Eliphaz’s second speech
15
📚Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said:15:1 The first round of speeches has ended. The three friends have set forth their doctrine that disasters and sufferings come from God because of sin. They have called Job to repentance. But Job has maintained his innocence and insisted he has nothing of which to repent. He has accused his friends of a lack of wisdom and compassion. In his second speech Eliphaz’s language is much harsher than in his first. His accusations are much more open and bold, and there is no exhortation to repentance at the end.⚜
2 📚“Should a wise man answer with empty knowledge, filling his belly with the east wind?
15:2-3 He has abandoned the polite manner he used in his first speech (Job 4:2-6). He now says plainly that Job’s words are nothing but hot air.⚜
3 📚Should he reason with unprofitable talk? Or with speeches which have no value? 4 📚Yes, you are rejecting the fear of God, and are restraining prayer before God.
15:4 He thought Job’s questioning the goodness and justice of God had this result.⚜
5 📚For your iniquity teaches your mouth, and you choose the tongue of the crafty. 6 📚Your own mouth condemns you and not I. Yes, your own lips testify against you.
15:5-6 He believed Job was trying to cover up his sins by insincerely insisting on his innocence, and that it was obvious from his defiant words against God that he was a great sinner.⚜
7 📚“Are you the first man ever born? Or were you made before the hills? 8 📚Have you heard the secret counsel of God? And do you limit wisdom to yourself? 9 📚What do you know that we do not know? What understanding do you have that is not in us?
10 📚Both the gray-haired and aged are with us, even older than your father.
15:7-10 He accuses Job of being proud of his wisdom and unwilling to humbly listen to others. He tries to bring against him the authority of men much older than he.⚜
11 📚Are the consolations of God too small for you, words spoken gently to you?
15:11 He calls his and his friends’ words to Job about repentance and restoration “God’s consolations” (Job 5:8-27; 8:5-7; 11:13-19). No doubt those words were beautiful and would be full of good exhortation and comfort to a man who needed to repent of his sins and turn to God. But Job did not need to do that (he had already done so – long before this), so those words were not God’s consolations to him.⚜
12 📚Why does your heart carry you away? And why do your eyes flash,
13 📚that you should turn your spirit against God, and let such words go out of your mouth?
15:12-13 Certainly Job’s friends were shocked at some of the things he dared to say to God.⚜
14 📚“What is man, that he can be clean? And he who is born of woman that he can be righteous?
15 📚Look, he puts no trust in his holy ones; indeed, the heavens are not pure in his sight.
16 📚How much more abominable and filthy is man, who drinks up iniquity like water!
15:14-16 Similar to language Eliphaz had used in his first speech (Job 4:17-19) but stronger. These words reveal how disturbed he was by Job’s claims of innocence. The last part of v 16 in Hebrew is literally “drinks up wrong”.⚜
17 📚“I will tell you something. Listen to me, and I will declare to you what I have seen,
18 📚what wise men have told and not concealed from their fathers,
19 📚to whom alone the land was given, when no foreigner passed among them:
15:17-19 He thinks he has a message for Job and begins with a solemn introduction.⚜
20 📚The wicked man writhes in pain all his days; the number of his years is hidden from the oppressor.
21 📚Terrifying sounds ring in his ears. In prosperity the destroyer comes on him.
22 📚He does not believe that he will return from darkness, as the sword waits for him.
23 📚He wanders around for food, saying ‘Where is it?’ He knows that his day of darkness is already at hand.
24 📚Trouble and anguish make him afraid. They overwhelm him like a king ready for battle.
25 📚For he stretches out his hand against God and strengthens himself against the Almighty,
26 📚running at him headlong with his thick embossed shield.
27 📚“Though his fat covers his face, and his waist bulges with fat,
28 📚he will live in desolate cities, in houses where no man lives, which are about to become heaps of rubble.
29 📚He will not become rich; nor will his wealth continue; nor will his possessions spread in the land.
30 📚He will not depart from darkness. The flame will dry up his branches; and by the breath of God’s mouth he will pass away.
31 📚Let him not deceive himself, trusting in emptiness. For emptiness will be his reward.
32 📚This will be fulfilled before his time, and his branch will not become green.
33 📚Like a vine he will shake off his unripe grape, and like an olive tree will shed his blossom.
34 📚For the company of hypocrites 📖 will be barren, and fire will consume the tents enriched by bribery.
35 📚They conceive trouble and give birth to evil, and their inner man prepares deceit”.
15:20-35 There is nothing new in his message, no advance to higher ground in his argument. He describes very vividly the punishment that comes to a wicked man. He obviously wants Job to apply the lesson to himself. He mentions things that actually happened to Job or that Job revealed about himself. Compare v 20 with Job 2:13; v 21 with Job 1:14, 17; v 22 with Job 10:20-22; v 24 with Job 7:13-15. Eliphaz believes Job is behaving as the man described in v 25. He is sure that Job is trusting in something altogether false – his supposed innocence. So he puts in the warning of v 31.⚜