Jobchapter 15
35 verses · KJVJob book hub →
Key verse
With us are both the grayheaded and very aged men, much elder than thy father.
It stands in scene A of the chapter, verses 1 to 16.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Eliphaz opens the second cycle with the courtesy gone: should a wise man fill himself with the east wind? Thou doest away with fear and hinderest devotion before God; thine own mouth condemneth thee. 'Art thou the first man that was born? or wast thou brought forth before the hills?' (15:7). He repeats his night-vision theology as settled fact: God 'putteth no trust in his holy ones; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight'. How much less a man that drinketh iniquity like water. The rest is a portrait of the wicked travailing in pain all his days, dread sounds in his ears, his branch never green.
Context
Poetry · Unknown · Job overview
Where the chapter sits
Job 15 falls in Dialogue: three cycles (chapters 3–27). Job's opening complaint (3); three rounds with Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar; the friends' rigid retribution theology; the third cycle breaks: Zophar does not speak again. The dialogue exhausts itself as argument.
Before it: Prose prologue: heavenly court, chapters 1–2. After it: Hymn to wisdom, chapters 28.
The whole shape of Job→The world behind this chapter
Job 15The history
The politeness is finished. Eliphaz now says Job fills his belly with the east wind, the sirocco, the scorching wind off the desert that withered crops and frayed tempers, the most useless and destructive air anyone in that region knew. He accuses Job of casting off fear and restraining prayer, which in that culture was the definition of a godless man.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
He appeals to a new authority: age and pedigree. Both the grey-headed and the very aged are on our side, he says, older than your father. Then he cites wise men who received wisdom from their fathers, 'unto whom alone the earth was given, and no stranger passed among them', a claim that this teaching comes down an unmixed line, uncontaminated by foreign ideas. In a world of tribal traditions, purity of transmission was itself an argument.
The portrait of the wicked man that fills the second half is drawn from the anxieties of a violent age. He travails with pain all his days; a dreadful sound is in his ears; in prosperity the destroyer comes on him; he does not believe he will return out of darkness; he wanders abroad for bread asking where it is; trouble makes him afraid 'as a king ready to the battle'.
The physical detail is deliberately ugly: he covers his face with his fatness and makes collops of fat on his flanks. In a hungry world, visible fat meant a man who had eaten well at someone else's expense. And the closing images are agricultural failure, a vine shaking off its unripe grapes, an olive casting its blossom, and the tents of bribery consumed by fire.
What it meant to them
Eliphaz has stopped counselling and started prosecuting. His argument is now circular: the wicked suffer, you are suffering, therefore your protests are just more evidence.
First hearers, who already knew from chapter 1 what the friends did not, were watching orthodoxy curdle. The chapter is a warning to anyone who has ever defended God by convicting a sufferer.
Sources cited
- John E. Hartley, The Book of Job
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews & Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
A. Eliphaz: Should a Wise Man Answer With Windy Knowledge?
1. (vv. 1-3)
a.Then answered Eliphaz the Temanite: 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 15:1, 2 voicesWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Job 15:1
“Chap. xv. 1. Then answered Eliphaz the Temanite, and said, Should a wise man answer as if speaking into the wind, and fill his belly with burning? ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION We have already said frequently that blessed Job bears a type of the Holy Church universal, and that his friends bear the likeness of heretics, who as it were on the plea of defence of the Lord find occasion of foolish talking, and let loose insulting words against good men; to whom all is displeasing that is thought by the faithful, as though it were uttered to the wind.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIIpatristic
Job 15:1
“Then answered Eliphaz the Temanite,.... Or, who was of Teman, as the Targum, the first of Job's friends and comforters, the oldest of them, who first began the dispute with him; which was carried on by his two other companions, who had spoken in their turns; and now in course it fell to him to answer a second time, as he here does, and said, as follows.”
