Interpretation Helps for Job 15-17

• In Job 15:10 when Eliphaz says, "The gray-haired and the aged are on our side, men even older than your father," he is saying that Job does not hold all wisdom--there are older and wiser men among them.
• In 15:11 Eliphaz says, "Are God's consolations not enough for you, words spoken gently to you?" He is referring to the advice of himself and Job's other friends.
• In 15:15-16 Eliphaz says, "If God places no trust in his holy ones, if even the heavens are not pure in his eyes, how much less man..." It's not that angels or heaven are tainted by sin, but this is another way of saying that created things are under God.
• In 15:17-19 where Eliphaz says, "Let me tell you what I have seen, what wise men have declared, hiding nothing received from their fathers (to whom alone the land was given when no alien pass among them)..." About the parenthetical phrase: Purity of race was considered a sign of high nobility. Basically Eliphaz is saying, "What I am about to share is of the highest caliber of wisdom."
• In Job 16:18-21 the witness/advocate is Jesus, although Job does not yet know him by name.
• In 17:3 Job says, "Give me, O God, the pledge you demand." He is asking for a guarantee from God that he is right.
• In 17:4-5 Job says, "You have closed their minds to understanding; therefore you will not let them triumph. If a man denounces his friends for reward, the eyes of his children will fail." Job is referring to his friends, whose children were bound to share in their judgment.