Job 22:12-20

Listen to Job 22:12-20
12 Is not God as high as the heavens? Look at the highest stars, how lofty they are!
13 Yet you say: ‘What does God know? Does He judge through thick darkness?
14 Thick clouds veil Him so He does not see us as He traverses the vault of heaven. [a]
15 Will you stay on the ancient path that wicked men have trod?
16 They were snatched away before their time, and their foundations were swept away by a flood.
17 They said to God, ‘Depart from us. What can the Almighty do to us?’
18 But it was He who filled their houses with good things; so I stay far from the counsel of the wicked.
19 The righteous see it and are glad; the innocent mock them:
20 ‘Surely our foes are destroyed, and fire has consumed their excess.’

Job 22:12-20 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO JOB 22

This chapter contains the third and last reply of Eliphaz to Job, in which he charges him with having too high an opinion of himself, of his holiness and righteousness, as if God was profited by it, and laid thereby under obligation to him, whereas he was not, Job 22:1-3; and as if he reproved and chastised him, because of his fear of him, whereas it was because of his sins, Job 22:4,5; an enumeration of which he gives, as of injustice, oppression, cruelty to the poor, and even of atheism and infidelity, for which snares and fears were around him, and various calamities, Job 22:6-14; and compares his way and course of life to that of the men of the old world, and the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, and suggests that his end would be like theirs, unless he repented, Job 22:15-20; and then concludes with an exhortation to him to return to God by repentance, and to reform, when he should see happy times again, and enjoy much outward and inward prosperity, and be an instrument of doing much good to many, Job 22:21-30.

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Footnotes 1

  • [a] Or heaven’s horizon or the circle of the sky
The Berean Bible and Majority Bible texts are officially placed into the public domain