Job 15:2, 1 voice
Job 15:2
“Should a wise man utter vain knowledge - Or rather, Should a wise man utter the science of wind? A science without solidity or certainty. And fill his belly with the east wind? - בטן beten, which we translate belly, is used to signify any part of the cavity of the body, whether the region of the thorax or abdomen; here it evidently refers to the lungs, and may include the cheeks and fauces.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2. (vv. 4-6)
a.thou castest off fear: 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 15:4, 1 voice
Job 15:4
“THIS is one of the charges brought by Eliphaz the Temanite against Job, "Yes, you cast off fear, and restrain prayer before God." I shall not use this sentence as an accusation against those who never pray, though there may be some in this House of Prayer whose heads are unaccustomed to bow down and whose knees are unaccustomed to kneel before the Lord, their Maker. You have been fed by God's bounty, you owe all the breath in your nostrils to Him, yet you have never done homage to His name!”
Charles Spurgeon· written before 1892· The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 2943: “Restraining Prayer” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)Particular Baptist
Job 15:5, 1 voice
Job 15:5
“Whence it is still further added, For thine iniquity teacheth thy mouth, and thou followest the tongue of the crafty. 'Iniquity teaches the mouth,' when there is conceived by a bad life somewhat to be spoken of a worse kind. Now because blessed Job was free in speech in proportion as he was holy in action, by his friends, who hold the type of heretics, he is found fault with at once on the grounds of a wicked life and of a bold mouth, so that it should be said, Thine iniquity teacheth thy mouth.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIIpatristic
Job 15:6, 1 voice
Job 15:6
“But he should have considered that he and his fellows had provoked him to say that which now they took advantage of; and that was not fair. Those are most effectually condemned that are condemned by themselves, Tit. iii. Many a man needs no more to sink him than for his own tongue to fall upon him.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
3. (vv. 7-9)
a.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 15:7, 1 voice
Job 15:7
“Art thou the first man that was born? - Hast thou lived ever since the creation, and treasured up all the wisdom of past times, that thou dost now speak so arrogantly and confidently? This question was asked, because, in the estimation of Eliphaz and his friends, wisdom was supposed to be connected with long life, and with an opportunity for extended and varied observation; see Job 15:10. Job they regarded as comparatively a young man.”
Job 15:8, 2 voices
Job 15:8
“Hast thou heard the secret of God?.... Or, "in the secret of God" (a), in his cabinet council, what was said and done there? hast thou stood in the council of God? hast thou been one of his privy council, or counsellors, and been let into all the secrets of God, of his purposes and providence, and into the reasons of all his administrations, that thou talkest so freely, and boldly, and confidently as thou dost?”
Job 15:8
“Hast thou heard the secret of God? - “Hast thou hearkened in God’s council?” Wert thou one of the celestial cabinet, when God said, Let Us make man in Our image, and in Our likeness? Dost thou restrain wisdom to thyself? - Dost thou wish us to understand that God’s counsels were revealed to none but thyself? And dost thou desire that we should give implicit credence to whatsoever thou art pleased to speak? These are all strong sarcastic questions, and apparently uttered with great contempt.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
4. (vv. 10-11)
a.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 15:10, 3 voices
Job 15:10
“With us are both the gray-headed - One copy of the Chaldee Targum paraphrases the verse thus: “Truly Eliphaz the hoary-headed, and Bildad the long-lived, are among us; and Zophar, who in age surpasseth thy father.” It is very likely that Eliphaz refers to himself and his friends in this verse, and not either to the old men of their tribes, or to the masters by whom they themselves were instructed. Eliphaz seems to have been the eldest of these sages; and, therefore, he takes the lead in each part of this dramatic poem.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 15:10
“On our side, thinking with us are the aged. Job had admitted that wisdom is with them (Job 12:12). Eliphaz seems to have been himself older than Job; perhaps the other two were also (Job 32:6).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 15:10
“This also serves contenders to make a noise with to very little purpose. If they are older than their adversaries, and can say they knew such a thing before their opponents were born, this will not serve to justify them in being arrogant and overbearing; for the oldest are not always the wisest, ch. xxxii.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 15:11, 2 voices
Job 15:11
“Are the consolations of God small with thee? - The “consolations of God” here refer probably to those considerations which had been suggested by Eliphaz and his friends, and which he takes to be the “consolations” which God had furnished for the afflicted. He asks whether they were regarded by Job as of little value? Whether he was not willing to take such consolations as God had provided, and to allow them to sustain him instead of permitting himself to inveigh against God? The Septuagint renders this, “thou hast been chastised less than thy sins deserve.”
