Job — Chapter 15

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: The first round of speeches is over. Each friend has spoken once, and Job has answered each in turn. His last reply (chs 12–14) was his longest and sharpest. He mocked his friends' claim to wisdom: "No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you" (12:2). He called them "worthless physicians" (13:4) and warned them not to "speak falsely for God" (13:7). Then he turned to God himself, "Though he slay me, I will hope in him; yet I will argue my ways to his face" (13:15), and ended with a lament for frail mortal life: "Man who is born of a woman is few of days and full of trouble" (14:1). Now the second round begins (chs 15–21), and Eliphaz the Temanite, probably the oldest of the three, speaks again. In his first speech (chs 4–5) he was polite and only hinted that Job had sinned. Here the politeness is gone. The Tyndale notes sum up this second round: the friends talk about the fate of the wicked, and the clear implication is that Job is one of them. Eliphaz first rebukes Job's words and attitude (vv2–16), then paints a long portrait of the wicked man, whose life is full of terror and ends in ruin (vv17–35). He never names Job as that man, but he doesn't have to.

Eliphaz Accuses: Job Does Not Fear God (vv1–35)

• "Should a wise man answer with windy knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind?" (v2). Job had claimed understanding equal to his friends (12:3). Eliphaz says no wise man talks like this. Job's words are hot air, a belly stuffed with wind instead of wisdom. The "east wind" (qadim) makes it worse. The lexicon describes it as the violent, scorching wind off the desert that withered Pharaoh's grain (Gen 41:6) and beat on Jonah's head (Jonah 4:8). The Tyndale notes suggest it stands for speech that is not only empty but hot and destructive. Bildad had already called Job's words "a great wind" (8:2), and Job himself had pleaded that "the speech of a despairing man is wind" (6:26). Eliphaz takes Job's own image and uses it against him, and in v3 he judges Job's words only by whether they are useful, not whether they are true.
• "But you are doing away with the fear of God and hindering meditation before God" (v4). This is the charge behind the chapter's heading. "The fear of God" was exactly what God praised in Job: a man "who fears God and turns away from evil" (1:8). "Meditation" (sichah) is a rare word. Its only other uses are in Psalm 119: "Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day" (Ps 119:97). The lexicon also allows "complaint" here, but either way the point is devotion, the inner life of prayer before God. Eliphaz seems to fear that if Job were right, people would stop praying. If a righteous man can suffer like this, why fear God at all? The reader knows that Job's devotion is the very thing being tested, and it is holding (1:21–22; 2:10).
• "For your iniquity teaches your mouth, and you choose the tongue of the crafty" (v5). Eliphaz claims to see into Job's heart. Job's words, he says, are not honest cries of pain but clever cover for hidden sin. "Crafty" (arum) is the word used of the serpent in Eden, "more crafty than any other beast" (Gen 3:1).
• "Your own mouth condemns you, and not I" (v6). Job had feared exactly this: "Though I am in the right, my own mouth would condemn me" (9:20). Eliphaz turns Job's fear into a verdict. The Tyndale notes point ahead to Jesus' trial, where the high priest said, "He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need?" (Matt 26:65). In both cases an innocent man's words are used against him.
• "Are you the first man who was born? Or were you brought forth before the hills?" (v7). Now Eliphaz attacks Job's supposed arrogance. "Brought forth before the hills" echoes Wisdom herself in Proverbs: "before the hills, I was brought forth" (Prov 8:25). Eliphaz is asking, "Do you think you are Wisdom in person, older than the mountains?" The Tyndale notes observe that God later puts a very similar question to Job: "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?" (38:4), and "You know, for you were born then" (38:21). When God asks, Job is humbled. When Eliphaz asks, it only hardens the argument. The same truth carries a different weight depending on who speaks it and why.
• "Have you listened in the council of God?" (v8). "Council" is sod, which the lexicon defines as an intimate circle of advisers and the secret counsel shared in it. The prophets used it for God's heavenly council: "who among them has stood in the council of the LORD to see and to hear his word?" (Jer 23:18). Eliphaz means it as an impossible question. The Tyndale notes highlight the irony. The reader has been let into that council (1:6–12; 2:1–6) and knows what neither man knows: Job is suffering not because of sin but because God holds him up as blameless. If anyone here speaks without knowledge of God's council, it is Eliphaz.
• "And do you limit wisdom to yourself?" (v8). "Limit" (gara) is the same verb translated "hindering" in v4. The lexicon lists both verses together under "restrain," and for v8 suggests "keep for yourself, monopolize." Eliphaz uses the word twice on purpose: Job is holding back devotion from God and hoarding wisdom for himself. It throws Job's sarcasm in 12:2 back at him.
