Job 15:10-20

10 Both the old and the gray-haired are among us. They are older than your father.
11 Isn't God's comfort enough for you, even when gently spoken to you?
12 Why have your emotions carried you away? Why do your eyes flash
13 when you turn against God and spit these words out of your mouth?
14 Why should a mortal be considered faultless or someone born of a woman be considered righteous?
15 If God doesn't trust his holy ones, and the heavens are not pure in his sight,
16 how much less will he trust the one who is disgusting and corrupt, the one who drinks wickedness like water.
17 "I'll tell you; listen to me! I'll relate what I have seen.
18 I'll tell you what wise people have declared and what was not kept secret from their ancestors.
19 (The land was given to them alone, and no stranger passed through their land.)
20 "The wicked person is tortured all his days. Only a few years are reserved for the ruthless person.

Job 15:10-20 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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