“The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days, and the number of years is hidden to the oppressor.”
My Notes
What Does Job 15:20 Mean?
"The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days, and the number of years is hidden to the oppressor." Eliphaz describes the wicked person's life as constant anguish: pain throughout all their days and uncertainty about their lifespan. The wicked don't enjoy their wickedness. They suffer through it. Every day is travail. Every year is uncertain.
The word "travaileth" (mithcholel — writhes, twists in pain, is in labor) uses childbirth imagery: the wicked person lives in perpetual labor pains without ever delivering. The agony is ongoing and unproductive — pain without result, suffering without birth. The wicked person's life is all contraction, no delivery.
The "number of years is hidden" means the oppressor lives in constant anxiety about death: he doesn't know when it will come. The uncertainty is part of the punishment. The wicked person can't relax into any season because the end might arrive at any moment. The hidden timeline is itself a form of torment.
Reflection Questions
- 1.What chronic internal pain might be the consequence of something you need to change?
- 2.How does 'travail without delivery' — pain without purpose — describe the futility of wickedness?
- 3.What does the 'hidden number of years' teach about the anxiety that accompanies living against God's design?
- 4.Where has someone applied the 'the wicked suffer, therefore your suffering proves wickedness' logic to you — and was it fair?
Devotional
All his days — pain. The wicked person doesn't enjoy the fruit of wickedness, according to Eliphaz. Every day is travail. The entire life is labor pains that never produce a birth. The suffering is constant, and the end is unknown. The oppressor lives in both chronic pain and chronic anxiety.
The childbirth imagery — 'travaileth' — is specifically cruel: labor pains have a purpose. They produce a child. But the wicked person's travail produces nothing. The pain is perpetual and purposeless. The writhing never stops and never delivers. It's agony without outcome — suffering without the reward that makes suffering meaningful.
The 'number of years is hidden' adds the existential dread: the oppressor doesn't know when death comes. The uncertainty itself is the punishment. You can't enjoy your stolen wealth when you don't know if tomorrow is your last day. You can't relax into your power when the end might arrive at any moment. The hidden timeline makes every day potentially the final one.
Eliphaz is partly right — wickedness DOES produce anxiety and chronic distress. The person living against God's design does experience internal torment. But Eliphaz's mistake is applying this as a diagnostic tool: since the wicked suffer, and you're suffering, you must be wicked. The correct observation (wickedness produces suffering) doesn't validate the reverse conclusion (suffering proves wickedness).
What internal travail — chronic pain, hidden anxiety, purposeless suffering — might be the fruit of something you need to change?
Commentary
Trusted original commentary from respected historical Bible scholars and theologians.
The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days,.... Either to commit iniquity, which he is at great pains to do, and…
Travaileth with pain - That is, his sorrows are like the pains of parturition. Eliphaz means to say that he is a…
Eliphaz, having reproved Job for his answers, here comes to maintain his own thesis, upon which he built his censure of…
This doctrine itself. The passage gives a picture of the conscience of the wicked man filled with presentiments of evil,…
Cross References
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