JOB – CHAPTER 16

JOB’S REPLY TO ELIPHAZ

Verses 1-22:

Verses 1-3 begin Job’s second series of replies to his false comforting (?) friends. He asserts that they are “miserable comforters,” literally annoying and burdensome, without compassion, like a thorn gouging at proud flesh. He inquires why Eliphaz has become so annoyed, upset, replied in such windy words, contradicting himself again and again, as a self-esteemed wiser man than Job, Job 13:4; Psa 69:25; Php_1:16; Job 6:20.

Verse 4 is a sharp reprimand Job gives to Eliphaz, declaring that if Eliphaz’s soul-life were afflicted as he was, he could heap up words against him and “shake his head at him, mocking him also,” as Eliphaz had been doing to him. But “hot-air words,” and a multitude of platitudes, would not prove that an innocent man was guilty of false charges leveled against him, see? 2Kg 19:21; Psa 22:7; Psa 44:11; Psa 109:25; Isa 37:22; Jer 18:16; La 2:15; Mat 27:39.

Verse 5 states that Job would strengthen or console Eliphaz, if Eliphaz were in his condition, rather than attack him with mocking sarcasm, derision, and false accusations. He would help, not hurt, one in his condition, is what Job says he would do, as an example of love and compassion for the afflicted, Pro 27:9; 2Co 1:3-4; Gal 6:1-2.

Verses 6-8 assert that though Job had spoken his grief had not been relieved or gone from him. He adds that Eliphaz had only wearied him in laying on him false charge, showing no compassion. God had permitted Satan to take his property, family,’ and health for a “glory purpose,” but Eliphaz took his loss to be a judgment for wicked guilt. God had caused him to be wretched, with wrinkles and sores, and witnesses against him, as interpreted by those who sat as accusers, though he was innocent of the charges, Job 2:6-10; Joh 9:2-3; Joh 11:4.

Verse 9 states that Job’s enemies had taken his testing wrongly and pounced on him like a wild beast, gnashing and tearing at him, sharpening their eyes on him, as if God were tearing him apart in judgment of guilt for grave sins unconfessed, Psa 7:12; Job 13:24.

Verse 10 offers a lament to the Lord that “they,” his wild beast, companionless friends have: 1) gaped upon him with their mouth, repeatedly, Psa 22:13; Psa 35:21; Luk 23:35-36. It was much as our Lord’s so-called friends treated Him; 2) They had smitten Job upon the cheek reproachfully, with contemptable abuse, La 3:30; Mat 5:39; Matthew , 3) They gathered themselves together, in colleague, collusion, and conspiracy against him, to make him the more wretched, Psa 35:15; Psa 94:21; Act 4:27.

Verse 11 states that Job is aware that God has turned him over unto the ungodly, even to the wicked, to tormentingly try him for a time. And he has been and is vexed by it. Yet, it was nothing that his Lord would not also endure, Heb 4:15-16; 1Co 10:13.

Verse 12 states that Job was at one time at ease, but the Lord had broken him asunder, taken him by the neck, as an animal does its prey, and shaken him in pieces, Job 10:16; in contrast with his former state of prosperity and ease, Psa 102:10; The Lord had set him up (again) as a “mark,” to be shot by arrows, darts of the archers, Job 7:20; La 3:12.

Verses 13, 14 describes the Lord as using false friends as archers, who shoot arrows into him, to wound him further, without mercy. His gall of bitterness which they have punctured is poured out upon the ground, as also the liver, La 2:11. They have stormed in upon him like a mighty warrior making breaches in a fortress, 2Kg 14:13.

Verses 15, 16 state that Job had sewed sackcloth upon his skin, over his body scabs, as a loose mourning garment. He had defiled his horn in the dust. The horn was an emblem of ruling power. That once mighty power and influence of Job now lay in the dust, ashes of humiliation. To throw ones self down in the dust as a symbol of mourning and humility, as well as a personal despair, 1Kg 22:11. The Druse of Lebanon still wear horns as an ornament symbol of power. Verse 16 adds that his face was foul, (red or inflamed) with weeping, and his eyelids was (existed) the heavy shadow of death, La 5:17.

Verse 17 protests that this wretched condition was not for or because of any injustice or wickedness which he had done, as falsely charged by Eliphaz, Job 11:14-15. Similar words were spoken of Jesus Christ, Isa 53:9, “who did no violence, neither was deceit found in his mouth.” See also allusions to the unjust charges against and suffering of our Lord, Psa 22:13; Isa 1:16; Psa 22:7. Our Lord always desires inward devotion and outward righteousness in His people. Job too asserts that even his prayer is pure, of pure motive, before the Lord, Luk 18:1.

