For your iniquity instructs your mouth, and you choose the language of the crafty.
Parallel translations
- WEB For your iniquity teaches your mouth, and you choose the language of the crafty.
- KJV For thy mouth uttereth thine iniquity, and thou choosest the tongue of the crafty.
- NKJV For your iniquity teaches your mouth, And you choose the tongue of the crafty.
- NASB “For your wrongdoing teaches your mouth, And you choose the language of the cunning.
- NLT Your sins are telling your mouth what to say. Your words are based on clever deception.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Eliphaz says Job's own sin shapes his crafty speech. He claims guilt is behind Job's words.
Overview
Eliphaz asserts that Job's 'iniquity teaches your mouth' and that he chooses 'the language of the crafty.' He presumes hidden guilt is fueling Job's defense. This circular reasoning, assuming sin and then reading it into Job's words, typifies the friends' flawed approach to his suffering.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 13
- Jer 9:3–5“They bend their tongues like bows; lies prevail over truth in the land. For they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not take Me into account,” declares the LORD.
- Jer 9:8Their tongues are deadly arrows; they speak deception. With his mouth a man speaks peace to his neighbor, but in his heart he sets a trap for him.
- Jas 1:26If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not bridle his tongue, he deceives his heart and his religion is worthless.
- Ps 52:2–4Your tongue devises destruction like a sharpened razor, O worker of deceit.
- Luke 6:45The good man brings good things out of the good treasure of his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil treasure of his heart. For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.
- Jas 3:5–8In the same way, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it boasts of great things. Consider how small a spark sets a great forest ablaze.
- Ps 50:19–20You unleash your mouth for evil and unharness your tongue for deceit.
- Ps 64:3who sharpen their tongues like swords and aim their bitter words like arrows,
- Ps 120:2–3Deliver my soul, O LORD, from lying lips and a deceitful tongue.
- Job 9:22–24It is all the same, and so I say, ‘He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.’
- Job 5:13He catches the wise in their craftiness, and sweeps away the plans of the cunning.
- Mark 7:21–22For from within the hearts of men come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery,
- Job 12:6The tents of robbers are safe, and those who provoke God are secure—those who carry their god in their hands.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
Job's cry for a mediator who can lay his hand on both God and man, and his confidence that 'my Redeemer lives' and will stand on the earth, reaches forward to Jesus the living Redeemer.
How Job 15:5 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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