Job 15:1 - Meaning and Application

Eliphaz now speaks very harshly against Job, because Job disagreed with him and his friends and would not simply accept their view. Proud people often take offense when others will not let them set the rules and judge everyone around them. They are quick to call others ignorant, stubborn, or wicked just because those others refuse to agree with everything they say.

Eliphaz brings several serious charges against Job, only because Job would not admit that he was a hypocrite. First, he says Job is foolish and speaks nonsense (Job 15:2, Job 15:3). Job had once been known as a wise man, but Eliphaz claims he has now lost that reputation. He says Job talks so wildly and so out of place that anyone would think his wisdom has left him. Bildad said something like this before (Job 8:2), and so did Zophar (Job 11:2, Job 11:3). Angry debaters often treat one another’s arguments as foolish and useless, even when they are not, and they forget the warning against calling a brother a fool.

It is true that there is much empty knowledge in the world, knowledge that people talk about but that does no real good. Such knowledge often makes people proud, because it feeds their self-importance. And if a person has that kind of knowledge, he should keep it to himself rather than spread it around. Unhelpful speech is sinful speech. We will answer for idle words at the great day, not only for wicked ones. So words that do no good for God, our neighbor, or ourselves are better left unsaid. Empty words, especially harmful and destructive ones, will count badly against us if we keep filling ourselves or others with them.

Eliphaz also charges Job with irreligion, meaning a lack of true respect for God (Job 15:4). He says, “You are throwing off the fear of God, and you are stopping prayer.” Religion is summed up here in two things, fearing God and praying to him. Fear of God is the needed inward spirit, and prayer is the needed outward practice. Where the fear of God is missing, nothing good should be expected. Those who live without prayer are living as if God were not in the world at all.

To stop praying is strong proof that a person has cast off the fear of God. Such people show no reverence for God’s greatness, no concern about his judgment, and no care for their own souls or eternity. Prayerless people are people without fear and without grace. When the fear of God is cast off, sin comes rushing in, and the door is opened to every kind of evil. It is especially sad when someone once feared God and prayed, but later gives it up. That is a terrible fall. Their first love is gone.

There is also a kind of force in the phrase. The fear of God would stay with them, but they throw it off. Prayer would rise up, but they restrain it. In both ways, they resist their own convictions. People may restrain prayer by leaving it out altogether or by cutting it short and not giving themselves full freedom in it. They quench the Spirit of adoption, the gracious Spirit who leads believers to cry to God as Father. It is even worse to restrain others from prayer, by forbidding or discouraging it, as Darius did (Daniel 6:7).

Eliphaz applies this charge to Job in two ways. He may mean that it was Job’s own practice. He thought Job spoke so freely about God as if he were equal to him, and that Job complained so strongly about God’s treatment of him and kept calling for a fair hearing that he had given up all religious respect for God. That accusation was completely false, though it had some surface appearance to it. We should be careful not only to keep prayer and the fear of God alive in our own lives, but also to avoid careless words that let others question our sincerity.

Or Eliphaz may mean that others would draw this conclusion from Job’s teaching. “If Job is right,” he thinks, “then religion is useless. Then prayer and the fear of God are pointless.” If all things happen alike to everyone, and the best people can suffer the worst in this life, then many will say, “It is useless to serve God” (Malachi 3:14). “I have kept my hands clean for nothing” (Psalm 73:13, Psalm 73:14). “Why be honest if robbers prosper?” (Job 12:6). “If there is no forgiveness with God, who will fear him?” (Job 7:21; Psalm 130:4). “If God laughs at the testing of the innocent, and if he is so hard to reach, who will pray to him?” (Job 9:23, Job 9:32). It is a serious wrong, and one even wise and good people can commit in heated argument, to pin on an opponent conclusions that do not truly follow from his words and that he would reject.

