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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 15:14 - 15:14
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14 What is mortal man that he should be pure,
And that he who is born of woman should be righteous?
15 He trusteth not His holy ones,
And the heavens are not pure in His eyes:
16 How much less the abominable and corrupt,
Man, who drinketh iniquity as water!
The exclamation in Job 15:14 is like the utterance: mortal man and man born flesh of flesh cannot be entirely sinless. Even “the holy ones” and “the heavens” are not. The former are, as in Job 5:1, according to Job 4:18, the angels as beings of light (whether קָדַשׁ signifies to be light from the very first, spotlessly pure, or, vid., Psalter, i. 588f., to be separated, distinct, and hence exalted above what is common); the latter is not another expression for the אַנְגְּלֵי מְרֹומָא (Targ.), the “angels of the heights,” but שָׁמַיִם is the word used for the highest spheres in which they dwell (comp. Job 25:5); for the angels are certainly not corporeal, but, like all created things, in space, and the Scriptures everywhere speak of angels and the starry heavens together. Hence the angels are called the morning stars in Job 38:7, and hence both stars and angels are called צְבָא השׁמים and צְבָאֹות (vid., Genesis. S. 128). Even the angels and the heavens are finite, and consequently are not of a nature absolutely raised above the possibility of sin and contamination.
Eliphaz repeats here what he has already said, Job 4:18.; but he does it intentionally, since he wishes still more terribly to describe human uncleanness to Job (Oetinger). In that passage אַף was merely the sign of an anti-climax, here כִּי אַף is quanto minus. Eliphaz refers to the hereditary infirmity and sin of human nature in Job 15:14, here (Job 15:16) to man's own free choice of that which works his destruction. He uses the strongest imaginable words to describe one actualiter and originaliter corrupted. נִתְעָב denotes one who is become an abomination, or the abominated = abominable (Ges. §134, 1); נֶֽאֱלָח, one thoroughly corrupted (Arabic alacha, in the medial VIII conjugation: to become sour, which reminds one of ζύμη, Rabb. שְׂאֹר שֶׁבְּעִסָּה, as an image of evil, and especially of evil desire). It is further said of him (an expression which Elihu adopts, Job 34:7), that he drinks up evil like water. The figure is like Pro 26:6, comp. on Psa 73:10, and implies that he lusts after sin, and that it is become a necessity of his nature, and is to his nature what water is to the thirsty. Even Job does not deny this corruption of man (Job 14:4), but the inferences which the friends draw in reference to him he cannot acknowledge. The continuation of Eliphaz' speech shows how they render this acknowledgment impossible to him.