• "Both the gray-haired and the aged are among us, older than your father" (v10). In the ancient world, wisdom was thought to grow with years and be handed down from the fathers. Bildad had already appealed to "the former generation" (8:8). The Tyndale notes add that Job had answered this kind of claim before (12:12, 20). Age deserves respect, but it can't settle a question when the older men simply don't have the facts.
• "Are the comforts of God too small for you, or the word that deals gently with you?" (v11). "Comforts" is tanchumot, consolations. Eliphaz means his own first speech, especially his promise that God would restore Job if he accepted discipline (5:17–26). He thinks of his words as God's comfort, gently spoken. Job will soon answer, "miserable comforters are you all" (16:2), and later plead, "Keep listening to my words, and let this be your comfort" (21:2), using this same word. What Job wants as comfort is to be heard. Eliphaz has mistaken his own advice for God's consolation, and a man who has just buried his children can hardly be blamed for finding it thin.
• "Why does your heart carry you away, and why do your eyes flash?" (vv12–13). "Flash" translates razam, a word found only here. The lexicon gives "wink" or "flash (in wrath)," and mentions a proposal to read "why are your eyes lifted up," a picture of pride (Prov 6:17). The Tyndale notes list the options: anger, unbelief, a sly wink, or blinking in disbelief. "Spirit" in v13 (ruach) is also the word for "wind." Job, Eliphaz says, is blowing his hot wind against God himself.
• "What is man, that he can be pure? Or he who is born of a woman, that he can be righteous?" (v14). Eliphaz repeats his night vision of 4:17, "Can a man be pure before his Maker?", and borrows Job's own words: "Man who is born of a woman" (14:1) and "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?" (14:4). The cross-references show this truth across Scripture: "there is no one who does not sin" (1 Kgs 8:46), "no one living is righteous before you" (Ps 143:2). Eliphaz is right. But Job never claimed sinless perfection, only that his suffering was not punishment for some hidden crime. Eliphaz answers a claim Job didn't make.
• "God puts no trust in his holy ones… how much less one who is abominable and corrupt" (vv15–16). "Holy ones" are angels, members of God's heavenly court (4:18). If even they and the heavens fall short, how much more does man? "Corrupt" (alach) is rare. The lexicon links it to an Arabic word used of milk gone sour, and its only other uses are in Psalm 14:3 and 53:3: "they have all together become corrupt." Then the picture sharpens: "a man who drinks injustice like water," gulping down evil as easily as a thirsty man drinks. On paper this is humanity in general. In context it is aimed at Job. Elihu will later use almost the same image of Job, who "drinks up scoffing like water" (34:7).
• "What wise men have told… to whom alone the land was given, and no stranger passed among them" (vv17–19). The second half begins. In his first speech Eliphaz appealed to a mysterious night vision (4:12–16). Now he appeals to his own experience and to tradition from a pure line of ancestors, untouched by foreign ideas. Teman, in Edom, was famous for wisdom (Jer 49:7), and he is proud of it. The Tyndale notes see an irony: wisdom literature is the most international part of the Old Testament, and Job himself is from Uz, outside Israel.
• "The wicked man writhes in pain all his days" (v20). Now comes the portrait. Even when the wicked man seems to prosper, his inner life is torment. This answers Job's observation that "the tents of robbers are at peace" (12:6). Eliphaz says that peace is an illusion.
• "Dreadful sounds are in his ears; in prosperity the destroyer will come upon him" (v21). A guilty conscience hears danger in every sound. The Tyndale notes trace this theme of terror through the book and show it is exactly what Job has said of himself: "the thing that I fear comes upon me" (3:25; see 6:4; 13:21). The "destroyer" may be raiders like the Sabeans and Chaldeans (1:15, 17), or one of God's agents of judgment, like the destroyer at the Passover (Exod 12:23). The Tyndale notes favor the second. Either way, Eliphaz is holding up a mirror to Job.
• "He is marked for the sword… He wanders abroad for bread" (vv22–24). The wicked man lives without hope of escaping darkness, as Job said his own days ended "without hope" (7:6). He searches anxiously for food, and fear besieges him "like a king ready for battle." The Tyndale notes mention that the ancient Greek translation reads v23 as "appointed as food for vultures," which fits the man marked for death in v22. The ESV follows the Hebrew.
• "Because he has stretched out his hand against God… running stubbornly against him with a thickly bossed shield" (vv25–26). Here is the cause behind the terror: the wicked man has declared war on God. "Running stubbornly" is literally "with neck," head down and charging behind a shield studded with metal knobs. This is pointed. Job had complained that God counted him as an enemy (13:24; see 7:19–21). Eliphaz turns it around: Job is the one attacking God.
