Job 15:8-10

15:8 Do you listen in on God’s secret council?

Do you limit wisdom to yourself?

15:9 What do you know that we don’t know?

What do you understand that we don’t understand?

15:10 The gray-haired and the aged are on our side,

men far older than your father.


tn The meaning of סוֹד (sod) is “confidence.” In the context the implication is “secret counsel” of the Lord God (see Jer 23:18). It is a question of confidence on the part of God, that only wisdom can know (see Prov 8:30,31). Job seemed to them to claim to have access to the mind of God.

tn In v. 4 the word meant “limit”; here it has a slightly different sense, namely, “to reserve for oneself.”

tn The last clause simply has “and it is not with us.” It means that one possesses something through knowledge. Note the parallelism of “know” and “with me” in Ps 50:11.

tn The participle שָׂב (sav), from שִׂיב (siv, “to have white hair”; 1 Sam 12:2), only occurs elsewhere in the Bible in the Aramaic sections of Ezra. The word יָשִׁישׁ (yashish, “aged”) occurred in 12:12.

tn Heb “with us.”

tn The line reads: “[men] greater than your father [in] days.” The expression “in days” underscores their age – they were older than Job’s father, and therefore wiser.