Eliphaz charges Job with impiety, in justifying himself: he proves by tradition the unhappiness of the wicked.
Before Christ 1645.
Job 15:1. Then answered Eliphaz— Eliphaz, not a little incensed that Job should pay no regard to his advice, and should dare to challenge the Almighty to argue the point with him, charges him home with self-conceit, in entertaining too high an opinion of his own knowledge; with arrogance, in undervaluing the arguments drawn from their experience, whose age was a sufficient voucher for their wisdom; and with impiety, in thus rudely challenging the Almighty to answer for his conduct in afflicting him, Job 15:2-13. He presses home the same argument upon him a second time; to which he adds that of universal tradition; insinuating, that he had yet worse to expect, unless he prevented it by a contrary conduct: and then presents him with an image, setting forth the final state of a wicked man; in which he so works up the circumstances, as to make it resemble Job and his condition as much as possible; intimating thereby, that he imagined him to be that very wicked man whom he had been describing, and that he had by that means drawn down God's judgments on himself, Job 15:14-30. That therefore his conceptions of innocence were an illusion, but one, however, of the worst kind: he had deceived himself: Job 15:31-35. Heath.