Job 15:11
“THESE are the words of Eliphaz, one of those three friends of Job who blundered dreadfully over his case. Their words are not to be despised. For they were men in the front rank of knowledge and experience. Eliphaz says, "With us are both the gray-headed and very aged men, much elder than your father." Their errors were not the superficial mistakes of fools but the profound reasoning of men of light and leading. Their utterances are, at least, equal to anything our own learned men may have to say on the same problem.”
5. (vv. 12-13)
a.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 15:12, 1 voice
Job 15:12
“Ver. 12. Why does thine heart lift thee up, and hast thou thine eyes astonished as thinking of great things? Often the mind of the righteous is so suspended in contemplating things on high, that outwardly their face seems to have been struck with stupefaction.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIIpatristic
Job 15:13, 1 voice
Job 15:13
“Ver. 13. Why dost thy spirit swell against God, that thou lettest such words go out of thy mouth? Very often when the righteous are afflicted with any woes, they are forced to confess their works, as blessed Job had done, who after just living was pressed down by the strokes of the rod; but when the unrighteous hear their sayings, they think that they are uttered in self-exaltation rather than in truth. For they weigh the words of the righteous by their own feelings, and do not think that good words can be said in a humble spirit.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIIpatristic
6. (vv. 14-16)
a.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 15:14, 3 voices
Job 15:14
“Ver. 14. What is man, that he should be clean? MORAL INTERPRETATION For hereby alone that he is called 'man' he is described as earthly and weak; for man is so named ['homo' from 'humus,' as Hebrew 'Adam'] from the earth. And how is it possible for him to be free from stain, who being made of earth of his own will fell into infirmity? where it is added; And he that is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? For the first piece of unrighteousness the woman proffered to the man in Paradise.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIIpatristic
Job 15:14
“What is man, that he should be clean? - מה אנוש mah enosh; what is weak, sickly, dying, miserable man, that he should be clean? This is the import of the original word enosh. And - born of a woman, that he should be righteous? - It appears, from many passages in the sacred writings, that natural birth was supposed to be a defilement; and that every man born into the world was in a state of moral pollution. Perhaps the word יצדק yitsdak should be translated, that he should justify himself, and not that he should be righteous.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 15:14
“What is he that is born of a woman, a sinful woman, that he should be righteous? Righteousness is cleanness; it makes us acceptable to God and easy to ourselves, Ps. xviii. Man, in his fallen state, cannot pretend to be clean and righteous before God, either to acquit himself to God's justice or recommend himself to his favour.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 15:15, 2 voices
Job 15:15
“Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints - In Job 4:18, it is, “in his servants,” but no doubt the same thing is intended. The reference is to the angels, called there servants, and here saints קדשׁים qôdeshı̂ym, holy ones; see the notes at Job 4:18. Yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight - In Job 4:18, “and his angels he charged with folly.” The general idea is the same. God is so holy that all things else seem to be impure. The very heavens seem to be unclean when compared with him.”
Job 15:15
“God places no confidence in saints and angels; he employs both, but trusts neither with his service, without giving them fresh supplies of strength and wisdom for it, as knowing they are not sufficient of themselves, neither more nor better than his grace makes them.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 15:16, 1 voice
Job 15:16
“How much more abominable and filthy is man - As in the preceding verse it is said, he putteth no trust in his saints, it has appeared both to translators and commentators that the original words, אף כי aph ki, should be rendered how much Less, not how much More: How much less would he put confidence in man, who is filthy and abominable in his natures and profligate in his practice, as he drinks down iniquity like water?”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
B. Eliphaz: The Wicked Travaileth With Pain All His Days
1. (vv. 17-19)
a.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 15:17, 2 voices
Job 15:17
“I will show thee ... - The remainder of this chapter is a violent declamation, designed to overwhelm Job with the proofs of personal guilt. Eliphaz professes to urge nothing which had not been handed down from his ancestors, and was the result of careful observation. What he says is made up of apothegms and maxims that were regarded as containing the results of ancient wisdom, all meaning that God would punish the wicked, or that the wicked would be treated according to their deserts.”