Verse 18 is a direct appeal of Job to the earth not to cover his blood, his undeserved suffering. He compares himself with one who has been murdered, whose blood the earth will not drink up, until it is avenged upon the murderer, Gen 4:10-11; Eze 24:1-8; Isa 26:2. The Arabs hold that no dew will lay on a spot defiled with innocent blood, 2Sa 1:21. Job asks the Lord that his cry may find no resting place, never stop, until his innocence of the false charges was known by men through the whole earth, even as it was in heaven, by the Lord God, Job 19:25; Job 27:9; Psa 66:18-19.

Verse 19 adds Job’s testimony, “behold my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high,” indicating his belief in vindication before the grave; He still trusted in God, implicitly, without wavering, Pro 3:3-5; Rom 1:9; 1Th 2:5; 2Co 5:1; 2Co 5:10-11.

Verse 20 relates that though Job’s friends scorned him, derided and scolded him, mocked him, as a wicked sinner, his eyes continually poured out tears, petitions to God, Isa 38:14. He never gave up on God, who never gives up on His children, Heb 13:5.

Verse 21 laments that a “man might plead for a man with God,” as he pleas for a neighbor in court, rather than mock, scoff at, and deride him, before God and his neighbor, friend, or fellowman, Job 31:35. The Man-God does plea for the helpless, as God helped Jacob in wrestling with him, Gen 23:6; Gen 32:25; and Jesus does plead or advocate for man before God, Rom 8:26-27; Heb 7:25; 1Jn 2:12.

Verse 22 recounts Job’s concession that when a few years had come, at the most, he would go the way, “whence he should not return,” that is to dwell in a corrupt body any more. The “few years,” in this present body, are contrasted with eternity where man shall live in an immortal body, Psa 90:10-12; Gen 34:30; Ecc 12:5; 1Co 15:51-58; 2Co 5:1.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

JOBS FOURTH ANSWER

Job 16, 17.

IF one had a sense of the ludicrous he would not only listen to this ardent debate, but he would be compelled to laugh in the very midst of it. Perhaps no more serious debate ever engaged the tongues of men, and no more difficult problem was ever discussed than the problem of human pain. It is the problem of the centuries, of the millenniums, and to this day remains unsolved. It is doubtful indeed if it ever had as intelligent a discussion as is recorded in the Book of Job. That is why the Book of Job lives.

In the nature of the case there can be no claim of inspiration on the part of these comforters, and it is not even essential that one claim inerrancy in the arguments of Job. The Bible nowhere maintains that everything found in it is true to fact. The intelligent advocates of verbal inspiration maintain rather that the record given is absolutely true, and even inerrant, but that true record may involve the report of misconceptions, false arguments, fallacious reasonings; yea, even with infidelity and atheism, but the report is true.

Now, the fun here is akin at least to the pleasure that brutal men derive from prize fights, and all men, even regenerate men, have more or less of the natural left over and left in them. The fun here is the fun of seeing the sick man rally and return to the attack every time, and in spite of his weakness, affliction and indescribable suffering, parry every blow and send his antagonists reeling against the

ropes, so that instead of taking the count as in the prize fight ring, they rest and seek mental recuperation, while their good seconds sally forth to confront the intellectual Samson.

In these chapters Job himself shows heat. The dear man has taken so many blows that they have roused him, and instead of putting him out of commission they have strengthened his good right arm, and he strikes more snappily and effectively than ever.

JOB CONDEMNS HIS COMFORTERS

He properly names them miserable comforters.

Then Job answered and said,

I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all.

Shall vain words have an end? or what emboldeneth thee that thou answerest? (Job 16:1-3).

He contrasts his humane character with their cruel conduct.

I also could speak as ye do: if your soul were in my souls stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you.

But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips would asswage your grief (Job 16:4-5).

He replies to their possible sympathy by a grief unassuaged.

Though I speak, my grief is not as swaged: and though I forbear, what am I eased? (Job 16:6).

JOB BELIEVES GOD IS BACK OF HIS AFFLICTION

He mistakes Satans work for Gods will.

But now He hath made me weary: Thou hast made desolate all my company.

And Thou hast filled me with wrinkles, which is a witness against me: and my leanness rising up in me beareth witness to my face.

He teareth me in His wrath, who hateth me: He gnasheth upon me with His teeth; mine enemy sharpeneth his eyes upon me.

