Job 16

Job answers Eliphaz by calling his friends worthless comforters, then pours out his sense that God Himself has become his attacker. Yet in the middle of the darkness he cries out that a witness and advocate in heaven will speak for him. The chapter moves from bitter complaint to a stubborn flicker of hope.

Job 16:1-2

Job replies to Eliphaz’s second speech. He has heard all this before. The friends came to comfort him, but their words add to his pain instead of easing it.

BSA: miserable (“troublesome, causing pain”): Their comfort does the opposite of comforting; it brings trouble and hurt.

Hebrew: עֲמַל (ʿamal, H5999) — “trouble, toil, misery.” Job calls them comforters of ’trouble’: their consolation produces the very misery it should remove.

Job 16:3

Job is weary of speeches that never end. They are windy, full of air and no substance. He asks what drives them to keep answering, when nothing they say helps him.

BSA: long-winded (“vain, windy”): Their words are like wind: plenty of noise, nothing solid to lean on.

Job 16:4-5

Job says he could talk as they do if the roles were reversed. But he would not mock or shake his head at a sufferer. He would strengthen and comfort. His complaint shows what true comfort should look like.

BSA: encourage (“strengthen, give courage to”): Real comfort puts strength back into a person instead of tearing him down.

See also: Romans 12:15.

Job 16:6

Nothing eases Job’s pain. Speaking does not help, and silence does not help. Grief like his cannot be talked away, and he is honest about it.

BSA: pain (“sorrow, grief, or suffering”): His pain is deep inner grief as well as bodily hurt.

Job 16:7

Job turns from the friends to God. He feels worn out by God and sees the loss of his children and household as God’s doing. This is how he honestly experiences it. The book’s opening shows the reader there was more going on.

BSA: devastated (“made desolate, left empty”): His home and circle of loved ones have been emptied out, leaving him alone.

See also: Job 1:18-19.

Job 16:8

Job’s wasted, shrunken body is treated by others as evidence that he must be guilty. His very frailty seems to stand up and accuse him. His suffering is being used as a verdict against him.

BSA: frailty (“leanness, physical weakness”): His thin, wasted body speaks like a witness, and onlookers read it as proof of guilt.

Job 16:9

Job pictures God as a wild beast tearing its prey, grinding its teeth, and glaring with fierce eyes. It is a dreadful picture, and it is how Job feels. He is saying what he feels, not stating a calm doctrine.

BSA: gnashes (“grinds, rubs”): The grinding of teeth is the sound of a hostile animal or enemy about to strike.

Job 16:10-11

People gape at Job, slap his cheek, and crowd against him. He feels that God has handed him over to cruel men. Being mocked and struck by the wicked deepens his sense of abandonment.

BSA: delivered (“handed me over to, shut me up unto”): Job feels locked in and given over to people who have no mercy.

See also: Psalm 22:7-13.

Job 16:12

Job remembers being at peace, then suddenly broken. The picture is a fighter seizing him by the neck and smashing him down. God has made him a target. The shock of the sudden reversal is part of the pain.

BSA: at ease (“in comfort, prosperous, and secure”): He had lived in settled well-being, which makes the sudden fall more bitter.

Job 16:13

Now the picture changes to archers on every side. Their arrows pierce his inner parts and spill his bile on the ground, which is a picture of a wound that kills. Job feels there is no mercy and no escape.

BSA: kidneys (“innermost being, seat of emotions”): In the ancient world the kidneys stood for the deepest inner life, so the wound reaches his very core.

Job 16:14

The blows come again and again. A wall is breached, then breached once more, as a champion storms in. Job feels there is no time to recover between one wound and the next.

BSA: wound (“breach, break”): The word pictures a gap broken in a city wall, which an attacker then pours through.

Job 16:15

Job has stopped trying to look strong. He has sewn sackcloth, the rough cloth of mourning, onto his skin. His horn, the sign of strength and dignity, lies buried in the dust. He is humbled to the ground.

BSA: horn (“a horn; a hill or peak”): A horn stood for strength and honor, so burying it means his pride and standing are gone.

Hebrew: קַרְנִי (qarni, H7161) — “my horn.” The horn of an animal was its strength, so ‘my horn’ stands for Job’s power and dignity, now thrust into the dust.

Job 16:16

Weeping has reddened Job’s face, and dark shadows circle his eyes. He looks like a man near death. The grief shows on his body.

BSA: deep shadows (“shades of death, death-shade”): The dark rings around his eyes look like the shadow of death itself.

Hebrew: צַלְמָוֶת (tsalmaveth, H6757) — “deep darkness, shadow of death.” The same word is used in Psalm 23:4 for the valley of the shadow of death. Here the darkness sits on Job’s own eyelids.

See also: Psalm 23:4.

Job 16:17

Job insists that his suffering is not the result of violence or a false heart. His hands are clean and his prayer is sincere. He does not claim to be sinless. He denies that he is the wicked man his friends describe.

BSA: pure (“clean and untainted”): He claims his prayer comes from an honest, undivided heart.

See also: Job 1:8.

Job 16:18

Job pleads that the earth would not hide his blood. In Scripture, spilled blood cries out for justice until it is answered. He wants his cry to stay alive until God acts. He fears being buried unvindicated.

BSA: cover (“let not, never”): He asks that his wrongs not be hidden and silenced.

See also: Genesis 4:10; Ezekiel 24:7-8.

Job 16:19

Here Job’s hope breaks through. Even now he believes someone in heaven will stand up for him. He seems to appeal to God against God, trusting the heavenly witness to speak the truth about him. Christians have often seen in this a pointer to Christ our advocate.

BSA: advocate (“supporter of my cause, one who vouches for me”): He looks for someone who will speak up for him and vouch for his honesty. witness (“testifier, one who gives evidence”): His witness is one who will tell the truth about him when others will not.

See also: 1 John 2:1; Job 19:25.

Job 16:20

His friends sneer at him, so he turns his tears toward God. He takes his grief to the one he cannot understand. Even in doubt, Job still weeps to God, not away from Him.

BSA: scoffers (“those who mock, scorn me”): Those who should have stood by him now treat his pain with contempt.

See also: Psalm 56:8.

Job 16:21

Job longs for someone to argue his case with God, as one man pleads for another. He wants fairness and a hearing. This longing for a mediator speaks to a need that Christians believe is answered in Jesus.

BSA: plead (“reason, argue, or rebuke”): He wants a real case put before God, with reasons weighed, not just silence.

See also: 1 Timothy 2:5.

Job 16:22

Job knows time is short. In a few years he will take the road from which no one returns. This gives his plea urgency. He wants to be vindicated before he dies.

BSA: no return (“from which I shall not come back, without turning back”): Death is a one-way road, so any answer must come soon.

See also: Job 10:21.