Job 15:1-35
1 Then answered Eliphaz the Temanite, and said,
2 Should a wise man utter vaina knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind?
3 Should he reason with unprofitable talk? or with speeches wherewith he can do no good?
4 Yea, thou castest off fear, and restrainest prayer before God.
5 For thy mouth utterethb thine iniquity, and thou choosest the tongue of the crafty.
6 Thine own mouth condemneth thee, and not I: yea, thine own lips testify against thee.
7 Art thou the first man that was born? or wast thou made before the hills?
8 Hast thou heard the secret of God? and dost thou restrain wisdom to thyself?
9 What knowest thou, that we know not? what understandest thou, which is not in us?
10 With us are both the grayheaded and very aged men, much elder than thy father.
11 Are the consolations of God small with thee? is there any secret thing with thee?
12 Why doth thine heart carry thee away? and what do thy eyes wink at,
13 That thou turnest thy spirit against God, and lettest such words go out of thy mouth?
14 What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?
15 Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight.
16 How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?
17 I will shew thee, hear me; and that which I have seen I will declare;
18 Which wise men have told from their fathers, and have not hid it:
19 Unto whom alone the earth was given, and no stranger passed among them.
20 The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days, and the number of years is hidden to the oppressor.
21 A dreadfulc sound is in his ears: in prosperity the destroyer shall come upon him.
22 He believeth not that he shall return out of darkness, and he is waited for of the sword.
23 He wandereth abroad for bread, saying, Where is it? he knoweth that the day of darkness is ready at his hand.
24 Trouble and anguish shall make him afraid; they shall prevail against him, as a king ready to the battle.
25 For he stretcheth out his hand against God, and strengtheneth himself against the Almighty.
26 He runneth upon him, even on his neck, upon the thick bosses of his bucklers:
27 Because he covereth his face with his fatness, and maketh collops of fat on his flanks.
28 And he dwelleth in desolate cities, and in houses which no man inhabiteth, which are ready to become heaps.
29 He shall not be rich, neither shall his substance continue, neither shall he prolong the perfection thereof upon the earth.
30 He shall not depart out of darkness; the flame shall dry up his branches, and by the breath of his mouth shall he go away.
31 Let not him that is deceived trust in vanity: for vanity shall be his recompence.
32 It shall be accomplishedd before his time, and his branch shall not be green.
33 He shall shake off his unripe grape as the vine, and shall cast off his flower as the olive.
34 For the congregation of hypocrites shall be desolate, and fire shall consume the tabernacles of bribery.
35 They conceive mischief, and bring forth vanity,e and their belly prepareth deceit.
Job 15:2. Fill his belly with the east wind; a hot dry wind, the least favourable to vegetation. This is an angry figure of speech, equivalent to a declaration that Job's defence was a mere storm of words. Instead of being a suppliant for mercy, he accuses him of unfounded confidence.
Job 15:5. Thy mouth uttereth thine iniquity; or blasphemy against the hand that afflicted so good a man unjustly.
Job 15:7. Art thou the first man? Wert thou born before Adam, or begotten before the hills? Shultens. Eliphaz here cautions Job to reason with greater deference and modesty; for he had received traditions from the sons of Noah, who walked the earth as heirs, and no stranger passed among them.
Job 15:11. Are the consolations of God small with thee? The spiritual consolations of peace, joy and hope; for he had no temporal consolations. Our translators very much follow Montanus, who asks, “Are not the consolations of God small with thee?” Is there any secret thing with thee? Hebrews a secret word, viz. of confession of some secret sin which thy pride will not let thee utter, And he intimates that if Job did not confess this sin, he should be as an exile and a vagabond upon the earth: Job 15:20.
Job 15:15. He putteth no trust in his saints, or in angels, as most of the ancient authorities read. Bede has here a good remark to preachers in taking texts; that these are not the words of Job, nor of other inspired men, but of Eliphaz. Yea the ethereal heavens are not clean, compared with him, a pure, an invisible, and eternal mind.
REFLECTIONS.
In this battle of argument we are now come to sharp words and hard blows. Eliphaz's reproaches are good in themselves, had they been applied to another person, and made the reprehensions of a criminal case, No man should be treated as a culprit, till he is first found guilty. He presumes that Job had cast off all fear, had ceased from prayer, and was hardening his soul in specious pleas of innocence, which implicated the divine Being as unjust, in the tremendous character of his visitations. He claims the opinion and support of all holy patriarchs, equal in age to the father of Job, as coinciding with him in the severity of his censures.
Eliphaz, who was oldest of the three, presumes farther, that Job must, like other wicked men, have a dreadful sound in his ears, for his great sin in accounting himself holy before God, when the heavens are not clean in his sight. And dreadful is the portrait he draws of a character loaded with crimes, and seeking to hide himself from the eyes of God and of man. And who would not weep at the sight of a man consummately wicked; a man, who has gone the round of crimes in blasphemy, seduction, and fraud. Yet he is suffered to live, a terror to himself, and a man from whom the public hide their faces. He shall not depart out of darkness, and the flames shall dry up his branches.