Job 15:1-16

Job’s intelligence questioned

1 Eliphaz answered:
2 Will the wise respond with windy knowledge and fill their belly with the east wind?
3 Will they argue with a word that has no benefit and with unprofitable words?
4 You are truly making religion ineffective and restraining meditation before God.
5 Your mouth multiplies your sins a thousand times; you opt for a clever tongue.
6 Your mouth condemns you, not I; your lips argue against you.
7 Were you born the first Adam, brought forth before the hills?
8 Did you listen in God's council; is wisdom limited to you?
9 What do you know that we don't know; what do you understand that isn't among us?
10 Both the graybeard and the aged are with us; those much older than your father.
11 Are God's comforts not enough for you, a word spoken gently with you?
12 Why has your mind seized you, why have your eyes flashed,
13 so that you return your breath to God and utter such words from your mouth?
14 What are humans that they might be pure, and those born of woman that they might be innocent?
15 If he doesn't trust his holy ones and the heavens aren't pure in his eyes,
16 how much less those who are abominable and corrupt, for they drink sin like water.

Job 15:1-16 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO JOB 15

Job's three friends having in their turns attacked him, and he having given answer respectively to them, Eliphaz, who began the attack, first enters the debate with him again, and proceeds upon the same plan as before, and endeavours to defend his former sentiments, falling upon Job with greater vehemence and severity; he charges him with vanity, imprudence, and unprofitableness in his talk, and acting a part unbecoming his character as a wise man; yea, with impiety and a neglect of religion, or at least as a discourager of it by his words and doctrines, of which his mouth and lips were witnesses against him, Job 15:1-6; he charges him with arrogance and a high conceit of himself, as if he was the first man that was made, nay, as if he was the eternal wisdom of God, and had been in his council; and, to check his vanity, retorts his own words upon him, or however the sense of them, Job 15:7-10; and also with slighting the consolations of God; upon which he warmly expostulates with him, Job 15:11-13; and in order to convince him of his self-righteousness, which he thought he was full of, he argues from the angels, the heavens, and the general case of man, Job 15:14-16; and then he declares from his own knowledge, and from the relation of wise and ancient men in former times, who made it their observation, that wicked men are afflicted all their days, attended with terror and despair, and liable to various calamities, Job 15:17-24; the reasons of which are their insolence to God, and hostilities committed against him, which they are encouraged in by their prosperous circumstances, Job 15:25-27; notwithstanding all, their estates, riches, and wealth, will come to nothing, Job 15:28-30; and the chapter is closed with an exhortation to such, not to feed themselves up with vain hopes, or trust in uncertain riches, since their destruction would be sure, sudden, and terrible, Job 15:31-35.

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