In modern times nations need to be aware of the covert influence of other nations, seeking to move the hearts of one people in favor of another. In other words, if left unchecked, a clandestine entity would be enabled to influence the decisions of an unsuspecting nation. In order to discourage such things, the United States has endeavored, in as much as such a thing is possible, to guard the way of our founding fathers. At that time, we won our freedom from a foreign power, and we decided on a path that would preserve our people and keep ourselves from being caught up in wars of other nations. In other words, we didn’t want to become involved in wars begun for reasons not supported by our own American way of life. Nothing is perfect, and we haven’t always followed the path our founding fathers envisioned for us, but the point is that we look to the past for wisdom, as we embrace our future.
In our present context, Eliphaz told Job to consider what he was about to tell him, and he would know the truth (Job 15:17). He said he was about to show Job what was true out of a known traditional record. Put another way, it was like taking a known monument and explaining what it was supposed to represent. Eliphaz uses a Hebrew word (H2372), which, according to the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon, can be translated: to see, perceive, look, behold, prophesy, provide… In other words, what Eliphaz sees, and he hopes to cause Job to see, is something that has come down from the past, pure and untainted by anything that may have come down to Job and the friends from a later time. Thus, what Eliphaz was about to share was the real deal, the original truth, something that had not been influenced by what came into existence later.
It is with a sense of pride not unlike patriotism that Eliphaz describes his source of wisdom, pure and unsophisticated as it was. He says: “wise men have declared (it) from their fathers and did not hide it (from their descendants)” (Job 15:18; parenthesis mine). Ancient wise men communicated to their descendants either by word of mouth, handed down by father to son, or by erecting a monument (cp. Genesis 31:45-55; 35:9-15). Whichever of these memorial records Eliphaz pointed to, cannot be known for certain, but he did point to an ancient record, concerning which his ancestors were moved to disclose an important matter to their descendants.
Eliphaz identifies his wise ancestors as folks who had been given their land by God. It was a time prior to the influence of strangers from other nations. In other words, what his ancestors had to declare to their descendants was something pure, unmixed and uncorrupted through outside influence (Job 15:19). It probably denoted a time not long after the Flood, immediately before or just after the time the nations were divided, vis-à-vis during or just after the time of the Nimrod Controversy (Genesis 11). Nevertheless, if this is true and logical, the time, to which Eliphaz pointed, was a time of disobedience. Mankind refused to fulfill the first directive of the Lord, which was to multiply and fill the earth (Genesis 1:28). Instead of obeying God, they wanted to remain together as one people (cp. Genesis 11:4). So, the Lord scattered them abroad by confusing their speech. Thus, one group of folks were unable to understand a second group, nor was the second able to communicate with a third and so forth (Genesis 11:8-9).
The problem, therefore, with Eliphaz’s argument is that, if these were the ancient wise men to whom he referred, they were disobedient to the Lord, so their wisdom would have been foolishness (Romans 1:21-22). On the other hand, if Eliphaz referred to a time prior to the Flood, the record and its interpretation had to pass through these folks, and would, therefore, have become corrupt, if it wasn’t already so. Finally, if Eliphaz referred to a time after the days of the Nimrod Controversy, that wisdom, so-called, would have been unable to escape the prior influence of those men who were so disobedient, themselves, that the Lord had to directly alter their goals (their wisdom), which were so opposed to his own (Genesis 11:4, 8-9). In other words, Eliphaz was basing his pure, unadulterated truth on something that came out of rebellion. How pure can that be?
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