15:1–6 As stated in the overview, these verses focus on Job’s words (“answer,” “argue,” “talk,” “words,” “mouth,” “tongue,” “lips,” and “testify”). Eliphaz starts with two rhetorical questions and colorful but cruel metaphors:

    Should a wise man answer with windy knowledge,

    and fill his belly with the east wind?

    Should he argue in unprofitable talk,

    or in words with which he can do no good? (vv. 2–3)

He pictures Job, a supposedly wise man, as digesting the wind. Then, when he opens his mouth, useless and empty claims are belched or spewed out. However, such talk, Eliphaz claims next, is not neutral. It might be like the wind, but it is a strong wind. It is breaking Job’s covenant relationship with God (“But you are doing away [Hb. parar, “break”]88 with the fear of God”; v. 4a). Eliphaz claims that this severing of God’s favor and diminishing of their relationship (the word “hindering” in v. 4b can also be translated “diminishing”; cf. Ezek. 16:27) is a sure consequence of Job’s “crafty” tongue (Job 15:5). Sin has been his schoolmaster (“your iniquity teaches your mouth”; v. 5), his vocabulary that of the snake (cf. Gen. 3:1). The case is open and shut. Job’s “own mouth condemns” him; his “own lips testify against” him (Job 15:6).

15:7–16 The first eight rhetorical questions to Job (vv. 7–13) are rebukes for not listening to his friends’ counsel. Eliphaz attacks Job’s self-autonomy and the fact that his perception is grounded in the present, not the past. Job is not older than Adam (“Are you the first man who was born?”) or creation itself (“Or were you brought forth before the hills?”; v. 7). And he certainly was not there at the moment of creation, when God in his wisdom created the earth (cf. Proverbs 8). This might be the sense of the question “Have you listened in the council of God?” (Job 15:8a). Or the sense might be that “the council of God” represents others who are wise, which would then correspond with the second line, “And do you limit wisdom to yourself?” (v. 8b). Certainly, in verse 9 Eliphaz speaks of the wisdom of others, notably that of the three friends. Job is acting like he knows more than they do. Eliphaz disagrees:

Moreover, unlike Job, their wisdom is grounded in years of experience and observation. Those “older than” Job’s “father” side with them (“are among us”; v. 10). The “gray-haired and the aged” are Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar or perhaps represent the tradition—ancients from the past—that the three friends continue to stand upon and are counseling Job with. Job is not listening to wisdom; he is not listening to God; he is not listening to God’s voice through the tradition.

    Are the comforts of God too small for you,

    or the word that deals gently with you? (v. 11)

If “the word that deals gently with you” refers to the words of the friends, then the reader joins Job in rolling his eyes. What!? God has not spoken with Job. There is no comfort there. The friends have spoken of what is wrong about Job, and with great venom at times (e.g., vv. 2–6, 16). There is certainly no comfort there, either. Job is rightly upset about such a lack of comfort. Yet Eliphaz considers Job’s “righteous,” or at least “understandable” anger, and accuses him of sin. Job’s passions (“your heart [carries] you away, . . . your eyes flash”; v. 12) have gotten the better of him. And out of the heart the mouth speaks! Job’s words (“words out of your mouth”) testify that every part of him rages against his creator (“you turn your spirit against God”; v. 13).

The last of the ten rhetorical questions is intended to move Job to consider his case before a holy God:

    Behold, God puts no trust in his holy ones,

    and the heavens are not pure in his sight;

    how much less one who is abominable and corrupt,

    a man who drinks injustice like water! (vv. 14–16)

The logic is tight. The poetic parallelisms precise. The theology correct. But the application is absolutely off. It is true that man is totally depraved. It is true that even the angels are not completely holy. It is therefore true that the man Job is not perfectly pure in God’s sight. But it is not correct that Job has claimed as much. Neither is it accurate that Job is “abominable and corrupt.” These disreputable OT words are certainly not reserved for Job, who is “blameless and upright” (1:1, 8; 2:3). It is certainly not true that he is so unrighteous that he “drinks injustice like water” (15:16).

15:17–35 At this point, the reader is done with Eliphaz’s patronizing preaching. Job is done with Eliphaz’s oratorical unkindness. But, alas, there are nineteen verses left in his sermon.

If we think of Eliphaz’s speech as a three-point sermon to Job, we might divide the material as follows. Point one: With your words, you are eating away the fear of God (vv. 1–6). Point two: Because you have not listened to God or tradition, you are like a man who drinks in sin like water (vv. 7–16). Point three: Such a diet will not fare well for you (vv. 17–35).

Eliphaz has not moved from his earlier stated vision:

    Remember: who that was innocent ever perished?

    Or where were the upright cut off?

