“For your wrongdoing teaches your mouth, And you choose the language of the cunning.
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.
- BSB For your iniquity instructs your mouth, and you choose the language of the crafty.
- NKJV For your iniquity teaches your mouth, And you choose the tongue of the crafty.
- 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 tongue, as their bow, for falsehood; and they have grown strong in the land, but not for truth: for they proceed from evil to evil, and they don’t know me,” says Yahweh.
- Jer 9:8Their tongue is a deadly arrow. It speaks deceit. One speaks peaceably to his neighbor with his mouth, but in his heart, he lays wait for him.
- Jas 1:26If anyone among you thinks himself to be religious while he doesn’t bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, this man’s religion is worthless.
- Ps 52:2–4Your tongue plots destruction, like a sharp razor, working deceitfully.
- Luke 6:45The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings out that which is good, and the evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings out that which is evil, for out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks.
- Jas 3:5–8So the tongue is also a little member, and boasts great things. See how a small fire can spread to a large forest!
- Ps 50:19–20“You give your mouth to evil. Your tongue frames deceit.
- Ps 64:3who sharpen their tongue like a sword, and aim their arrows, deadly words,
- Ps 120:2–3Deliver my soul, Yahweh, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue.
- Job 9:22–24“It is all the same. Therefore I say he destroys the blameless and the wicked.
- Job 5:13He takes the wise in their own craftiness; the counsel of the cunning is carried headlong.
- Mark 7:21–22For from within, out of the hearts of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, sexual sins, murders, thefts,
- Job 12:6The tents of robbers prosper. Those who provoke God are secure, who carry their God in their hands.
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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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