Job 15:17

THE DARK PICTURE THAT ELIPHAZ PAINTED OF JOB'S FUTURE

"I will show thee, hear thou me;

And that which I have seen I will declare

(Which wise men have told

From their fathers, and have not hid it;

Unto whom alone the land was given,

And no stranger passed among them):

The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days,

Even the number of years that are laid up for the oppressor.

A sound of terror is in his ears;

In prosperity the destroyer shall come upon him.

He believeth not that he shall return out of darkness,

And he is waited for of the sword.

He wandereth abroad for bread, saying,

Where is it?

He knoweth that the day of darkness is ready at his hand.

Distress and anguish make him afraid;

They prevail against him, as a king ready to the battle.

Because he hath stretched out his hand against God,

And behaveth himself proudly (biddeth defiance to) against the Almighty.

He runneth upon him with a stiff neck,

With the thick bosses of his bucklers;

Because he hath covered his face with his fatness,

And gathered fat upon his loins;

And he hath dwelt in desolate cities,

In houses which no man inhabited,

Which were ready to become heaps;

He shall not be rich, neither shall his substance continue,

Neither shall their possessions be extended .... on the earth.

He shall not depart out of the darkness;

The flame shall dry up his branches,

And by the breath of God's mouth shall he go away.

Let him not trust in vanity, deceiving himself;

For vanity shall be his recompense.

It shall be accomplished before his time,

And his branch shall not be green.

He shall shake off his unripe grape as the vine,

And shall cast off his flower as the olive tree

For the company of the godless shall be barren,

And fire shall consume the tents of bribery.

They conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity,

And their heart prepareth deceit."

The discerning reader will not overlook Eliphaz' strategy in this evil speech. In effect, he preached Job's funeral, mentioning all the things he could think of that would tie his description of the wicked to what had already happened to Job. The implied prophecies were that Job would never be rich (Job 15:20), that he would soon die (Job 15:30,32). etc. These prophecies, of course, were never fulfilled. Note particularly Job 15:21 in which Eliphaz explained that God's judgment would fall upon the wicked in the time of his "prosperity," exactly as it had happened to Job. A dozen other such brutal insinuations may be detected in this shameful tirade against Job.

We are delighted to skip any further attention to this crooked speech, although a fantastic instrument of the devil it surely was!