Job 15:17
“In direct contradiction of Job's position (Job 12:6, &c.), that the lot of the wicked was the most prosperous here, Eliphaz appeals (1) to his own experience, (2) to the wisdom of the ancients.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 15:18, 1 voice
Job 15:18
“Which wise men have told from their fathers - Which they have received from their ancestors and communicated to others. Knowledge among the ancients was communicated chiefly by tradition from father to son. They had few or no written records, and hence, they embodied the results of their observation in brief, sententious maxims, and transmitted them from one generation to another. And have not hid it - They have freely communicated the result of their observations to others.”
Job 15:19, 2 voices
Job 15:19
“To whom - By the gracious gift of God: this he alleges to make their testimony more considerable, because these were no obscure men, but the most worthy and famous men in their ages; and to confute what Job had said, chap. ix, 24, that the earth was given into the hand of the wicked. By the earth he means the dominion and possession of it.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Job 15:19
“On this head he enlarges, showing that even those who impiously dare God's judgments yet cannot but dread them and will feel them at last. He speaks in the singular number-- the wicked man, meaning (as some think) Nimrod; or perhaps Chedorlaomer, or some such mighty hunter before the Lord.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2. (vv. 20-24)
a.The wicked man travaileth with pain: 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 15:20, 2 voices
Job 15:20
“The wicked man travaileth with pain - This is a most forcible truth: a life of sin is a life of misery; and he that Will sin Must suffer. One of the Targums gives it a strange turn: - “All the days of the ungodly Esau, he was expected to repent, but he did not repent; and the number of years was hidden from the sturdy Ishmael.” The sense of the original, מתחולל mithcholel, is he torments himself: he is a true heautontimoreumenos, or self-tormentor; and he alone is author of his own sufferings, and of his own ruin.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 15:20
“Oppressor - To the wicked man: he names this one sort of them, because he supposed Job to be guilty of this sin, in opposition of what Job had affirmed of the safety of such persons, chap. xii, 6, and because such are apt to promise themselves a longer and happier life than other men.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Job 15:21, 2 voices
Job 15:21
“Ver. 21. A dreadful sound is alway in his ears, and when there is peace, he suspecteth plots. But there is nothing more happy than simplicity of heart, in that in proportion as it shews forth innocency towards others, there is nothing it dreads to meet with from others. For it has its simplicity as a kind of citadel of strength, nor is it suspicious of undergoing what it has no remembrance of having itself done. Whence it is well said by Solomon, In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIIpatristic
Job 15:21
“A dreadful sound is in his ears - Margin, “A sound of fears.” He hears sudden, frightful sounds, and is alarmed. Or when he thinks himself safe, he is suddenly surprised. The enemy steals upon him, and in his fancied security he dies. This sentiment might be illustrated at almost any length by the mode of savage warfare in America, and by the sudden attacks which the American savage makes, in the silence of the night, on his unsuspecting foes.”
Job 15:22, 2 voices
Job 15:22
“That he shall return out of darkness - If he take but a few steps in the dark, he expects the dagger of the assassin. This appears to be the only meaning of the place. Some think the passage should be understood to signify that he has no hope of a resurrection; he can never escape from the tomb. This I doubt: in the days of the writer of this book, the doctrine of a future judgment was understood in every part of the East where the knowledge of the true God was diffused.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 15:22
“Good men expect light at evening time, light out of darkness; but what reason have those to expect that they shall return out of the darkness of trouble who would not return from the darkness of sin, but went on in it? It is the misery of damned sinners that they know they shall never return out of that utter darkness, nor pass the gulf there fixed.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 15:23, 1 voice
Job 15:23
“He wandereth abroad for bread - The Septuagint renders this, “he is destined to be food for vultures” - κατατέτακται δὲ εἰς σῖτα γυψίν katatetaktai de eis sitos gupsin. The meaning of the Hebrew is, simply, that he will be reduced to poverty, and will not know where to obtain a supply for his returning needs. He knoweth that the day of darkness is ready at his hand - He is assured that the period of calamity is not far remote. It must come. He has no security that it will not come immediately.”
