Job 15:14

“What [is] man, that he should be clean? etc.] Frail, feeble, mortal man, or woeful man, as Mr. Broughton renders it; since he is sinful, whereby he is become such a weak and dying creature: this question, as well as the following, is put by way of contempt, and as lessening man in a comparative sense, and in order to abate any high conceit of himself; who is not naturally clean, but the reverse, being conceived and born in sin; nor can he be so of himself, nor by any means he is capable of; and however clean he may be in his own eyes, or in the eyes of others, yet is not clean in the sight of God, and still less pure than him, his Maker, as in (<180417>Job 4:17); and indeed cannot be clean…”

“Eliphaz repeats the revelation (Job 4:17) in substance, but using Job's own words (see on Job 14:1, on "born of a woman") to strike him with his own weapons.”

“What is man that he should be clean? - The object of Eliphaz in this is to overturn the positions of Job that he was righteous, and had been punished beyond his deserts. He had before maintained Job 4:7, that no one ever perished being innocent, and that the righteous were not cut off. This was with him a favorite position; and indeed the whole drift of the argument maintained by him and his friends was, to prove that uncommon calamities were proof of uncommon guilt. Job had insisted on it that he was a righteous man, and had not deserved the calamities which had come upon him - a position which Eliphaz seems to have regarded as an assertion of innocence. To meet this he now maintains that…”

“15:14 Can any mortal be pure? Eliphaz repeated himself (4:17-19) and Job (7:17; 14:4). • anyone born of a woman: Both “mortal” and “born of woman” imply weakness.”

“is man: Job 9:2, Job 14:4, Job 25:4-6; Kg1 8:46; Ch2 6:36; Psa 14:3, Psa 51:5; Pro 20:9; Ecc 7:20, Ecc 7:29; Joh 3:6; Rom 7:18; Gal 3:22; Eph 2:2, Eph 2:3; Jo1 1:8-10 Job 15:15”

“14 What is mortal man that he should be pure, And that he who is born of woman should be righteous? 15 He trusteth not His holy ones, And the heavens are not pure in His eyes: 16 How much less the abominable and corrupt, Man, who drinketh iniquity as water! The exclamation in Job 15:14 is like the utterance: mortal man and man born flesh of flesh cannot be entirely sinless. Even "the holy ones" and "the heavens" are not. The former are, as in Job 5:1, according to Job 4:18, the angels as beings of light (whether קדשׁ signifies to be light from the very first, spotlessly pure, or, vid., Psalter, i. 588f., to be separated, distinct, and hence exalted above what is common); the latter is not…”