Text -- Job 15:1-23 (NET)

Eliphaz’s Second Speech

15:1 Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered: 15:2 “Does a wise man answer with blustery knowledge, or fill his belly with the east wind? 15:3 Does he argue with useless talk, with words that have no value in them? 15:4 But you even break off piety, and hinder meditation before God. 15:5 Your sin inspires your mouth; you choose the language of the crafty. 15:6 Your own mouth condemns you, not I; your own lips testify against you. 15:7 “Were you the first man ever born? Were you brought forth before the hills? 15:8 Do you listen in on God’s secret council? Do you limit wisdom to yourself? 15:9 What do you know that we don’t know? What do you understand that we don’t understand? 15:10 The gray-haired and the aged are on our side, men far older than your father. 15:11 Are God’s consolations too trivial for you; or a word spoken in gentleness to you? 15:12 Why has your heart carried you away, and why do your eyes flash, 15:13 when you turn your rage against God and allow such words to escape from your mouth? 15:14 What is man that he should be pure, or one born of woman, that he should be righteous? 15:15 If God places no trust in his holy ones, if even the heavens are not pure in his eyes, 15:16 how much less man, who is abominable and corrupt, who drinks in evil like water! 15:17 “I will explain to you; listen to me, and what I have seen, I will declare, 15:18 what wise men declare, hiding nothing, from the tradition of their ancestors, 15:19 to whom alone the land was given when no foreigner passed among them. 15:20 All his days the wicked man suffers torment, throughout the number of the years that are stored up for the tyrant. 15:21 Terrifying sounds fill his ears; in a time of peace marauders attack him. 15:22 He does not expect to escape from darkness; he is marked for the sword; 15:23 he wanders about– food for vultures; he knows that the day of darkness is at hand.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Job 15:1

¹ sn In the first round of speeches, Eliphaz had emphasized the moral perfection of God, Bildad his unwavering justice, and Zophar his omniscience. Since this did not bring the expected response from Job, the friends see him as a menace to true religion, and so they intensify their approach. Eliphaz, as dignified as ever, rebukes Job for his arrogance and warns about the judgment the wicked bring on themselves. The speech of Eliphaz falls into three parts: the rebuke of Job for his irreverence (2-6); the analysis of Job’s presumption about wisdom (7-16), and his warning about the fate of the wicked (17-35).

NET Notes: Job 15:2

¹ tn The Hebrew is דַעַת־רוּחַ (da’at-ruakh). This means knowledge without any content, vain knowledge.

² tn The image is rather graphic. It is saying that he puffs himself up with the wind and then brings out of his mouth blasts of this wind.

³ tn The word for “east wind,” קָדִים (qadim), is parallel to “spirit/wind” also in Hos 12:2. The east wind is maleficent, but here in the parallelism it is so much hot air.

NET Notes: Job 15:3

¹ tn The infinitive absolute in this place is functioning either as an explanatory adverb or as a finite verb.

sn Eliphaz draws on Job’s claim with this word (cf. Job 13:3), but will declare it hollow.

² tn The verb סָכַן (sakhan) means “to be useful, profitable.” It is found 5 times in the book with this meaning. The Hiphil of יָעַל (ya’al) has the same connotation. E. LipinÃski offers a new meaning on a second root, “incur danger” or “run risks” with words, but this does not fit the parallelism (FO 21 [1980]: 65-82).

NET Notes: Job 15:4

¹ tn The word פָּרַר (parar) in the Hiphil means “to annul; to frustrate; to destroy; to break,” and this fits the line quite well. The NEB reflects G. R. Driver’s suggestion of an Arabic cognate meaning “to expel; to banish” (“Problems in the Hebrew text of Job,” VTSup 3 [1955]: 77).

² tn Heb “fear,” “reverence.”

³ tn The word גָּרַע (gara’) means “to diminish,” regard as insignificant, occasionally with the sense of “pull down” (Deut 4:2; 13:1). It is here that Eliphaz is portraying Job as a menace to the religion of society because they dissuade people from seeking God.

⁴ tn The word שִׂיחָה (sikhah) is “complaint; cry; meditation.” Job would be influencing people to challenge God and not to meditate before or pray to him.

NET Notes: Job 15:5

¹ tn The verb אַלֵּף (’allef) has the meaning of “to teach; to instruct,” but it is unlikely that the idea of revealing is intended. If the verb is understood metonymically, then “to inspire; to prompt” will be sufficient. Dahood and others find another root, and render the verb “to increase,” reversing subject and object: “your mouth increases your iniquity.”

² tn Heb “tongue.”

³ tn The word means “shrewd; crafty; cunning” (see Gen 3:1). Job uses clever speech that is misleading and destructive.

