Job 15
Job 15 opens the second cycle of the great dialogue between Job and his friends. Eliphaz spoke first in chapters 4-5, and his tone then was grandfatherly - concerned, paternal, urging Job to accept the chastening of God. Across chapters 6-14, Job has heard all three friends complete their opening speeches and has answered each in turn. The conversation has not gone the way the friends expected. Job has rejected their counsel, called them physicians of no value (13:4), and demanded a hearing in God's court. Now Eliphaz speaks again, and the grandfather is gone. What remains is the theologian for whom Job's refusal to confess is itself the proof of guilt.
The chapter divides into two halves. The first (vv. 1-16) is direct attack. Thou castest off fear, and restrainest prayer before God (v. 4) - i.e., Job's honest lament is itself impiety. Art thou the first man that was born? or wast thou made before the hills? (v. 7) - biting sarcasm meant to mock Job's presumption. With us are both the grayheaded and very aged men, much elder than thy father (v. 10) - appeal to age and tradition as the trump card against Job's lonely claim of innocence. And then the theological coup in vv. 14-16: what is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?… how much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water? Eliphaz has moved from defending God to slandering humanity in general - and Job in particular - as a way of dismissing Job's claim.
The second half (vv. 17-35) is a long set-piece portrait of “the wicked man” - and Eliphaz means it as a mirror Job is supposed to recognize himself in. The portrait is striking precisely because it does match Job's outward experience: anguish in the ears, prosperity overturned, isolation in desolate cities, fire consuming the branches. The chapter's deepest irony is that the same outward features can belong to two completely different inner realities - and Eliphaz cannot tell the difference. The wicked man he describes is suffering for his wickedness. Job is suffering as the righteous. The same kind of mistaken identification will eventually nail the only truly Righteous Man to a Roman cross - “he was numbered with the transgressors” (Isa. 53:12) - so that the actually-wicked could go free.
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Job 15:1-6Thou Castest Off Fear
1Then answered Eliphaz the Temanite, and said, 2Should a wise man utter vain knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind? 3Should he reason with unprofitable talk? or with speeches wherewith he can do no good? 4Yea, thou castest off fear, and restrainest prayer before God. 5For thy mouth uttereth thine iniquity, and thou choosest the tongue of the crafty. 6Thine own mouth condemneth thee, and not I: yea, thine own lips testify against thee.
Notice what has happened to Eliphaz between chapters 4 and 15. In chapter 4 he opened with if we assay to commune with thee, wilt thou be grieved? - almost apologetic. By chapter 15 he is opening with should a wise man utter vain knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind?1 The vocabulary has hardened from concerned to contemptuous. The chapter is documenting something pastorally important: the friend who set out to help a sufferer can, in only a few rounds of being refused, harden into the friend who accuses the sufferer of impiety. The progression is not unique to Job's friends. It is a recognizable shape every Christian who has been on either side of a long crisis has seen.
Verse 4 is Eliphaz's sharpest accusation. Thou castest off fear, and restrainest prayer before God. What he means is that Job's honest lament - his demand for a hearing, his refusal to confess a sin he did not commit, his willingness to argue with God - looks to Eliphaz like irreverence. The chapter is teaching that there is a kind of religiosity for which honest grief itself is a sign of impiety. The Bible elsewhere repeatedly endorses the kind of honest prayer Eliphaz is calling impiety: the laments of David (Pss. 22, 42, 88), the complaints of Jeremiah (Jer. 20:7-18), the prayer of Habakkuk (Hab. 1:2-4). Eliphaz's theology has no category for it. His category for it is “casting off fear.” The book of Job is the canon's warning against having that as your only category.
Job 15:7-16Art Thou the First Man That Was Born?
7Art thou the first man that was born? or wast thou made before the hills? 8Hast thou heard the secret of God? and dost thou restrain wisdom to thyself? 9What knowest thou, that we know not? what understandest thou, which is not in us? 10With us are both the grayheaded and very aged men, much elder than thy father. 11Are the consolations of God small with thee? is there any secret thing with thee? 13That thou turnest thy spirit against God, and lettest such words go out of thy mouth? 14What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? 15Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight. 16How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?
Verse 7 is the chapter's most savage sarcasm. Art thou the first man that was born? or wast thou made before the hills? Eliphaz means it as a put-down - “you are not an authority on the secret counsels of God.” But the vocabulary he reaches for is the exact vocabulary of Proverbs 8:25, where Wisdom personified declares: before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth3. The chapter is doing something the friends do not know they are doing. They are sarcastically asking a question - were you made before the hills? - to which the deepest answer is: there is One who actually was, and He will eventually become flesh and dwell among the readers of this book. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God (John 1:1-2). The sarcasm of Eliphaz reaches past Job to the only One it could ever truly land on, and lands as worship instead of insult.
