Job 15: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Eliphaz the Temanite answers Job a second time. He charges that Job's words are empty wind, that they undermine the fear of God, and that Job's own mouth convicts him; he asks whether Job is older or wiser than everyone else, and repeats that no human being is pure before God. He then recites teaching handed down from earlier wise men: a long description of the wicked man, who lives in terror, loses his wealth, and ends in darkness.

Claim by Claim

1. 15:1
   • Eliphaz the Temanite answered.
   • Eliphaz spoke.
2. 15:2
   • Eliphaz asks whether a wise man should answer with knowledge that is mere wind.
   • Eliphaz asks whether a wise man should fill his belly with the east wind.
3. 15:3
   • Eliphaz asks whether a wise man should argue with talk that brings no profit.
   • Eliphaz asks whether a wise man should use speeches that accomplish no good.
4. 15:4
   • Eliphaz says Job is doing away with the fear of God.
   • Eliphaz says Job is diminishing devout speech before God.
5. 15:5
   • Eliphaz says Job's iniquity instructs his mouth.
   • Eliphaz says Job chooses the tongue of the crafty.
6. 15:6
   • Eliphaz says Job's own mouth condemns him.
   • Eliphaz says it is not he who condemns Job.
   • Eliphaz says Job's own lips testify against him.
7. 15:7
   • Eliphaz asks whether Job was the first man born.
   • Eliphaz asks whether Job was brought forth before the hills.
8. 15:8
   • Eliphaz asks whether Job has listened in on the council of God.
   • Eliphaz asks whether Job keeps wisdom limited to himself.
9. 15:9
   • Eliphaz asks what Job knows that they do not know.
   • Eliphaz asks what Job understands that is not with them.
10. 15:10
    • Eliphaz says the gray-haired and the aged are among them.
    • Eliphaz says those men are much older in days than Job's father.
11. 15:11
    • Eliphaz asks whether the consolations of God are too small for Job.
    • Eliphaz asks whether a word spoken gently to Job is too small for him.
    • The word describing the speech to Job is ambiguous between gentleness and secrecy.
12. 15:12
    • Eliphaz asks why Job's heart carries him away.
    • Eliphaz asks what Job's eyes flash at.
13. 15:13
    • Eliphaz says Job turns his spirit against God.
    • Eliphaz says Job lets such words go out of his mouth.
14. 15:14
    • Eliphaz asks what man is, that he should be clean.
    • Eliphaz asks how one born of a woman could be righteous.
15. 15:15
    • Eliphaz says God puts no trust in his holy ones.
    • Eliphaz says the heavens are not clean in God's sight.
16. 15:16
    • Eliphaz says man is much more abominable and corrupt than the heavens.
    • Eliphaz says man drinks iniquity like water.
17. 15:17
    • Eliphaz says he will show Job something.
    • Eliphaz tells Job to listen to him.
    • Eliphaz says he will declare what he has seen.
18. 15:18
    • Eliphaz says wise men have told this.
    • Eliphaz says the wise men received it from their fathers.
    • Eliphaz says the wise men did not hide it.
19. 15:19
    • Eliphaz says the land was given to those fathers alone.
    • Eliphaz says no stranger passed among them.
20. 15:20
    • Eliphaz says the wicked man writhes in pain all his days.
    • Eliphaz says the number of years is stored up for the ruthless man.
    • Whether the stored years mean a hidden number or only a few is ambiguous.
21. 15:21
    • Eliphaz says a sound of terrors is in the wicked man's ears.
    • Eliphaz says the destroyer comes upon him while he is at peace.
22. 15:22
    • Eliphaz says the wicked man does not believe he will return out of darkness.
    • Eliphaz says he is marked out for the sword.
23. 15:23
    • Eliphaz says the wicked man wanders about for bread, asking where it is.
    • Eliphaz says he knows a day of darkness is ready at his hand.
24. 15:24
    • Eliphaz says trouble and anguish terrify the wicked man.
    • Eliphaz says they overpower him like a king ready for the attack.
25. 15:25
    • Eliphaz says the wicked man stretched out his hand against God.
    • Eliphaz says he acted arrogantly against the Almighty.
26. 15:26
    • Eliphaz says the wicked man runs at God with a stiff neck.
    • Eliphaz says he runs at God with the thick bosses of his shields.
27. 15:27
    • Eliphaz says the wicked man covered his face with his fat.
    • Eliphaz says he made rolls of fat on his loins.
28. 15:28
    • Eliphaz says the wicked man dwells in destroyed cities.
    • Eliphaz says he dwells in houses no one inhabits.
    • Eliphaz says those houses are destined to become heaps of rubble.
29. 15:29
    • Eliphaz says the wicked man will not be rich.
    • Eliphaz says his wealth will not endure.
    • Eliphaz says his possessions will not spread out over the land.
30. 15:30
    • Eliphaz says the wicked man will not depart out of darkness.
    • Eliphaz says a flame will dry up his shoots.
    • Eliphaz says he will be carried away by the breath of a mouth.
    • Whose mouth the breath belongs to is not specified.
31. 15:31
    • Eliphaz says the deceived man should not trust in emptiness.
    • Eliphaz says emptiness will be his recompense.
32. 15:32
    • Eliphaz says it will be paid in full before his time.
    • Eliphaz says his branch will not be green.
33. 15:33
    • Eliphaz says he will shake off his unripe grape like a vine.
    • Eliphaz says he will cast off his blossom like an olive tree.
34. 15:34
    • Eliphaz says the company of the godless will be barren.
    • Eliphaz says fire will consume the tents of bribery.
35. 15:35
    • Eliphaz says they conceive mischief.
    • Eliphaz says they bring forth iniquity.
    • Eliphaz says their belly prepares deceit.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

15:1

Teman was a district of Edom, southeast of Israel, with a reputation in the ancient world for wise men. Eliphaz is the oldest of Job's three friends, and this is his second of three speeches.

