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The Book of Job

Chapter Fifteen: Eliphaz Speaks Again

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The Tongue of the Crafty

Job: chapter 15
1 Then answered Eliphaz the Temanite, and said,

2 Should a wise man utter vain 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 uttereth 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 dreadful 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 recompense.
32 It shall be accomplished 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, and their belly prepareth deceit.

Eliphaz disregards everything that Job has to say. He lunges at Job without any niceties this time. ‘You're a wise man, how can you speak from vanity?’ ‘You suck up the east wind’ (15:2). The east winds are destructive winds from out of the desert (Ps. 48:7). These are the winds that bring the plague of locusts to Egypt (Exod. 10:13), and push back the Red Sea (Exod. 14:21). “The east wind was not only tempestuous and vehement, but sultry, and destructive to vegetation. It passed over vast deserts, and was characterized by great dryness and heat” (Barnes, note to 15:2). Eliphaz is accusing Job of hot air and more. He accuses Job of creating useless arguments (15:3) when he should be begging forgiveness of God (15:4). He then goes on to accuse Job of speaking evil through crafty arguments (15:5-6), without enumerating instances.

Job and his friends return to the same arguments time and again, but discount or ignore each other. While Job says that wisdom is to be had from God who was there before time, Eliphaz accuses Job of disregarding the wisdom of older men (15:9-10), and twice asks him if he has any secret wisdom from God (15:8,11). Job is arguing that his friends need to be quiet while he seeks the council of God (13:13). The friends are arguing that Job needs to be quiet while they tell him what God says (15:3).

Are You the First Man?

Eliphaz begins to pepper Job with questions. The delivery here is reminiscent of a courtroom drama where the flood of questions is not meant to illicit any particular answer, but to dislodge the defenses of the defendant. Job is accused of crafty speech, but here he appears to be on trial. His friend has become his prosecutor. Among his friends there is no defender. They have all joined forces with Satan to bring Job down.

The tongue of the crafty (15:5) accuses Job through a torrent of sarcastic questions, which produce oblique suggestions. Eliphaz asks, “Art thou the first man that was born?” (15:7), (your wisdom is deficient); “Hast thou heard the secret of God?” (15:8), (God is not talking to you); “What knowest thou, that we know not?” (15:9) and “With us are... very aged men” (15:10), (we know more than you); “Are the consolations of God small with thee?” (15:11), (you are ungrateful); “What do thy eyes wink at” (15:12), (you are hiding sin). You “turn your spirit against God” (15:13).

In all these things are seeming bits of wisdom, but the clear purpose here is to crush Job, so that there is no question left that he is despised by God. Eliphaz presents himself as confident and clear-headed, but as Chambers notes, his weakness is being exposed: “A temporizing mind is one that takes a position from immediate circumstances and never alters that position...The weapon of a temporizing mind is sarcasm. There is a difference between sarcasm and irony. Sarcasm is the weapon of a weak man; the word literally means to tear the flesh from the bone. Both Isaiah and the apostle Paul make free use of irony, but they never use sarcasm. If a weak man is presented with facts he cannot understand, he invariably turns to sarcasm” (Chambers 1990, 73).

If Job were to believe in his heart, as his mind is already telling him, that he is thrust out by God, permanently, Satan's victory will be complete. Job would curse God and die.

If God Trusts Not His Saints

“God places no trust in His holy ones” (15:15, NIV). The ‘wisdom’ of the night vision has returned. Surely the ‘holy ones’ who are not trusted are the angels who are cast down. Chambers further suggests that Eliphaz “tries to wear down Job's opposition by sheer ponderosity...like a theological buzzard, he sits on the perch of massive tradition and preens his ruffled feathers and croaks his eloquent platitudes. There is no trace for the fraud of Eliphaz; he vigorously believes his beliefs, but he is at a total loss to know God” (Chambers 1990, 72).

Eliphaz turns Job's statement, that all men are rotten to the core (13:28), into an argument against him. All men are evil, he says, therefore (because you are evil) you refuse to listen to the saints and you drink up iniquity (15:14-16). Listen, Eliphaz declares (15:17), to the wisdom from many generations (15:18): “the wicked man travaileth with pain all his days” (15:20). Eliphaz is attacking haphazardly without thinking it through: ‘God doesn't trust the saints so you should listen to their wisdom.’

The rest of the chapter is filled with the enumeration of the travails of the wicked. Laced into this dialogue are insinuated sins: “he stretcheth out his hand against God” (15:25); “he covereth his face with his fatness” (15:27); “him that is deceived trust in vanity” (15:31); “the congregation of hypocrites” (15:34); and “the tabernacles of bribery” (15:34); “their belly prepareth deceit” (15:35). The picture is of a malevolent person filled with corruption and looking for the next opportunity to give birth to evil. Although Eliphaz's attack is oblique, against “the wicked”, this is a formal courtesy. There is no question that his attack is aimed at Job. This is inappropriate condemnation. The worst that can be said of Job is that he questions God.

The shot gun blast of questions does not cause Job to cave in, and these condemnations, rather than helping, are bricking up the dialogue between the three friends and Job.


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*All Bible quotes are from the King James Version unless otherwise indicated.



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