Eliphaz's appeal in v. 10 - with us are both the grayheaded and very aged men, much elder than thy father - is the classic move of tradition-as-trump-card. He is not arguing the position; he is asserting that age and consensus settle the question. Tradition is a real and good thing in the Bible (cf. Prov. 22:28; 2 Thess. 2:15). It is also not, by itself, a sufficient warrant. Jesus will eventually face down a much more sophisticated version of Eliphaz's move in His own conflict with the Pharisees, who appealed to “the tradition of the elders” against Him (Mark 7:5-13). The book of Job is on Jesus' side here, not Eliphaz's. There are seasons in which an inherited consensus is right; there are seasons in which the lone sufferer on the ash heap is seeing more clearly than the long line of grayheaded counselors.
Job 15:17-35The Portrait of the Wicked, as a Mirror
17I will shew thee, hear me; and that which I have seen I will declare; 18Which wise men have told from their fathers, and have not hid it: 20The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days, and the number of years is hidden to the oppressor. 21A dreadful sound is in his ears: in prosperity the destroyer shall come upon him. 22He believeth not that he shall return out of darkness, and he is waited for of the sword. 24Trouble and anguish shall make him afraid; they shall prevail against him, as a king ready to the battle. 25For he stretcheth out his hand against God, and strengtheneth himself against the Almighty. 30He shall not depart out of darkness; the flame shall dry up his branches, and by the breath of his mouth shall he go away. 34For the congregation of hypocrites shall be desolate, and fire shall consume the tabernacles of bribery.
Notice how cunningly the portrait is constructed2. Travaileth with pain all his days. Job is currently in pain all his days. A dreadful sound is in his ears. Job is hearing the death of his children echoing through every quiet moment. In prosperity the destroyer shall come upon him. The destroyer came in chapter 1 at the height of Job's prosperity. Trouble and anguish shall make him afraid. Trouble and anguish are the air Job is breathing. Eliphaz is not making things up. He is describing Job's external life with documentary precision - and then sliding into it the unspoken claim that the description proves the diagnosis. Wicked people suffer. You are suffering. Therefore you are wicked. The chapter is teaching, by displaying it, the deepest logical fallacy of bad counsel. The same external suffering can belong to two completely different inner realities.
Verse 25 contains the chapter's most theologically loaded misreading. He stretcheth out his hand against God, and strengtheneth himself against the Almighty. Eliphaz is describing the wicked man as actively defiant against God - fist clenched, weapon raised, charging the divine throne. And he is meaning this to describe Job's honest lament and demand for a hearing. The chapter is reading Job's wrestling with God as if it were the rebellion of an enemy. The Bible itself reads it the opposite way. God's closing verdict in Job 42:7 is that Job has spoken of God the thing that is right, while the friends have not. Job's wrestling is not enmity. It is the faithfulness of a man who refuses to fake an answer he does not yet have, in the presence of a God who would rather be wrestled with than lied to. The chapter is asking the reader to be careful with the difference.
Further study
- Hebrew text with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Ramban on Eliphaz's second speech and the rabbinic tradition of reading the “wicked man” portrait of vv. 20-35 as a description Eliphaz is wrongly applying to a righteous sufferer.
- The Friends' Speeches in JobBible Odyssey (SBL)SBL overview of the three-cycle structure of the dialogue. The second cycle (chs. 15-21) shows the friends' speeches hardening; the chapter you are reading is the first speech of that hardening.
- Job 15:7 ↔ Proverbs 8:25Intertextual BibleEliphaz's sarcastic question in v. 7 - wast thou made before the hills? - borrows the exact vocabulary of Proverbs 8:25 where Wisdom personified declares before the hills was I brought forth. The vocabulary the New Testament will identify with the pre-existent Christ (John 1:1; Col. 1:15-17).
Where this echoes in Scripture
Thou Castest Off Fear
- Romans 8:33-34Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died.The gospel’s direct answer to the Eliphaz voice.
- Habakkuk 1:2-4O LORD, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear!… For the wicked doth compass about the righteous.A prophet praying exactly the kind of prayer Eliphaz calls “casting off fear.”
- Hebrews 4:16Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy.The opposite instinct from Eliphaz - and the apostolic one.
Art Thou the First Man That Was Born?
- Proverbs 8:24-25When there were no depths, I was brought forth… before the hills was I brought forth.The exact vocabulary Eliphaz reaches for in sarcasm; Wisdom personified gives it as joyful self-witness.
- Colossians 1:15-17He is before all things, and by him all things consist.Paul on the One who actually was “made before the hills.”
- Mark 7:5-13Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders?Christ’s answer to a more sophisticated version of Eliphaz’s v. 10 appeal to age.
The Portrait of the Wicked, as a Mirror
- Isaiah 53:3, 12He was despised and rejected of men… and he was numbered with the transgressors.The only person who could ever truly fit Eliphaz’s portrait while being personally innocent - the Servant of Isaiah 53.
- 2 Corinthians 5:21He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.The exchange the cross performs - and the answer to the kind of bad logic Eliphaz uses.
- Job 42:7Ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.God’s closing verdict on Eliphaz’s entire speech.