Translations
F.O.G.MPrimary
F.O.G MessageYour own guilt is schooling your mouth in its arguments; you've chosen the tongue of the cunning.
F.O.GSecondary
The F.O.GFor your guilt trains your mouth, and you choose the tongue of the crafty.
KJV
King James VersionFor thy mouth uttereth thine iniquity, and thou choosest the tongue of the crafty.
BSB
Berean Standard BibleFor your iniquity instructs your mouth, and you choose the language of the crafty.
Footnotes
The word *arum* ("crafty/shrewd") is the identical term used of the serpent in Genesis 3:1—"Now the serpent was more *arum* than any beast of the field." Eliphaz is not merely calling Job clever; he is casting him as serpent-like, a subverter of divine order. The intertextual echo is devastating and almost certainly deliberate. *Avon* ("guilt/iniquity") as teacher (*ye'alef*, from the same root as the Hebrew letter *aleph*—to learn) adds a bitter irony: Job's own moral failure has become his instructor. FOG preserves the verb "trains" to echo *ye'alef*'s pedagogical root; both translations retain the serpent-resonance through the word "crafty."