How does Job 15:35 fit into the overall message of the Book of Job? Text of Job 15:35 “They conceive trouble and give birth to evil; their womb prepares deceit.” Immediate Literary Setting Eliphaz of Teman is speaking for the second time (Job 15). By now he is frustrated that Job refuses the standard retribution formula—“the righteous prosper, the wicked suffer.” His entire speech tightens that charge: the wicked person’s own scheming becomes a gestation that inevitably “delivers” destruction. Verse 35 is the poetic climax, reducing the sinner’s life-cycle to conception, gestation, and birth—all of it wickedness. Connection to Earlier Imagery in Job Job’s lament in chapter 3 employed birth imagery (“May the day perish on which I was born”). Eliphaz in 15:35 co-opts that language, portraying the wicked as undergoing an inverse birth narrative. Thus, the friends twist Job’s own vocabulary to indict him, showing how human counsel can sound sophisticated yet be misapplied. Poetic Parallels Across Scripture • Psalm 7:14: “Behold, the wicked man travails with evil; he conceives trouble and gives birth to falsehood.” • Isaiah 59:4: “They conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity.” • James 1:15: “Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin.” Job 15:35 stands in deliberate intertextual harmony with these passages, underscoring the biblical theme that sin is organic, self-propagating, and ultimately suicidal. Role in the Dialogical Structure The dialogues in Job follow a three-cycle pattern: accusation, rebuttal, escalation. Eliphaz’s second speech inaugurates Cycle 2 (chapters 15–21). Verse 35 functions as: 1. A thesis statement for the friends’ theology of retribution. 2. A transition into Bildad’s and Zophar’s harsher accusations (chapters 18–20). 3. A foil against which Job’s oath of innocence (chapters 27–31) will shine more brightly. Theological Tension Introduced Eliphaz’s maxim is theologically orthodox in the abstract—Scripture elsewhere affirms that sin breeds sin. Yet its application to Job is pastorally disastrous. The Book of Job exposes two truths simultaneously: • General moral order exists (cf. Proverbs 1:31). • Exceptions occur because God’s wisdom transcends human calculation (Job 28:12–28). Job 15:35 therefore sets up the central tension: Will God’s governance be reduced to a mechanistic formula or revealed as omniscient and free? Foreshadowing of Divine Verdict When Yahweh speaks (Job 38–42), He never indicts Job for hidden evil, thereby invalidating the friends’ syllogism epitomized in 15:35. The verse is retained in canonical Scripture not as final truth about Job but as essential dialogue that moves the audience toward God’s corrective voice. Contribution to Major Themes 1. Suffering and Innocence: Job’s experience contradicts Eliphaz’s axiom, pushing readers to see that innocence can coexist with suffering, culminating in the ultimate Innocent Sufferer, Christ (1 Peter 2:22–24). 2. Limits of Human Wisdom: Eliphaz is a sage of the ancient Near East, yet his wisdom fails because it lacks revelation (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:20–25). 3. Moral Causality vs. Sovereign Freedom: The verse articulates moral causality; the rest of the book balances it with divine freedom (Job 42:2). Pastoral and Practical Implications • Guard against simplistic blame-the-victim theology when counseling sufferers. • Recognize that true wisdom listens longer than it lectures. • Allow biblical tension to drive us toward the cross, where absolute innocence bore ultimate suffering for redemptive purposes (Isaiah 53:5). Summary Job 15:35 is Eliphaz’s poetic indictment against the wicked, serving as a literary and theological hinge in the Book of Job. It reinforces the friends’ retribution dogma, contrasts with Job’s assertions of innocence, and prepares for God’s revelatory correction. In the broader canonical context, it exposes the insufficiency of human wisdom, magnifies divine sovereignty, and anticipates the redemptive pattern fulfilled perfectly in Christ, the true Righteous Sufferer who, unlike Eliphaz’s caricature, conceived no deceit yet bore our iniquities that we might be born again to righteousness. |
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