NET Notes: Job 15:6

¹ tn The Hiphil of this root means “declare wicked, guilty” (a declarative Hiphil), and so “condemns.”

² tn The verb עָנָה (’anah) with the ל (lamed) preposition following it means “to testify against.” For Eliphaz, it is enough to listen to Job to condemn him.

NET Notes: Job 15:8

¹ tn The meaning of סוֹד (sod) is “confidence.” In the context the implication is “secret counsel” of the Lord God (see Jer 23:18). It is a question of confidence on the part of God, that only wisdom can know (see Prov 8:30,31). Job seemed to them to claim to have access to the mind of God.

² tn In v. 4 the word meant “limit”; here it has a slightly different sense, namely, “to reserve for oneself.”

NET Notes: Job 15:9

¹ tn The last clause simply has “and it is not with us.” It means that one possesses something through knowledge. Note the parallelism of “know” and “with me” in Ps 50:11.

NET Notes: Job 15:10

¹ tn The participle שָׂב (sav), from שִׂיב (siv, “to have white hair”; 1 Sam 12:2), only occurs elsewhere in the Bible in the Aramaic sections of Ezra. The word יָשִׁישׁ (yashish, “aged”) occurred in 12:12.

² tn Heb “with us.”

³ tn The line reads: “[men] greater than your father [in] days.” The expression “in days” underscores their age – they were older than Job’s father, and therefore wiser.

NET Notes: Job 15:11

¹ sn The word תַּנְחֻמוֹת (tankhumot) occurs here and only in Job 21:34. The words of comfort and consolation that they have been offering to Job are here said to be “of God.” But Job will call them miserable comforters (16:2).

² tn The formula “is it too little for you” or “is it too slight a matter for you” is also found in Isa 7:13 (see GKC 430 §133.c).

³ tn The word “spoken” is not in the Hebrew text, but has been supplied in the translation.

NET Notes: Job 15:12

¹ tn The interrogative מָה (mah) here has the sense of “why?” (see Job 7:21).

² tn The verb simply means “to take.” The RSV has “carry you away.” E. Dhorme (Job, 212-13) goes further, saying that it implies being unhinged by passion, to be carried away by the passions beyond good sense (pp. 212-13). Pope and Tur-Sinai suggest that the suffix on the verb is datival, and translate it, “What has taken from you your mind?” But the parallelism shows that “your heart” and “your eyes” are subjects.

³ tn Here is another word that occurs only here, and in the absence of a completely convincing suggestion, probably should be left as it is. The verb is רָזַם (razam, “wink, flash”). Targum Job and the Syriac equate it with a verb found in Aramaic and postbiblical Hebrew with the same letters but metathesized – רָמַז (ramaz). It would mean “to make a sign” or “to wink.” Budde, following the LXX probably, has “Why are your eyes lofty?” Others follow an Arabic root meaning “become weak.”

NET Notes: Job 15:13

¹ tn The Hebrew is רוּחֶךָ (rukhekha, “your spirit” or “your breath”). But the fact that this is turned “against God,” means that it must be given a derived meaning, or a meaning that is metonymical. It is used in the Bible in the sense of anger – what the spirit vents (see Judg 8:3; Prov 16:32; and Job 4:9 with “blast”).

² tn The verb is a Hiphil perfect of yasa’, “to go out, proceed, issue forth.”

NET Notes: Job 15:15

¹ tn Eliphaz here reiterates the point made in Job 4:18.

² sn The question here is whether the reference is to material “heavens” (as in Exod 24:10 and Job 25:5), or to heavenly beings. The latter seems preferable in this context.

NET Notes: Job 15:16

¹ tn The two descriptions here used are “abominable,” meaning “disgusting” (a Niphal participle with the value of a Latin participle [see GKC 356-57 §116.e]), and “corrupt” (a Niphal participle which occurs only in Pss 14:3 and 53:4), always in a moral sense. On the significance of the first description, see P. Humbert, “Le substantif toáe„ba„ et le verbe táb dans l’Ancien Testament,” ZAW 72 [1960]: 217ff.). On the second word, G. R. Driver suggests from Arabic, “debauched with luxury, corrupt” (“Some Hebrew Words,” JTS 29 [1927/28]: 390-96).

² sn Man commits evil with the same ease and facility as he drinks in water – freely and in large quantities.

NET Notes: Job 15:17

¹ tn The demonstrative pronoun is used here as a nominative, to introduce an independent relative clause (see GKC 447 §138.h).

² tn Here the vav (ו) apodosis follows with the cohortative (see GKC 458 §143.d).

NET Notes: Job 15:18

¹ tn The word “tradition” is not in the Hebrew text, but has been supplied in the translation.

