Job 15:7-17

7 "Are you the first man that was born? Or were you brought forth before the hills?
8 Have you listened in the council of God? And do you limit wisdom to yourself?
9 What do you know that we do not know? What do you understand that is not clear to us?
10 Both the gray-haired and the aged are among us, older than your father.
11 Are the consolations of God too small for you, or the word that deals gently with you?
12 Why does your heart carry you away, and why do your eyes flash,
13 that you turn your spirit against God, and let such words go out of your mouth?
14 What is man, that he can be clean? Or he that is born of a woman, that he can be righteous?
15 Behold, God puts no trust in his holy ones, and the heavens are not clean in his sight;
16 how much less one who is abominable and corrupt, a man who drinks iniquity like water!
17 "I will show you, hear me; and what I have seen I will declare

Job 15:7-17 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.

Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.