Eliphaz: Are You the First Man Born?
1 Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered, 2 “Should a wise man answer with vain knowledge, and fill himself with the east wind? 3 Should he reason with unprofitable talk, or with speeches with which he can do no good? 4 Yes, you do away with fear, and hinder devotion before God. 5 For your iniquity teaches your mouth, and you choose the language of the crafty. 6 Your own mouth condemns you, and not I. Yes, your own lips testify against you. 7 “Are you the first man who was born? Or were you brought out before the hills? 8 Have you heard the secret counsel of God? Do you limit wisdom to yourself? 9 What do you know that we don’t know? What do you understand which is not in us? 10 With us are both the gray-headed and the very aged men, much older than your father. 11 Are the consolations of God too small for you, even the word that is gentle toward you? 12 Why does your heart carry you away? Why do your eyes flash, 13 that you turn your spirit against God, and let such words go out of your mouth? 14 What is man, that he should be clean? What is he who is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? 15 Behold, he puts no trust in his holy ones. Yes, the heavens are not clean in his sight; 16 how much less one who is abominable and corrupt, a man who drinks iniquity like water!
The second cycle opens with the gentle friend gone, and the charge is now that Job's arguments are themselves the evidence against him.
Nothing survives of the courtesy that opened the first speech. Job's words are the east wind Job 15:2, the hot dry blast that ruins a crop.
The accusation in verse 4 is the most serious Eliphaz makes, and it is about consequences rather than conduct. You do away with fear, and hinder devotion before God. Job is not merely wrong; he is damaging other people's reverence by talking this way in public. That charge is always available against anyone who says out loud that the system does not work, and it is usually made by those with least reason to doubt it.
Then the reasoning turns circular in a way worth naming. Your iniquity teaches your mouth, and your own mouth condemns you, and not I Job 15:5–6.
The complaint is being treated as proof of the guilt it complains about. A man who accepts the verdict confirms it; a man who protests demonstrates it. There is no statement Job could make that would count as evidence of innocence, which means the friends' position has stopped being a claim about the world and become unfalsifiable.
The sarcasm that follows is aimed at Job's presumption. Are you the first man who was born? Or were you brought out before the hills? Have you heard the secret counsel of God? Job 15:7–8.
The irony is total and Eliphaz cannot see it. There is a secret counsel, it is reported in the first two chapters, and it concerns Job. Nobody in the room has heard it. Eliphaz is mocking the idea of access to a heavenly deliberation while arguing a case that a heavenly deliberation has already settled — and his own authority for that case is a voice he heard in the dark and could not identify Job 4:15–16.
His appeal to seniority follows: with us are both the gray-headed and the very aged men, much older than your father Job 15:10. The argument is a headcount weighted by age.
And the theology he closes on is a harder version of his night vision. What is man, that he should be clean? God puts no trust in his holy ones, and the heavens are not clean in his sight; how much less a man who drinks iniquity like water Job 15:14–16.
The first half of that is true and the second half is a slander. Human beings are not clean before God, and every party in this book would agree. But the last phrase describes a man who takes in evil as naturally and eagerly as a thirsty man drinks, and it is said to someone who used to rise early to sacrifice for sins his children might have committed in their thoughts Job 1:5.
A general truth about human sinfulness has been aimed at a particular man, and that is the move the friends make in every speech they give.
settled What this mark means