Discovery BoxJob 15:12-16 
Context15:12 Why 1 has your heart carried you away, 2
and why do your eyes flash, 3
15:13 when you turn your rage 4 against God
and allow such words to escape 5 from your mouth?
15:14 What is man that he should be pure,
or one born of woman, that he should be righteous?
15:15 If God places no trust in his holy ones, 6
if even the heavens 7 are not pure in his eyes,
15:16 how much less man, who is abominable and corrupt, 8
who drinks in evil like water! 9
1 tn The interrogative מָה (mah) here has the sense of “why?” (see Job 7:21).
2 tn The verb simply means “to take.” The RSV has “carry you away.” E. Dhorme (Job, 212-13) goes further, saying that it implies being unhinged by passion, to be carried away by the passions beyond good sense (pp. 212-13). Pope and Tur-Sinai suggest that the suffix on the verb is datival, and translate it, “What has taken from you your mind?” But the parallelism shows that “your heart” and “your eyes” are subjects.
3 tn Here is another word that occurs only here, and in the absence of a completely convincing suggestion, probably should be left as it is. The verb is רָזַם (razam, “wink, flash”). Targum Job and the Syriac equate it with a verb found in Aramaic and postbiblical Hebrew with the same letters but metathesized – רָמַז (ramaz). It would mean “to make a sign” or “to wink.” Budde, following the LXX probably, has “Why are your eyes lofty?” Others follow an Arabic root meaning “become weak.”
4 tn The Hebrew is רוּחֶךָ (rukhekha, “your spirit” or “your breath”). But the fact that this is turned “against God,” means that it must be given a derived meaning, or a meaning that is metonymical. It is used in the Bible in the sense of anger – what the spirit vents (see Judg 8:3; Prov 16:32; and Job 4:9 with “blast”).
5 tn The verb is a Hiphil perfect of yasa’, “to go out, proceed, issue forth.”
6 tn Eliphaz here reiterates the point made in Job 4:18.
7 sn The question here is whether the reference is to material “heavens” (as in Exod 24:10 and Job 25:5), or to heavenly beings. The latter seems preferable in this context.
8 tn The two descriptions here used are “abominable,” meaning “disgusting” (a Niphal participle with the value of a Latin participle [see GKC 356-57 §116.e]), and “corrupt” (a Niphal participle which occurs only in Pss 14:3 and 53:4), always in a moral sense. On the significance of the first description, see P. Humbert, “Le substantif toáe„ba„ et le verbe táb dans l’Ancien Testament,” ZAW 72 [1960]: 217ff.). On the second word, G. R. Driver suggests from Arabic, “debauched with luxury, corrupt” (“Some Hebrew Words,” JTS 29 [1927/28]: 390-96).
9 sn Man commits evil with the same ease and facility as he drinks in water – freely and in large quantities.
