Job15chapter 15

Job 15:1-3

Eliphaz opens his second speech with open scorn where his first speech in chapter 4 began with courtesy, should a wise man utter vain knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind measuring Job's argument as windy rather than wise. Should he reason with unprofitable talk turns Job's own word for pleading a case from 13:6 back on him as worthless noise. Henry notes the change in tone across Eliphaz's three speeches, gentle at first and increasingly severe as Job continues to answer rather than yield.

Job 15:4-6

Yea, thou castest off fear, and restrainest prayer before God escalates the charge from bad argument to irreligion, reading Job's protests as an abandonment of reverence itself. Thy mouth uttereth thine iniquity, and thou choosest the tongue of the crafty accuses Job of the very deceit chapter 13:7 warned the friends against, Eliphaz turning Job's own charge back on its author. Thine own mouth condemneth thee, and not I claims Job's words are self-convicting, so that Eliphaz need only quote him to prosecute him.

Job 15:7-9

Art thou the first man that was born, or wast thou made before the hills mocks Job with the primeval-wisdom question the whirlwind speeches will later ask in earnest, though Eliphaz means it as sarcasm and God will mean it as instruction. Hast thou heard the secret of God accuses Job of claiming access to a divine council no man may enter, an irony given that the reader has already watched that council convene in chapters 1 and 2. Barnes notes that Eliphaz's questions here are rhetorical weapons rather than real inquiries, unlike the same form of question when God asks it later.

Job 15:10-11

With us are both the grayheaded and very aged men, much elder than thy father appeals to age as the guarantor of wisdom, a claim the book will let Elihu contest directly in his own speeches. Are the consolations of God small with thee reframes the friends' speeches as divine comfort Job has despised rather than human argument he has answered, and Gill notes the irony that Job will later call these same consolations miserable at 16:2.

Job 15:12-13

Why doth thine heart carry thee away, and what do thy eyes wink at reads Job's protests as a loss of self-control rather than the reasoned case Job has claimed to bring. That thou turnest thy spirit against God, and lettest such words go out of thy mouth restates the charge of chapter 4 in sharper form, Job's grief now read as open rebellion rather than honest complaint. Henry notes that Eliphaz here assumes the very point in question, that Job's words are against God rather than a plea addressed to him.

Job 15:14-16

What is man, that he should be clean, and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous recycles the vision doctrine of 4:17 in sharper words, the phrase born of a woman appearing here for the second time in the book after Job's own use of it at 14:1. He putteth no trust in his saints, yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight widens the claim from man to the heavenly beings themselves, an argument from the greater to the lesser that Eliphaz first used in his opening speech. How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water sharpens the same doctrine into open contempt, the careful reasoning of chapter 4 now reduced to an insult.

Job 15:17-19

I will shew thee, hear me, and that which I have seen I will declare shifts Eliphaz's ground from the private vision of chapter 4 to inherited tradition, wise men have told from their fathers, and have not hid it. Unto whom alone the earth was given, and no stranger passed among them claims an unbroken line of ancestral wisdom reaching back before any foreign corruption, and Delitzsch reads it of the patriarchal age before the land was mixed with other peoples. Eliphaz is building the authority for the poem that follows, appealing to tradition where his first speech appealed to a private night vision.

Job 15:20-24

Eliphaz opens the book's first full-length wicked-man poem, the doctrine he and the other friends have assumed from the start now stated as sustained verse. The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days, a dreadful sound always in his ears even in prosperity, unable to believe he shall return out of darkness because he is waited for of the sword, wandering abroad for bread and knowing the day of darkness is ready at his hand, trouble and anguish coming on him like a king ready to the battle. Henry reads the whole poem as Eliphaz's settled theology rather than a new argument, the same doctrine of exact retribution the friends will repeat with variations through chapters 18 and 20, and the book itself will name at 42:7 as not the thing that is right, though Job's own case as an innocent sufferer never appears in the poem.

Job 15:25-28

The poem's middle section pictures the wicked man's arrogance as a soldier's assault on God, stretching out his hand against the Almighty and running upon him even on the thick bosses of his bucklers, a shield's boss being the raised metal center that took the hardest blow. Because he covereth his face with his fatness, and maketh collops of fat on his flanks reads prosperity itself as the arrogance's cause, a well-fed confidence that forgets the God it defies. Gill takes the desolate cities and uninhabited houses of verse 28 as the wicked man's own future dwelling, ruin overtaking the very prosperity the fatness described.

Job 15:29-35

The poem closes with loss answering the wealth Eliphaz has just pictured, he shall not be rich, neither shall his substance continue, the flame shall dry up his branches, an image drawn from the same plant vocabulary Job used of hope in chapter 14 turned here into a sentence of judgment. He shall shake off his unripe grape as the vine, and shall cast off his flower as the olive pictures a harvest that fails before it ripens, fruit that never becomes fruit. The congregation of hypocrites shall be desolate, and fire shall consume the tabernacles of bribery names the doctrine's whole point in its last lines, they conceive mischief, and bring forth vanity, and their belly prepareth deceit, a poem stated once by Eliphaz as settled law and left, by the book's own later ruling at 42:7, unsettled.