Job 15:24, 1 voice
Job 15:24
“Trouble and anguish shall make him afraid - He shall be in continual fear of death; being now brought down by adversity, and stripped of all the goods which he had got by oppression, his life is a mark for the meanest assassin. As a king ready to the battle - The acts of his wickedness and oppression are as numerous as the troops he commands; and when he comes to meet his enemy in the field, he is not only deserted but slain by his troops.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
3. (vv. 25-28)
a.he stretcheth out his hand against God: 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 15:25, 2 voices
Job 15:25
“For he stretcheth out his hand against God - The hand is stretched out for battle. It wields the spear or the sword against an enemy. The idea here is, that the wicked man makes God an adversary. He does not contend with his fellow-man, with fate, with the elements, with evil angels, but with God. His opponent is an Almighty Being, and he cannot prevail against him; compare the notes at Isa 27:4. And strengtheneth himself - As an army does that throws up a rampart, or constructs a fortification.”
Job 15:25
“This applies to the audacious impiety of some sinners who are really haters of God ( Rom. i. 30 ), and whose carnal mind is not only an enemy to him, but enmity itself, Rom. viii. But, alas! the sinner's malice is as impotent as it is impudent; what can he do?”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 15:26, 1 voice
Job 15:26
“He runneth upon him - Calmet has properly observed that this refers to God, who, like a mighty conquering hero, marches against the ungodly, rushes upon him, seizes him by the throat, which the mail by which it is encompassed cannot protect; neither his shield nor spear can save him when the Lord of hosts comes against him.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 15:27, 2 voices
Job 15:27
“Because - This is mentioned as the reason of his insolent carriage towards God, because he was fat, rich, potent, and successful, as that expression signifies, Deut. xxxii, 15 Psalm lxxviii, 31 Jer. xlvi, 21.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Job 15:27
“Why is God forgotten and slighted, but because the belly is made a god of and happiness placed in the delights of sense? Those that fill themselves with wine and strong drink abandon all that is serious and flatter themselves with hopes that tomorrow shall be as this day, Isa. lvi.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 15:28, 2 voices
Job 15:28
“The class of wicked here described is that of robbers who plunder "cities," and seize on the houses of the banished citizens (Isa 13:20). Eliphaz chooses this class because Job had chosen the same (Job 12:6). heaps--of ruins.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 15:28
“Proud and cruel men take a strange pleasure in ruins, when they are of their own making, in destroying cities ( Ps. ix. 6 ) and triumphing in the destruction, since they cannot make them their own but by making them ready to become heaps, and frightening the inhabitants out of them.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
4. (vv. 29-35)
a.He shall not be rich: 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.