15:2

The east wind in this region blew off the desert: scorching, dry and destructive. To be 'full of wind' was a stock insult for talk with nothing in it, and the image here is of someone gorging himself on hot air.

15:3

"Unprofitable" means useless, producing no gain of any kind.

15:4

'Fear of God' is not terror but reverence, the whole attitude of respect that religion was built on. The second half is uncertain in the Hebrew: the word can mean prayer, or quiet devotion and reflection before God.

15:5

The word for 'tricky' is the one used for shrewdness or cunning, the same term applied to the serpent in Genesis. It can be a compliment (prudence) or an accusation (slyness); here it is an accusation.

15:7

Both questions mock Job for claiming knowledge no living person could have. Some ancient traditions spoke of a first human being who existed before the world was finished and so knew its secrets; Wisdom herself is described in Proverbs as brought forth before the hills.

15:8

God was pictured as ruling with a council of heavenly beings around him, and prophets were said to have stood in that assembly and overheard its deliberations. Eliphaz is asking whether Job claims that kind of access.

15:10

In this culture age carried authority: long life meant long observation, and the sayings of the old were treated as evidence. Eliphaz is claiming the weight of tradition, not making a personal boast.

15:11

'God's comforts' means the consolation the three friends believe they have been offering Job on God's behalf. The last phrase is uncertain in the Hebrew: it has been read as 'a word spoken gently to you' and also as 'is there some secret thing you are holding back?'

15:12

The gesture behind 'eyes flash' is obscure; the Hebrew suggests eyes that blink, glare or signal, and it is taken as a sign of anger, or of contempt.

15:13

The Hebrew word behind "spirit" also means breath and wind. Turning your spirit against God therefore means aiming both your temper and your breath, the words you breathe out, straight at him. It picks up the wind image from verse 2.

15:14

'Clean' here is the language of ritual purity, fit to come near what is holy. 'Born of a woman' is a set phrase for a human being, used when the point is human frailty and short life.

15:15

'His holy ones' are the heavenly beings of God's court, the angels and members of the divine council, not human saints. The argument runs from greater to lesser: if even they do not measure up, no human could.

15:16

Drinking something 'like water' is an idiom for doing it constantly and without effort, the way a person drinks without thinking about it.

15:18

Teaching "told from their fathers" means wisdom handed down by mouth through generations. An unbroken chain back to the ancestors was the strongest evidence a speaker in this world could offer, roughly what citing sources is for us.

15:19

Eliphaz is dating his wisdom to an early age when the ancestors held the land by themselves, before outsiders came through, the claim being that this teaching is pure, unmixed with foreign ideas, and therefore reliable.

15:20

The second line is ambiguous in the Hebrew. It can mean that only a few years are allotted to the tyrant, or that the number of his years is hidden from him, so he lives without knowing when the end comes.

15:21

'The destroyer' is a raider or plunderer, the sudden armed attack that falls on a settlement without warning. The word can also be read as a destroying power sent against him.

15:22

'The sword is waiting for him' means he is marked out for a violent death, the standard image for being killed in a raid or a war.

15:23

The Hebrew here is disputed. It can be read as a hungry man wandering and asking where food is, or, with the same consonants read differently, as a corpse thrown out as food for vultures.

15:25

'The Almighty' translates Shaddai, an ancient title for God used throughout Job, older than the name used elsewhere in Israel's scriptures; its exact original sense is no longer certain.

15:26

A picture from battle: a soldier charging with his neck lowered behind his shield. The 'studs' are the thick metal bosses on the face of a shield, which took the blow and could be driven into an enemy.

15:27

Body fat was a sign of wealth and easy living, and in Hebrew idiom a fat, covered heart or face also meant a man grown insensitive and arrogant, too well fed to feel anything or listen to anyone.

15:28

Ruined and abandoned sites were considered dangerous, sometimes cursed places that were never to be rebuilt. The picture is of a man ending up squatting in exactly the kind of rubble he once made of others' towns.

15:29

The last phrase is obscure in Hebrew. Suggestions range from "his possessions will not spread out over the land" to an image of grain so heavy it bends to the ground, which he will never have.

15:30

The image is a tree: young shoots scorched dry, and the tree itself blown away. 'Breath' and 'wind' are the same word in Hebrew, so the last line is at once God's breath and a wind that carries him off.

15:31

"Vanity" in the King James almost never means being conceited. It means emptiness, a puff of air, something with no substance to it. The same word is used twice here, for what the man trusts in and for the wages he is paid.

15:32

The Hebrew of the first line is obscure. It is read as his account being settled early, or as his being cut down and withered before his natural time.

15:33

Both are pictures of loss before harvest. Vines drop unripe fruit under stress, and olive trees shed huge numbers of blossoms that never set into fruit, a promising start that comes to nothing.

15:34

'Tent' stands for a household and everything in it. Taking bribes meant perverting a legal case, since disputes were judged by elders at the town gate and a paid-off judge destroyed the only protection the poor had.

15:35

A proverbial way of speaking, found elsewhere in the Hebrew scriptures: what a person plots is described as a pregnancy that eventually delivers its offspring into the open.