From this strained reading, Eliphaz makes a strong charge against Job’s wickedness (Job 15:5). He says Job’s own mouth speaks his sin, and even teaches it. In other words, he is teaching others to think hard thoughts about God and religion, the same thoughts he himself holds. It is bad to break even the smallest command, but it is worse to teach others to do the same (Matthew 5:19). If we ever have an evil thought, we should put our hand over our mouth to stop it (Proverbs 30:32), and we should certainly not say it aloud. To speak it is to give it approval and spread it, bringing dishonor to God and harm to others.

When people cast off the fear of God and stop praying, their mouths soon speak evil freely. Those who stop doing good soon learn to do evil. What else should we expect from people who do not arm themselves with God’s grace against sin? Eliphaz also says Job has chosen “the tongue of the crafty,” meaning he speaks his sin with a show of piety, mixing good words with bad ones. It is like a merchant who mixes in something pleasing to help sell his goods. Sin would do less harm if it did not dress itself up with clever speech. The serpent tricked Eve through subtlety (Romans 16:18). Crafty speech is planned and deliberate, which is why people choose it when they think it will serve them better than honest speech. But in the end, plain honesty proves the better way.

In his first speech, Eliphaz had argued against Job based only on guesswork (Job 4:6, Job 4:7). Now he says he has direct proof from Job’s own words (Job 15:6): “Your own mouth condemns you, not I.”

But Eliphaz should have remembered that he and his friends had driven Job to speak as he did, and then took advantage of his words. That was unfair. Those are often convicted most strongly when they are convicted by their own words (Titus 3:11; Luke 19:22). Many a person is undone by the very words he has spoken.

Third, Eliphaz charges Job with pride and self-importance. Job had made a fair and modest request, saying, “Let me have understanding too” (Job 12:3). But his friends twisted that into a claim that he was wiser than everyone else. Since he would not give them a monopoly on wisdom, they acted as if he were claiming all wisdom for himself (Job 15:7-9).

Eliphaz speaks as if Job thought he had more experience than the rest of mankind. “Were you the first man ever born?” he asks, as if Job were older than Adam and wiser than all who came after. “Were you made before the hills?” The point is that God’s plans are as vast and steady as the mountains and everlasting hills (Psalm 36:6), and Job should not expect those plans to bend to his own opinions. Job was not wiser than the rest of them. He was only “of yesterday,” like everyone else (Job 8:9).

Or Eliphaz may mean that Job claimed closer knowledge of God than others. “Have you heard the secret counsel of God?” he asks, as if Job sat in heaven’s private council and could explain God’s ways better than anyone else (Job 15:8). But there are secret things that belong to God alone, and we must not pretend to explain what God has not revealed. It is bold and reckless to do that.

Eliphaz also says Job acted as if wisdom belonged to him alone, and no one else had it. Job had said, “What you know, I also know” (Job 13:2). Now his friends turn that back on him in the heat of argument: “What do you know that we do not know?” Such replies often rise naturally in debate, but they look small and foolish afterward.

He also accuses Job of standing against the old ways and the wisdom of age. “With us are the gray-haired and very old men” (Job 15:10), he says, meaning, “The fathers are on our side.” People often use antiquity, the authority of what is old, to support their case. But that is easy to claim and hard to prove, and even when it is true, it does not settle truth by itself. David valued God’s word above age and tradition, saying, “I understand more than the elders, because I keep your precepts” (Psalm 119:100). Some of Job’s friends may really have been older than he was (Job 32:6), but age alone does not make a person right. The oldest are not always the wisest (Job 32:9).

Fourth, Eliphaz says Job despised the comfort his friends offered him (Job 15:11). He asks, “Are God’s consolations too small for you?” He felt offended that Job did not value their speeches more highly, or welcome every word as if it were important and true. It is true that they said some good things, but when they applied them to Job, they became miserable comforters.

Eliphaz also treats Job’s reaction as if he were brushing aside God’s own comforts. Yet if Job had not valued those comforts, he could not have kept standing under his suffering. The comforts that come from God are not small. They are great things, especially the comfort found in God himself. So it is a sad thing when those comforts seem small to us. That shows disrespect toward God and a heart that has grown dull toward spiritual joy.

