Job 16

Chap. XVI. Ver. 1—22. Job again replies to Eliphaz.— I shall go the way whence I shall not return. The preceding speech was certainly calculated to keep up the interest of the poem, and to produce from Job an animate reply. He retaliates upon him what he had said about “words of wind,” or windy arguments, and calls them “miserable (Compare (Job 4:18).) comforters,” because by their tiresome and unfeeling speeches they added rather to his misery than relieved it. Were he in their case, he also could heap up words against them, and also “shake his head” at them, as they probably had done at him. But he would not copy their example; on the contrary, he would animate and strengthen them, and endeavour to assuage their grief.

In this chapter, it is not, in every case, easy to ascertain when Job speaks of his unkind friends, or of his God. In the former case, he had too much reason certainly for complaint; in the latter none, even upon his own principles: for, notwithstanding all he could suffer upon earth, yet, admitting a future state of retribution, there was still room to expect an abundant recompense for all his sufferings: and considering himself a sinner, as he constantly admits, “Wherefore doth a living man complain? a man for the punishment of his sins?” Job still, however, protests his innocence, in respect of the charges brought against him; and imprecates upon himself the punishment of all the blood which he had shed, meaning thereby pointedly to deny that he had shed any; which Scott, in his poetical version, thus beautifully expresses:— “‘O Earth! the blood accusing me reveal; Its piercing voice in no recess conceal.” The chapter concludes with an appeal to Heaven for his innocence of the crimes imputed to him, and with an earnest wish that he had an advocate on high, “as well as a witness, that his character might be redeemed from obloquy, before he went that way from which he should return no more during the present state of things.