Job 15:15

Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(15) Behold.—Comp. Job 4:18; Job 5:5.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

15:1-16 Eliphaz begins a second attack upon Job, instead of being softened by his complaints. He unjustly charges Job with casting off the fear of God, and all regard to him, and restraining prayer. See in what religion is summed up, fearing God, and praying to him; the former the most needful principle, the latter the most needful practice. Eliphaz charges Job with self-conceit. He charges him with contempt of the counsels and comforts given him by his friends. We are apt to think that which we ourselves say is important, when others, with reason, think little of it. He charges him with opposition to God. Eliphaz ought not to have put harsh constructions upon the words of one well known for piety, and now in temptation. It is plain that these disputants were deeply convinced of the doctrine of original sin, and the total depravity of human nature. Shall we not admire the patience of God in bearing with us? and still more his love to us in the redemption of Christ Jesus his beloved Son?

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints - In Job 4:18, it is, "in his servants," but no doubt the same thing is intended. The reference is to the angels, called there servants, and here saints קדשׁים qôdeshı̂ym, holy ones; see the notes at Job 4:18.

Yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight - In Job 4:18, "and his angels he charged with folly." The general idea is the same. God is so holy that all things else seem to be impure. The very heavens seem to be unclean when compared with him. We are not to understand this as meaning that the heavens are defiled; that there is sin and corruption there, and that they are loathsome in the sight of God. The object is to set forth the exceeding purity of God, and the greatness of his holiness. This sentiment seemed to be a kind of proverb, or a commonplace in theology among the sages of Arabia. Thus, it occurs in Job 25:5, in the speech of Bildad, when he had nothing to say but to repeat the most common-place moral and theological adages -

Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not;

Yea, the stars are not pure in his sight:

How much less man, that is a worm,

And the son of man, which is a worm!

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

15. Repeated from Job 4:18; "servants" there are "saints" here; namely, holy angels.

heavens—literally, or else answering to "angels" (see on [508]Job 4:18, and [509]Job 25:5).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

In his saints, i.e. in his angels, as appears by comparing Job 4:18, who are called his saints or holy ones, Deu 33:2 Psalm 103:20 Daniel 4:13,23 Mt 18:10 24:36; who though they were created holy, yet he could not be confident in them, nor they be confident in themselves that they would continue in their integrity if they were left to themselves, and not upheld by God’s special grace and assistance. See Poole "Job 4:18".

The heavens, Heb. and the heavens, i.e. either,

1. The heavens properly so called; which though they be free from those drossy mixtures which are and appear in heavenly bodies, yet are not absolutely pure, but have some spots and blemishes in them; as philosophers have discovered, and the all-seeing God knoweth. Compare Job 25:5, where the stars are said not to be pure; unless the stars also there be metaphorically put for the angels, as they are Job 38:7, and for other holy ministers of God, as Daniel 8:10 Revelation 1:16,20 12:1,4.

2. The angels that dwell in heaven; heaven being oft put for its inhabitants; either for God, as Psalm 73:9 Daniel 4:26 Luke 15:18,21; or for the angels that dwell in heaven, as Psalm 89:5 148:1,2. So this is a repetition of the same thing in other words. And these are not pure, to wit, simply and perfectly, and comparatively to God; in which and such like respects God only is said to be good, and wise, and immortal. The angels are pure from corruption, but not from imperfection, nor from a possibility of sinning, if God should withdraw his help from them.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints,.... In holy men, set apart for himself by his grace, whose sins are expiated by the blood of his Son, and whose hearts are sanctified by his Spirit, and who live holy lives and conversations, as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; these, though he trusts many of them with much, as the prophets of old with the messages of his grace and will, and the ministers of the word with treasure, in their earthen vessels, the sacred "depositum" of the glorious Gospel, with gifts of grace, fitting them for their work, and with the care of the souls of men; yet he trusts none of them with themselves, with the redemption and salvation of their souls, with the regeneration and sanctification of their hearts, and with their preservation to eternal glory; he has put those into the hands of his Son and Spirit, and keeps them by his power through faith unto salvation: the Targum renders it, in his saints above, in the saints in heaven, in glorified men; he is there their all in all; as their happiness, so their safety and protection; see an instance of his care and preservation of them after the resurrection, when in a perfect state, Revelation 20:8; or this may be understood of the angels, who sometimes are called saints, Deuteronomy 33:2; who though they have been trusted with many things to impart to the sons of men, yet not with the salvation of men, nor even with the secret of it; they were not of God's privy council when the affair was debated and settled; nor with other secrets, as the day and hour of the last judgment, the coming of the Son of Man: or the sense may be, "he putteth no perfection or stability" (d) in them, that is, perfection in comparison of his; for if theirs were equal to his, they would be gods, which it is impossible to be, or for God to make them such; and likewise such stability as to have been able to have stood of themselves, which it appears they had not, since many of them fell, and the rest needed confirming grace, which they have by Christ, the Head of all principalities and powers:

yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight; heaven born men, partakers of the heavenly calling, whose hearts and affections are set on heavenly things, and have their conversation in heaven; yet these, in the sight of a pure and holy God, and in comparison of him, are impure and unholy; or they of heaven, as Mr. Broughton renders it, the inhabitants of heaven; the angels on high, as the Targum paraphrases it; these are charged by him with folly, and they, conscious of their imperfection with respect to him, cover their faces with their wings, while they celebrate the perfection of his holiness, who is so glorious in it; though the natural heavens may be intended, at least not excluded, and the luminous bodies in them, as Bildad seems to explain it, Job 25:5; the stars are reckoned the more dense and thick part of the heavens, the moon has its spots, and by later discoveries it seems the sun is not without them, and the heavens are often covered with clouds and darkness, and the present ones will be purified with fire at the general conflagration, which supposes them unclean, and they shall pass away, and new ones succeed, which implies imperfection in the former, or there would be no need of others; this is the proof Eliphaz gives of what he had suggested in Job 15:14.

(d) "non posuit stabilitatem", Pagninus; "immutabilitatem, sive perfectionem absolutam", Vatablus; "firmum opus non produxit", Tigurine version; "non crediturns esset firmitatem", Junius & Tremellius.

Geneva Study Bible

Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

15. his saints] his holy ones, i. e. His angels, cf. on ch. Job 5:1.

the heavens] These are here the material heavens, not the celestial inhabitants, cf. ch. Job 25:5. So Exodus 24:10, “And they saw the God of Israel, and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the very heaven in its clearness”; see also Ezekiel 1:22.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 15. - Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; rather, in his holy ones (see the Revised Version). The word "saint" has in course of time come to be so exclusively attached to holy men' that it can no longer be applied, without danger of being misunderstood, to angels. Eliphaz here, as in Job 5:1, speaks not of holy men, but of the holy angels. Without taxing them with sin, he is strongly convinced of their imperfection - their defective wisdom (Job 5:18), weakness, and untrustworthiness. His views are decidedly peculiar, and not borne out by the rest of Scripture. Yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight. The material heavens are probably intended. That limpid liquid blue in which the human eye sees no stain or speck, to the Divine eye is tinged with uncleanness The idea is that neither animate nor inanimate nature contains any form of being that is absolutely without spot or blemish. In God alone is there perfect purity. Job 15:15

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

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 קדשׁ 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 אנגּלי מרומא (Targ.), the "angels of the heights," but שׁמים 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 צבא השׁמים and צבאות (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 אף was merely the sign of an anti-climax, here כּי אף 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. נתעב denotes one who is become an abomination, or the abominated equals abominable (Ges. 134, 1); נאלח, one thoroughly corrupted (Arabic alacha, in the medial VIII conjugation: to become sour, which reminds one of ζύμη, Rabb. שׂאר שׁבּעסּה, 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 Proverbs 26:6, comp. on Psalm 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.