Eliphaz then asks whether Job has some hidden thing in himself, some private source of strength that no one else knows about. Or perhaps he means that Job is hiding some secret sin that blocks God’s comfort. In his view, only people who secretly love the world and the flesh can treat divine comfort lightly.

Fifth, Eliphaz says Job is resisting God and religion itself (Job 15:12, Job 15:13). “Why does your heart carry you away?” he asks. Every person is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desire (James 1:14). When we turn from God or act wrongly, it is our own heart that leads us off. If a person scorns God, he alone will bear it. Eliphaz says there is a wild force in the movements of the soul, and a corrupt heart can drag a person along, almost by force, against his own convictions.

“What are your eyes winking at?” he asks, meaning, “Why are you so careless with what is being said to you? Why do you act as if you are half asleep? Why do you despise our words, as if you were too high to notice them?” He takes Job’s words as an insult to God himself. It is bad enough for a heart to turn away from God, but it is worse when it turns against him.

This shows itself, Eliphaz says, in the words Job lets pass from his mouth, words that seem to question God’s justice and goodness. The wicked “set their mouth against the heavens” (Psalm 73:9), and that is a sure sign that their spirit is against God. Eliphaz thought Job’s spirit had become bitter toward God and that this bitterness was showing in his speeches. He lacked the charity and fairness he should have shown to a man with Job’s known devotion, especially while Job was under such heavy pressure. In effect, Eliphaz was siding with Satan, as if Job had done what Satan claimed he would do, and cursed God to his face.

He accuses Job of going so far in self-defense that he seems to deny the shared corruption of human nature (Job 15:14). “What is man, that he should be clean?” In other words, how can any person claim to be pure, or even be expected to be so? “What is he who is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?” Here Eliphaz means that no one born into fallen humanity can claim sinless righteousness.

There are three truths here. First, righteousness means being clean before God. It makes us acceptable to God and brings peace to our own consciences (Psalm 18:24). Second, fallen man cannot claim to be clean and righteous before God, either to clear himself before God’s justice or to earn God’s favor. Third, because he is born of a woman, he comes from a corrupt nature, and that corruption is both his guilt and his stain.

Eliphaz uses these plain truths to try to convince Job, but Job had already said the same thing about human weakness (Job 14:4): “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?” Yet this does not prove that Job was a hypocrite or a wicked man, which was the charge he denied. Not at all. Even though man, as born of a woman, is not clean, he can be made clean as one born again by the Spirit.

Eliphaz goes on to support his point by saying that even the brightest creatures are imperfect and impure before God (Job 15:15). God puts no trust in saints or angels. He uses both, but he does not rely on them, because they need fresh strength and wisdom from him for every service. He knows they are not enough in themselves, and only his grace makes them fit to serve. Even the heavens do not satisfy him completely. However pure they may seem to us, in his sight they still have many flaws: “The heavens are not clean in his sight.” If the stars have no light in the sight of the sun, what light can the sun itself have in the sight of God? (Isaiah 24:23)

If that is true of the brightest created things, then it is even more true of man (Job 15:16). “How much more abominable and filthy is man!” If even saints are not fully trustworthy, sinners are far less so. If the heavens are not pure, though God made them, then man is even less pure, since he has fallen from his original state. In God’s sight he is corrupt and unclean, and when a person truly repents, he sees that same corruption in himself and hates it.

Sin is a hateful thing, and it makes people hateful too. The whole body of sin is filthy, which is why Scripture speaks of it as a dead body, something unclean and offensive. It is foul enough to make anyone sick to see a man eating pig food or drinking something nasty and disgusting. But that is what human sin is like. People drink iniquity, the evil thing the Lord hates, as eagerly as a thirsty man drinks water. It is their daily drink. Sin feels natural to sinners. It pleases the old sinful nature, but it does not satisfy it. It is like water to a man with a swelling disease, the more he drinks, the more he wants. The more people sin, the more they want to sin.