Job 22:5-15

5 Hardly! It's because you're a first-class moral failure, because there's no end to your sins.

6 When people came to you for help, you took the shirts off their backs, exploited their helplessness.

7 You wouldn't so much as give a drink to the thirsty, or food, not even a scrap, to the hungry.

8 And there you sat, strong and honored by everyone, surrounded by immense wealth!

9 You turned poor widows away from your door; heartless, you crushed orphans.

10 Now you're the one trapped in terror, paralyzed by fear. Suddenly the tables have turned!

11 How do you like living in the dark, sightless, up to your neck in flood waters?

12 "You agree, don't you, that God is in charge? He runs the universe - just look at the stars!

13 Yet you dare raise questions: 'What does God know? From that distance and darkness, how can he judge?

14 He roams the heavens wrapped in clouds, so how can he see us?'

15 "Are you going to persist in that tired old line that wicked men and women have always used?

Job 22:5-15 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.