• "He has covered his face with his fat" (vv27–28). In a world where food was often scarce, fat was a sign of wealth and easy living, and of a heart grown dull to God (Deut 32:15). Eliphaz admits in passing that the wicked do prosper for a time. He has also "lived in desolate cities," which may mean seizing ruined towns that were meant to stay empty, perhaps under a curse (Josh 6:26). JFB takes it as robbers settling in abandoned places. Either way, he builds on ground already marked for ruin.
• "He will not be rich… the flame will dry up his shoots, and by the breath of his mouth he will depart" (vv29–30). The Tyndale notes say the flame could be scorching sun or God's fire of judgment, and the "breath" most likely God's breath, a wind from God. Job lost his flocks to "the fire of God" (1:16) and his children to "a great wind" (1:19). The Tyndale notes list the matches: raiders (v21), collapsed houses (v28), lost possessions (v29) and fire (vv30, 34). Eliphaz is retelling chapter 1 as the story of a wicked man.
• "Let him not trust in emptiness… for emptiness will be his payment" (v31). "Emptiness" (shav) means what is hollow or false, the same word Zophar used for "worthless" men (11:11). The lexicon notes a deliberate play on the word's two uses in this verse. Trust in emptiness, and emptiness is the wage.
• "He will shake off his unripe grape like the vine, and cast off his blossom like the olive tree" (vv32–33). Olive trees flower heavily, and most of the blossoms fall without setting fruit. Everything looks promising, then nothing comes of it. To a man who had lost all ten children, a picture of fruit cut off before its time would have been hard to hear.
• "For the company of the godless is barren, and fire consumes the tents of bribery" (v34). "Godless" (chaneph) is the lexicon's "profane, irreligious," a word the friends use often (8:13; 20:5). "Bribery" (shochad) is a bribe given to bend justice (Exod 23:8), and the lexicon reads "tents of bribery" as the homes of bribe-givers. This is a dangerous hint. Job had sat as a judge at the city gate (29:7). Eliphaz suggests his wealth came from corrupt deals. In his third speech he will drop the hints and accuse Job of specific crimes (22:5–9). Job answers in chapters 29 and 31: "I put on righteousness, and it clothed me" (29:14).
• "They conceive trouble and give birth to evil" (v35). The same picture of a pregnancy that produces only evil appears in Psalm 7:14 and Isaiah 59:4. Eliphaz began by calling Job's words empty wind (v2) and ends by saying the wicked are pregnant with deceit. In between he never once names a sin Job committed.
• What went wrong? Almost every sentence Eliphaz speaks could be defended from elsewhere in Scripture. No one is pure before God. The wicked face judgment. Guilt brings fear. Godless wealth does not last. The problem is his conclusion: Job suffers, so Job must be wicked. The opening chapters show this is false, and God's verdict at the end confirms it (42:7). Readers differ on how much to blame the friends. Some say their theology was sound and only their application to Job was wrong. Others argue the problem runs deeper, a rigid system with no room for the innocent suffering of the righteous or for a God whose purposes are hidden. Both agree that Eliphaz spoke with great confidence about things he could not see.
• Commentators: Matthew Henry says Eliphaz "here falls very foul upon Job, because he contradicted what he and his colleagues had said," yet he treats the charges as true in general. On v3 he writes, "Unprofitable talk is evil talk," on v4, "Those who are prayerless are fearless and graceless," and on v10, "the oldest are not always the wisest." On v11 he agrees that "The consolations of God are not in themselves small." Guzik presses the injustice of the speech. Job 1 shows Job to be a man of prayer, so the charge in v4 is false, and Job's claim to know more was about his own innocence, not superior wisdom. He passes on Spurgeon's point that Eliphaz's questions are wrong as applied to Job but right in principle, with a list of God's neglected comforts, Christ himself among them. Guzik also mentions Andersen's suggestion that "fill" in v2 should be read in reverse, as "empty." The lexicon gives the verb only as "fill" and does not support that reading. JFB, which comments on every verse except vv1 and 3, calls the east wind "the most destructive of winds" and reads v7 as "Art thou wisdom personified?", matching the echo of Proverbs 8. On v16 it appeals to an Arabic word meaning sour, which the lexicon supports, and on v19 it remarks that "Eliphaz speaks like a genuine Arab," proud of a line "unmixed with foreigners." On v21 Henry and JFB agree the terror is conscience at work. Henry: "He that would keep his peace, let him keep a good conscience." JFB: "An evil conscience conceives alarm at every sudden sound." On v34 JFB goes further than the Tyndale notes, suggesting Eliphaz hints that Job's losses came "on account of Job's bribery as an Arab sheik or emir."