    As I have seen, those who plow iniquity

    and sow trouble reap the same. (4:7–8)

Here he just expands upon what he meant in 4:9: “By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of his anger they are consumed.” That is, both the wisdom tradition (“what wise men have told, without hiding it from their fathers”; 15:18) and wise observation of life (“what I have seen I will declare”; v. 17b) teach the retribution principle: the good prosper, while the bad perish. The focus here is only on the downside of that principle, with the key verse being Eliphaz’s opening line: “The wicked man writhes in pain all his days” (v. 20a). All the lines that follow focus on this main point. The purpose of this poem on the wicked man is for Job to hear the wisdom of Eliphaz (“hear me”; v. 17a) and see that he is that man (cf. 2 Sam. 12:7).

Job 15:21–24 illustrates various aspects of divine punishment that the wicked man suffers. Even in times of peace, suddenly he hears the sounds of marauders marching around his home. All his shalom quickly vanishes. “Dreadful sounds are in his ears; in prosperity the destroyer will come upon him” (v. 21). He fears going out at night (“he does not believe that he will return out of darkness”), because his once safe neighborhood is now filled with violence (“he is marked for the sword”; v. 22). Verses 21–22 are likely flashbacks to Job’s loss of property at the hands of the Sabeans and Chaldeans (1:13–19), and 15:23–24 the aftermath. He is hungry: “He wanders abroad for bread, saying, ‘Where is it?’” (v. 23a). He thinks that death is imminent: “He knows that a day of darkness is ready at his hand” (v. 23b). And like a warrior king defeating his foes, “distress and anguish terrify him” and “prevail against him” (v. 24). He is physically and psychologically a mess.

Eliphaz next tells his congregation the cause of all these calamities: sin! The only specific named sin, which makes the wicked man “wicked,” is found in verses 25–26: all of this has come upon him “because he has stretched out his hand against God”; put differently, he “defies the Almighty.” The phrase “he has stretched out his hand” is an image not of worshiping Yahweh but of confronting and challenging him. It is a clenched hand, a fist in the air—the ultimate posture of rebellion. This image is reinforced with another related image—that of the wicked man charging at God (“running stubbornly [or “defiantly”] against him”) with a massive, “thickly bossed” shield in hand (v. 26). While the image is that of a battle scene, with Job rushing at Yahweh, the fact that a shield and not a sword is mentioned may symbolize his defensiveness. He is so stubborn in his position against God.

The ESV begins verse 27 with the word “because” (so also v. 25). This particle (Hb. ki) can be translated as “because,” “that,” “when,” or “though.” Since a new thought seems to be in place (the ki does not relate directly to vv. 25–26 but connects to what follows in vv. 27–28), “though” also fits well, the sense being:

    Though his face is covered with fat

    and his waist bulges with flesh,

    he will inhabit ruined towns

    and houses where no one lives,

    houses crumbling to rubble. (vv. 27–28 NIV)

The irony is this: while this man is overweight (“he has covered his face with his fat and gathered fat upon his waist,” as the ESV translates v. 27), he is not living high on the hog! His housing situation is a joke. The cities he has resided in are “desolate,” his homes condemned (“houses that none should inhabit”) and soon to be demolished (“ready to become heaps of ruins,” v. 28; perhaps an allusion to 1:19).

Like 15:21–24 and 27–28, verses 29–35 further illustrate various aspects of divine punishment. Any “wealth” he has “will not endure” (v. 29a). He will leave no inheritance (“nor will his possessions spread over the earth”; v. 29b). He himself will join his money: he will not endure but will die (“not depart from darkness”; v. 30a). By “the breath of [God’s] mouth” he will be incinerated (“the flame will dry up his shoots”; v. 30bc). With these analogies of a consuming fire (also v. 34b below) and the drastic loss of possessions, Job’s own sad story is likely echoed here (cf. 1:16–17).

Then, with a mix of metaphors from botany, business, and birth, Eliphaz concludes:

    Let him not trust in emptiness, deceiving himself,

    for emptiness will be his payment.

    It will be paid in full before his time,

    and his branch will not be green.

    He will shake off his unripe grape like the vine,

    and cast off his blossom like the olive tree.

    For the company of the godless is barren,

    and fire consumes the tents of bribery.

    They conceive trouble and give birth to evil,

    and their womb prepares deceit. (15:31–35)

All of the images are of emptiness and ineffectiveness. The wicked man, who is self-deceived because he trusts not in Yahweh (cf. v. 31), is a loser in life. He is paid “emptiness” (v. 31b). He does not flourish (“his branch will not be green”; v. 32b; cf. v. 33 for similar ideas, and the imagery of barrenness in v. 34). His shady business deals come back to bite him (cf. vv. 34–35).