, though he was covering his face and body-flanks with fatness of plenty, Job 16:8; Isaiah 6:10; Jeremiah 5:28; 1 Samuel 2:29.

Verse 28 describes the wicked, with whom Eliphaz identified Job, as dwelling in cities made desolate, heaps of rubble and ruin, as no righteous man would choose to inhabit. He is compared with a thug, a robber, or a plunderer who would seize and occupy houses of banished citizens, Isaiah 5:8; Isaiah 13:20.

Verse 29 adds that such an one as Job does not grow rich; He has reached his zenith, his highest point. His prosperity will not continue. He will not continue his perfection, ways of reproduction and prosperity on the earth, as in the past. Eliphaz erroneously assured him, Job 42:10-17.

Verse 30 falsely predicts that "he" (Job) would never depart out of his dark judgment calamity, the flame of God’s anger would dry up his branches (his off-spring growth) and by the breath of his mouth, God’s wrath, he would die, as branches of a tree or blades of grass under an east wind, Job 1:18-19; Job 4:9; Psalms 37:35.

Verse 31 is an exhortation of Eliphaz for Job not to be deceived in his vanity. For vanity or deceit would pay him off the wages of sin, Proverbs 1:31; Jeremiah 2:19. Vanity is the tree that is to have her branches dried up or burned with the flames of v. 30; Psalms 62:10; Psalms 9:4; John 2:8.

Verse 32 adds that "it," Job’s trust in his vanity, will be completed before his time, his normal span of life and his branch should not be green; He would have no hope of a future time of prosperity, according to the advice of Eliphaz, Job 22:16; Psalms 55:21; Ecclesiastes 7:17; For he and his children would perish and be forgotten forever, a false prophecy of Eliphaz.

Verse 33 continued Eliphaz’s vituperation against Job, charging that as a lying, wicked, impenitent hypocrite he would shake off his unripe grape like a vine, and cast off his flower like an olive, becoming unproductive, or bear only hope of fruit, none of it reaching maturity, as the fallen fruit of his own sin, Isaiah 3:11; Jeremiah 6:19.

Verse 34 concludes that the congregation or assembly of hypocrites would become desolated and fire would consume their tabernacles of bribery, in certain judgment, Job 8:13; Job 20:5; Job 27:8; Job 36:13; Isaiah 33:14; Matthew 24:51. Eliphaz seems set on insinuating to the end that Job is a treacherous, bribing Arab sheik, a reprobate.

Verse 35 concludes further that all hypocrites if banded together for a common purpose of deceit, will come to vanity, emptiness in judgment. Everything they conceive or hatch from their belly or hollow of life, brings judgment upon themselves, a thing of which Job is guilty, and to which he is party, is Eliphaz’s final evaluation of Job’s state, Psalms 7:14-15; Isaiah 33:11; Isaiah 59:4; Hosea 10:13; Galatians 6:7-8; James 1:15.