Job 15:1 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters | Metropolitan Tabernacle

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Job 15:1

Comments

Eliphaz speaks again, this time more roughly than before. His resentment of Job’s claim to evangelical experience leads him to cry in effect – ‘Do you think you are unique in religious knowledge and experience? Won’t you accept that we have standing also?’He has become more blunt with less pretence at being conciliatory. Having tried and failed using something gentler (15:11), he feels he can only succeed by being blunt. He is now openly against Job. He has less to say than he did on the previous occasion, and the tendency is for the comforters to say less in each further round. ‘You, Job, make a claim to wisdom still, but your words show you to be an empty-headed man, without knowledge.’ Making no attempt to answer any of the matters that Job has raised, he insists that Job’s words are enough in themselves to mark him as empty; no one would utter such things unless he had zero understanding. He has the indication of a man who is afraid to engage too closely, because he realises he would have difficulty answering the specific points that Job had raised. Job had said things that deeply challenged the whole basis of his theology, and required him to question it himself. But this was an effort he was not prepared to make, so he clings to his existing ideas and repeats them even though the Job’s objections remain unanswered.The east wind was a hot wind, passing over extensive deserts which dried it and so brought little refreshment. Job’s words are like this according to Eliphaz. This is a superficial way of dealing with what Job has said. If he seriously wished to convince Job of error, he should have interacted with his arguments in detail and not ignored them.

Application

‘When we know we have spoken truth and done so on God’s behalf, and yet men reject all that we have said: it is a very hard and grievous temptation. For when that happens not only are we personally blamed, but we see that men also refuse the things that are of God. Nevertheless it was necessary for Job to undertake such a battle, as we see in this passage. He had maintained his case, not by subtlety or of wilfulness, nor through ignorance: and yet he was charged with taking the tongue of craftiness, or of the despisers of God, and that all his sayings were only wind, in which there was no firm reasoning. Job is then grievously charged here for maintaining the doctrine which he knew to be of God. This serves as our example today, for many are deeply grieved when they see that men do not receive God’s word, and that, for the most part, the world condemns it. But what of it? Given that men have at all times stubbornly opposed God, and he could never yet get them to receive what they need to receive. Let us not think it strange that we also have the same experience, and that the authority of God and of his word is resisted by the stubbornness and malice of men’ (Calvin – English updated).

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Job 15:1 Commentary and Bible Study