Pointing to Christ

Eliphaz asked Job, "Have you listened in the council of God?" (v8). No human being had, and so no one could explain Job's suffering. But the one who stood in that council from the beginning, "God the only Son, who is at the Father's side," has come and "made him known" (John 1:18). He is the true Wisdom brought forth before the hills. Eliphaz painted a wicked man who is terrified, cut off and condemned by his own mouth. That is how Jesus was treated. He was "holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners" (Heb 7:26), yet his own words were turned against him (Matt 26:65), and he was "despised and rejected by men" (Isa 53:3), counted among the wicked so that the wicked could be forgiven. Eliphaz offered "the comforts of God" and delivered accusations. In Christ those comforts are not small. He is "the consolation of Israel" that Simeon waited for (Luke 2:25), and his Father is "the God of all comfort" (2 Cor 1:3).

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik notes that Eliphaz's second speech reveals how threatened he is by Job's arguments. Job has challenged the entire framework Eliphaz relies on — and rather than reconsidering his theology, Eliphaz escalates his attacks. This is a common pattern: when our theology is threatened by reality, we often double down rather than reconsider. Guzik also observes that the description of the wicked (vv.20-35) is intended as a mirror for Job: "This is what you look like to us."
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• BibleProject: bibleproject.com On the whole book: the speech from the whirlwind, and why it answers Job the way it does.
• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of Job -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

Links open on the publisher's own site. Nothing here is reproduced on this page.

Reflection

• Twisting Words Into Accusation (vv.4-6) — Eliphaz claims Job's own protests of innocence prove his guilt, a circular accusation that leaves Job no way to defend himself. Do you ever assume someone's denial of wrongdoing is itself evidence against them, rather than actually listening?
• Questioning Someone's Standing to Speak (vv.7-8) — Eliphaz mocks Job by asking if he predates creation or sat in God's private council, dismissing Job's insight rather than engaging his argument. Do you ever dismiss someone's honest perspective just because they don't have the credentials or status you expect?
• No One Perfectly Righteous, Yet Still Called Blameless (v.14) — Eliphaz uses the truth that no human is flawless to erase any real distinction between the righteous and the wicked. Do you let a true doctrine like universal sinfulness excuse you from recognizing genuine integrity in someone who is suffering unfairly?
• A Portrait Painted to Wound (vv.20-35) — Eliphaz describes in vivid detail the miserable fate of the wicked, clearly intending Job to see himself in the picture without ever naming him directly. Have you ever used a general warning as an indirect way to accuse someone instead of speaking to them honestly?