Job 15:29, 2 voices
Job 15:29
“Ver. 29. He shall not be inhabited, neither shall his substance continue, neither shall he send forth his root into the earth. That which is here expressed, He shall not be inhabited, I have found in some copies, He shall not be enriched; but the sense is not at variance, though the phraseology is at variance. For he is 'enriched' with virtuous attainments whose mind is 'inhabited' by Almighty God. But because the thought of the proud man is not 'inhabited' by the grace of his Maker, hereby surely he is not 'enriched' with virtues.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIIpatristic
Job 15:29
“It is contentment only that is great gain. Providence remarkably keeps some from being rich, defeating their enterprises, breaking their measures, and keeping them always behind-hand. Many that get much by fraud and injustice, yet do not grow rich: it goes as it comes; it is got by one sin and spent upon another.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 15:30, 1 voice
Job 15:30
“He shall not depart out of darkness - 4. He shall be in continual afflictions and distress. 5. The flame shall dry up his branches - his children shall be cut off by sudden judgments. 6. He shall pass away by the breath of his mouth; for by the breath of his mouth doth God slay the wicked.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 15:31, 2 voices
Job 15:31
“Ver. 31. Let him not believe, being vainly deceived, that he is to be redeemed with any price. As often as we do alms after sin, we as it were pay a price for bad actions. Whence too it is said by the Prophet concerning him who doeth these things not, He will not give God his propitiation, nor the price of the redemption of the soul.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIIpatristic
Job 15:31
“Vanity - In the vain and deceitful things of this world, he subjoins a general caution to all men to take heed of running into the same error and mischief. Vanity - Disappointment and dissatisfaction, and the loss of all his imaginary felicity. Recompence - Hebrew. his exchange; he shall exchange one vanity for another, a pleasing vanity for a vexatious vanity.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Job 15:32, 3 voices
Job 15:32
“Ver. 32. Before his days are fulfilled he shall perish, and his hands shall wither. The days foreordained to each individual by the Divine Prescience can neither be increased nor lessened, except it happen that they be so foreknown as either to be longer if they be accompanied with the most perfect works, or shorter with the most wicked, just as Hezekiah obtained increase of days by the bestowing of tears, and as it is written concerning the wicked, Death meets the undisciplined.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIIpatristic
Job 15:32
“It shall be accomplished before his time - I believe the Vulgate gives the true sense: Antequam dies ejus impleantur, peribit; “He shall perish before his time; before his days are completed.” 8. He shall be removed by a violent death, and not live out half his days. 9. And his branch shall not be green - there shall be no scion from his roots; all his posterity shall fail.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 15:32
“Literally, "it (the tree to which he is compared, Job 15:30, or else his life) shall not be filled up in its time"; that is, "he shall be ended before his time." shall not be green--image from a withered tree; the childless extinction of the wicked.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 15:33, 1 voice
Job 15:33
“He shall shake off his unripe grape as the vine - The idea here is, that the wicked man shall be like a vine that casts off its grapes while they are yet sour and green, and brings none to perfection; compare the notes at Isa 18:5. Scott renders this, “As when the vine her half-grown berries showers, Or poisoned olive her unfolding flowers.” It would seem from this passage that the vine might be so blasted by a hot wind or other cause, as to cast its unripe grapes to the earth.”
Job 15:34, 2 voices
Job 15:34
“The congregation of hypocrites - 11. Job is here classed with hypocrites, or rather the impious of all kinds. The congregation, or עדת adath, society, of such, shall be desolate, or a barren rock, גלמוד galmud. See this Arabic word explained in the note on Job 3:7 (note). Fire shall consume the tabernacles of bribery - 12. Another insinuation against Job, that he had perverted justice and judgment, and had taken bribes.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 15:34
“Rather, The binding together of the hypocrites (wicked) shall be fruitless [UMBREIT]. tabernacles of bribery--namely, dwellings of unjust judges, often reprobated in the Old Testament (Isa 1:23). The "fire of God" that consumed Job's possessions (Job 1:16) Eliphaz insinuates may have been on account of Job's bribery as an Arab sheik or emir.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 15:35, 2 voices
Job 15:35
“Ver. 35. They conceive woe, and bring forth iniquity, and their womb prepareth deceit. For he conceives 'woe,' when he devises wicked things; he 'brings forth iniquity,' when he has begun to fulfil what he has devised; by entertaining envy, he 'conceives woe;' by uttering slanders, he 'brings forth iniquity.' For it is grievous wickedness when he who is wicked strives to make others appear wicked, that he may himself thereby appear as holy, because he has shewn that others are not holy.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XIIpatristic
Job 15:35
“They conceive mischief - The meaning of this verse is, that they form and execute plans of evil. It is the characteristic of such men that they form such plans and live to execute them, and they must abide the consequences. All this was evidently meant for Job; and few things could be more trying to a man’s patience than to sit and hear those ancient apothegms, designed to describe the wicked, applied so unfeelingly to himself.”
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Job 15. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on 9 works. Open for the list.
This page draws on Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes; Charles Spurgeon; Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Book of Job; Gregory the Dialogist, Morals on the Book of Job, Book XII; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871); John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765) and Matthew Henry.
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