Job 15
Eliphaz: You’ve gone too far
Eliphaz to Job: You suck the desert wind
1Eliphaz from Teman answered Job:2Would a wise man talk to God like that,
By sucking in the desert wind [1]
And blowing it out his belly?
3Would he babble on, yet make no sense?
Talk like that is a waste of time.
Job, you testify against yourself
4What you’re saying is disrespectful to God.We’re trying to pray for you,
But these words of yours are distracting us.
5That speech you made proves you’ve sinned.
Yet you speak in the style of wise teachers. [2]
6I don’t need to drop a hammer and pronounce you guilty.
You did that when you opened your mouth.
Job, are you older than the hills?
7Are you the first human?Is that why you’re smarter than everyone else?
Are you older than the hills?
8Did you get to sit in on God's council meetings?
Would you say that you own the rights to wisdom?
9Tell me, what do you know that we don't?
What have you figured out about things that confuse us?
10Gray-haired men older than your father
Back up what we’re trying to tell you.
Job, you get carried away
11Is God's comfort not enough for you?Are our words too much?
12Why are you letting yourself get carried away?
Why do you talk with your eyes on fire?
13Why do you spit fire at God?
Why do you burn him with your choice of words?
14How on earth could a person become perfectly pure?
How could a human live a righteous life?
15If God doesn’t fully trust his angels
Or anything in creation,
16Think of how much less he should trust us.
We’re bone-bad, disgusting,
And we chug evil like we’re dying of thirst.
Eliphaz’ beliefs 101
17Listen up and I’ll teach you a thing or two.I’ll tell you what I’ve seen for myself.
18I’ll tell you what the wisest sages have to say
And what their ancestors said long ago,
19Clear back to when the land was theirs
and before strangers moved in to live among them.
20Wicked people will suffer for their sins.
God stores up the suffering and dumps it on them.
21They imagine a terrifying future,
An attack that takes everything away. [3]
22There’s no light at the end of their road.
There’s nothing but a violent death.
23Rejected, they’ll roam about,
Scrounging for food.
They know that day will come too soon,
Crooks know they’ll pay for what they did
24That dark future terrifies them.And thy squirm like a king before a battle.
25They took a stand against God himself.
They defied the Almighty.
26They stubbornly refused to obey him,
And thought a mere shield [4] would protect them.
27They wear their wealth as fat on the face
And disgusting blubber on their thighs.
28But they will live in ruined cities,
And in houses condemned by the sane.
29Their wealth won't last,
And no one will care about their legacy.
30They won't escape the darkness ahead.
As suddenly as fire erupts and destroys,
Everything they own will blow away
As ashes in the wind.
32They don’t get to build a future.
They’ll run out of time
Before their dreams come true.
33They’ll shed their wealth
Like a vineyard drops grapes too soon,
Like an olive tree drops blossoms. [5]
34Godless people aren’t productive.
They destroy with bribes.
And destruction is what they’ll get,
Like a fire that swallows everything they own.
35They are the mother of lies,
The father of disaster.
Evil is all they produce.
Footnotes
115:1
Literally “east wind,” the same wind that crushed his oldest son’s house and killed his family (Job 1:19). This was presumably the sirocco wind that blew in from the Arabian Desert, east of what is now Israel and Palestinian Territory.
215:5
Literally the “crafty tongue.” “Crafty” can mean Job speaks with wisdom and understanding. But it doesn’t seem to point that way here. It can mean “sly” and “slick,” in the sense of a con man, fraud, or a snake in a nylon sock.
315:21
This is starting to sound like a word picture of Job’s experience, of losing everything.
415:26
The Hebrew text says it was a “bossed” shield. The bossed shield had a projection in the front center, An outward bump, The helped the shield deflect arrows and other sharp objects away from their target.
515:33
Blossoms should develop into olives. If they drop instead, there goes the harvest.
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