² tn Heb “their fathers.” Some commentators change one letter and follow the reading of the LXX: “and their fathers have not hidden.” Pope tries to get the same reading by classifying the מ (mem) as an enclitic mem. The MT on first glance would read “and did not hide from their fathers.” Some take the clause “and they did not hide” as adverbial and belonging to the first part of the verse: “what wise men declare, hiding nothing, according to the tradition of their fathers.”

NET Notes: Job 15:19

¹ sn Eliphaz probably thinks that Edom was the proverbial home of wisdom, and so the reference here would be to his own people. If, as many interpret, the biblical writer is using these accounts to put Yahwistic ideas into the discussion, then the reference would be to Canaan at the time of the fathers. At any rate, the tradition of wisdom to Eliphaz has not been polluted by foreigners, but has retained its pure and moral nature from antiquity.

NET Notes: Job 15:20

¹ tn Heb “all the days of the wicked, he suffers.” The word “all” is an adverbial accusative of time, stating along with its genitives (“of the days of a wicked man”) how long the individual suffers. When the subject is composed of a noun in construct followed by a genitive, the predicate sometimes agrees with the genitive (see GKC 467 §146.a).

² tn The Hebrew term מִתְחוֹלֵל (mitkholel) is a Hitpolel participle from חִיל (khil, “to tremble”). It carries the idea of “torment oneself,” or “be tormented.” Some have changed the letter ח (khet) for a letter ה (he), and obtained the meaning “shows himself mad.” Theodotion has “is mad.” Syriac (“behave arrogantly,” apparently confusing Hebrew חול with חלל; Heidi M. Szpek, Translation Technique in the Peshitta to Job [SBLDS], 277), Symmachus, and Vulgate have “boasts himself.” But the reading of the MT is preferable.

³ tn It is necessary, with Rashi, to understand the relative pronoun before the verb “they are stored up/reserved.”

⁴ tn This has been translated with the idea of “oppressor” in Job 6:23; 27:13.

NET Notes: Job 15:21

¹ tn The word “fill” is not in the Hebrew text, but has been supplied in the translation.

² tn The word שׁוֹדֵד (shoded) means “a robber; a plunderer” (see Job 12:6). With the verb bo’ the sentence means that the robber pounces on or comes against him (see GKC 373 §118.f). H. H. Rowley observes that the text does not say that he is under attack, but that the sound of fears is in his ears, i.e., that he is terrified by thoughts of this.

NET Notes: Job 15:22

¹ tn This is the meaning of the Hiphil imperfect negated: “he does not believe” or “he has no confidence.” It is followed by the infinitive construct functioning as the direct object – he does not expect to return (to escape) from darkness.

sn The meaning of this line is somewhat in question. H. H. Rowley (Job [NCBC], 111) thinks it could mean that he is afraid he will not wake up from the night, or he dreads misfortune, thinking it will be final for him.

² sn In the context of these arguments, “darkness” probably refers to calamity, and so the wicked can expect a calamity that is final.

³ tn Heb “he is watched [or waited for] by the sword.” G. R. Driver reads it, “he is marked down for the sword” (“Problems in the Hebrew text of Job,” VTSup 3 [1955]: 78). Ewald suggested “laid up for the sword.” Ball has “looks for the sword.” The MT has a passive participle from צָפָה (tsafah, “to observe, watch”) which can be retained in the text; the meaning of the form can then be understood as the result of the inspection (E. Dhorme, Job, 217).

NET Notes: Job 15:23

¹ tn The MT has “he wanders about for food – where is it?” The LXX has “he has been appointed for food for vultures,” reading אַיָּה (’ayyah, “vulture”) for אַיֵּה (’ayyeh, “where is it?”). This would carry on the thought of the passage – he sees himself destined for the sword and food for vultures. Many commentators follow this reading while making a number of smaller changes in נֹדֵד (noded, “wandering”) such as נִתַּן (nittan, “is given”), נוֹעַד (no’ad, “is appointed”), נוֹדַע (noda’, “is known”), or something similar. The latter involves no major change in consonants. While the MT “wandering” may not be as elegant as some of the other suggestions, it is not impossible. But there is no reading of this verse that does not involve some change. The LXX has “and he has been appointed for food for vultures.”

² tn This line is fraught with difficulties (perceived or real), which prompt numerous suggestions. The reading of the MT is “he knows that a day of darkness is fixed in his hand,” i.e., is certain. Many commentators move “day of darkness” to the next verse, following the LXX. Then, suggestions have been offered for נָכוֹן (nakhon, “ready”), such as נֵכֶר (nekher, “disaster”); and for בְּיָדוֹ (bÿyado, “in his hand”) a number of ideas – לְאֵיד (lÿ’ed, “calamity”) or פִּידוֹ (pido, “his disaster”). Wright takes this last view and renders it “he knows that misfortune is imminent,” leaving the “day of darkness” to the next verse.