Job 15:14-24

14 "How can anyone be pure? How can someone born to a woman be good?
15 God places no trust in his holy ones, and even the heavens are not pure in his eyes.
16 How much less pure is one who is terrible and rotten and drinks up evil as if it were water!
17 "Listen to me, and I will tell you about it; I will tell you what I have seen.
18 These are things wise men have told; their fathers told them, and they have hidden nothing.
19 (The land was given to their fathers only, and no foreigner lived among them.)
20 The wicked suffer pain all their lives; the cruel suffer during all the years saved up for them.
21 Terrible sounds fill their ears, and when things seem to be going well, robbers attack them.
22 Evil people give up trying to escape from the darkness; it has been decided that they will die by the sword.
23 They wander around and will become food for vultures. They know darkness will soon come.
24 Worry and suffering terrify them; they overwhelm them, like a king ready to attack,

Job 15:14-24 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.

Scripture taken from the New Century Version. Copyright © 1987, 1988, 1991 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.