Job 15

Verse-by-verse explanation

1. Job 15:1Eliphaz’s second speech, now much harsher than his first — he is losing patience with Job.
2. Job 15:2Eliphaz speaks again, now much harsher — he asks whether a truly wise man would answer with the “east wind,” accusing Job’s speech of being just hot air with no real content.
3. Job 15:3Eliphaz keeps accusing Job of arguing with useless words that go nowhere.
4. Job 15:4The accusation grows more serious: Eliphaz says Job is destroying his own fear of God and emptying out prayer — this is no longer just about argument, it is about piety.
5. Job 15:5Eliphaz claims Job’s own mouth reveals his guilt, that he has chosen “the tongue of the crafty” — turning Job’s own words against him.
6. Job 15:6“Thine own mouth condemneth thee, and not I” — Eliphaz clears himself of any direct accusation, saying it is Job who incriminates himself with his own speech.
7. Job 15:7Eliphaz asks sarcastically whether Job was the first man ever born — meaning, whether he thinks he has access to some wisdom no one else has, not even the elders.
8. Job 15:8Eliphaz asks, with sarcasm, whether Job has heard God’s secret counsel, as if he alone had access to such wisdom — mocking the presumption he pins on Job.
9. Job 15:9He asks what Job knows that his friends do not — denying that Job has any special knowledge.
10. Job 15:10Eliphaz reminds Job that among them are men even older than his father — claiming authority through age and accumulated experience.
11. Job 15:11Eliphaz asks whether the “consolations of God” they have offered are too small for Job — he feels their comfort is being scorned.
12. Job 15:12He asks why Job’s heart “carrieth thee away” and what his eyes “wink at” — noting, and criticizing, Job’s visible emotional intensity.
13. Job 15:13Eliphaz accuses Job of turning his spirit against God, letting words escape his mouth that should never be spoken against the Almighty.
14. Job 15:14Eliphaz repeats almost the same question from the night vision in chapter 4: what is man, born of woman, that he should be pure or righteous?
15. Job 15:15Neither the “saints” nor the heavens are pure in God’s sight, Eliphaz says — reinforcing that impurity is universal, no one escapes the comparison.
16. Job 15:16Eliphaz escalates the argument: how much more abominable is man, “which drinketh iniquity like water” — a description of someone utterly saturated with wrongdoing.
17. Job 15:17Eliphaz shifts tone: now he speaks not of a personal vision but of what he himself has “seen” and will declare — another source of authority, alongside tradition and the vision of chapter 4.
18. Job 15:18He invokes what the ancient sages taught and passed down without concealing anything — the authority of tradition handed from father to son.
19. Job 15:19Eliphaz stresses that this tradition came from a people “unto whom alone the earth was given,” with no foreign influence — meaning the wisdom would be pure, uncontaminated from outside.
20. Job 15:20Eliphaz describes the wicked living in constant fear even when nothing bad happens — a way of saying that psychological suffering is already punishment built into sin itself, even without visible disaster.
21. Job 15:21Here begins Eliphaz’s long description of the wicked man’s fate: even in times of peace, the sound of terror already echoes in his ears, and the destroyer is on his way.
22. Job 15:22The wicked man lives without believing he will escape the darkness, always waiting for the sword — a portrait of constant fear as part of the punishment itself.
23. Job 15:23He wanders after bread, knowing that a day of darkness is already reserved for him — hunger and dread walk together in this description.
24. Job 15:24Anguish and tribulation haunt him like a king ready for battle — Eliphaz personifies suffering as an armed enemy advancing on the wicked man.
25. Job 15:25The reason for the punishment, according to Eliphaz, is clear: the wicked man stretched out his hand against God and rebelled against the Almighty.
26. Job 15:26The image of charging at God “upon his neck, upon the thick bosses of his bucklers” is one of arrogant, hard-headed confrontation, like someone going to war against his own Creator.
27. Job 15:27The face covered in fat and the fleshy waist describe the wicked man’s prosperity before his fall — abundance as a symbol of satisfied arrogance.
28. Job 15:28Ironically, this same wicked man ends up living in ruined cities, in houses destined for destruction — the fate he helped cause comes back upon him.
29. Job 15:29Eliphaz assures that this man will not grow rich nor keep his possessions — his apparent prosperity is described as temporary and doomed to collapse.
30. Job 15:30He does not escape the darkness; fire dries up his shoots, and he vanishes “by the breath of his mouth” — almost the image of God’s own breath blowing out a flame.
31. Job 15:31Eliphaz warns not to trust in vanity, because the very vanity the wicked man trusts in will be exactly his payment — he falls into the very thing he valued.
32. Job 15:32Ruin arrives before its proper time, and his branch will never turn green again — no chance of recovery or new life.
33. Job 15:33The images of the shaken unripe grape and the fallen olive blossom describe a potential cut short before it can ripen — everything he might have produced is lost early.
34. Job 15:34The “congregation of hypocrites” turns barren, and fire consumes the tents built with bribery — Eliphaz widens the target to the whole community of the corrupt, not just one individual.
35. Job 15:35The final image, that they “conceive mischief, and bring forth vanity,” treats wickedness as something that generates its own destruction, like a pregnancy that only produces deceit.