“He taketh the wise in their own craftiness: and the counsel of the froward is carried headlong.”
Eliphaz states that God catches the wise in their own craftiness and that the counsel of the twisted is brought to a quick end, suggesting that intelligence and cunning, when employed for selfish or wicked purposes, inevitably backfire. The circular punishment where the wise are caught by their own devices represents poetic justice. The assertion implies that any attempt by Job to hide or rationalize hidden sin will ultimately be exposed by God.
Church Fathers on Job 5:13
He taketh the wise in their own craftiness, and the counsel of the froward is carried headlong. For oftentimes, some that are puffed up with human wisdom, when they see that the decrees of God are contrary to their inclinations, set themselves to oppose them with crafty manoeuvres, and that they may bend the power of the dispensation of the Most High to meet their own wishes, they busy themselves in cunning contrivances, they devise schemes of excessive refinement. But they…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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