They have gaped upon me with their mouth; they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully; they have gathered themselves together against me.

God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked.

I was at ease, but He hath broken me asunder: He hath also taken me by my neck, and shaken me to pieces, and set me up for His mark.

His archers compass me round about, He cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth not spare: he poureth out my gall upon the ground.

He breaketh me with breach upon breach, he runneth upon me like a giant (Job 16:7-14).

Here let us remark in passing, this is the most common of all misconceptions. Nine-tenths of our Christian people, owing to poor Biblical instruction, believe that sickness, suffering, sorrow and bereavement are all from God. The Book of Job was evidently written to show the fallacy of that philosophy. Smiting is Gods strange work in which He seldom indulges. It is Satans daily delight.

It was Satan, not God, who sent the Sabeans to rob this rich man, and slay his servants with the sword. It was Satan who burned up the sheep and the servants by a lightning flash from Heaven, since he is the prince of the power of the air. It was Satan who put it into the heart of the Chaldeans to carry them away and slay their defenders. It was Satan who put it into the hearts of sons and daughters to eat and drink, and who in the midst of their bacchanalian feast, smote the four corners of the house with a cyclone and crushed and killed, and it was Satan who went forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown.

With what injustice men treat a compassionate God when they assign all manner of sorrow and afflictions and griefs to Him, who is love.

Job vainly defends his own character against charges.

I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and defiled my horn in the dust.

My face is foul with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death;

Not for any injustice in mine hands: also my prayer is pure (Job 16:15-17).

It is this approach to self-exaltation; it is this near declaration of Pharisaism that constantly irritates his comforters, and with fair occasion. There is no man among us who is well balanced in intellect, well instructed in Scripture, and is in vital contact with the Holy Spirit, who can enjoy, or even endure from his fellow-men, or dare exercise himself in, the speech of braggartism.

We know too well that even when sackcloth is upon us and we are humbled to the dust, and our faces are foul with weeping, and on our eyelids is the shadow of death, we are still incapable of saying truthfully, There is no injustice in my hands, and my prayer is pure.

He yearns for a successful intercessor.

O earth, cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have no place.

Also now, behold, my witness is in Heaven, and my record is on high.

My friends scorn me: but mine eye poureth out tears unto God.

O that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbour!

When a few years are come, then I shall go the way whence I shall not return (Job 16:18-22).

The very character of this debate produces in Jobs life apparently contradictory statements and sentiments. Any man under attack from his fellows whom he knows to be sinners is tempted to self-defense, for unwittingly he institutes and maintains a comparison between them and himself, and he need not suffer by the comparison. However, the moment he turns from such a comparison to look at God, humiliation and shame smite him, and like Job, he feels the necessity of an intercessor, of one that could plead for him with God as a man pleadeth for his neighbor, of one who could be more effective before the Father than the favorable record of conduct, or even the tears of contrition.

JOB BEGS FOR SOME RELIEF Chapter 17.

First, he appeals to the grave for rest.

My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the graves are ready for me.

Are there not mockers with me? and doth not mine eye continue in their provocation?

Lay down now, put me in a surety with Thee; who is he that will strike hands with me?

For Thou hast hid their heart from understanding: therefore shalt Thou not exalt them (Job 17:1-4).

Then he appeals to his enemies for commiseration.

He that speaketh flattery to his friends, even the eyes of his children shall fail.

He hath made me also a by word of the people; and aforetime I was as a tabret.

Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow.

Upright men shall be astonied at this, and the innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite.

The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger.

But as for you all, do ye return, and come now: for I cannot find one wise man among you (Job 17:5-10).

And finally even calls upon corruption to assist him.

My days are past, my purposes are broken off., even the thoughts of my heart.

They change the night into day: the light is short because of darkness.

If I wait, the grave is mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness.

I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister.

And where is now my hope? as for my hope, who shall see it?

They shall go down to the bars of the pit, when our rest together is in the dust (Job 17:11-16).

Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley

JOBS SECOND REPLY TO ELIPHAZ

I. Complains of the want of sympathy on the part of his friends (Job. 16:2-5).

1. They gave him only verses from the ancients about the punishment of the wicked and the prosperity of the righteous, such as he was already familiar with. (Job. 16:2).I have heard many such things. In this, and the manner in which they did it, they showed themselves miserable (margin, troublesome) comforters; (Heb. comforters of trouble or mischief). Professing to come as comforters, they had turned out tormentors. Professed comfort may be only an exasperation of sorrow. No small sin to talk to the grief of those whom God has wounded. In speaking to tried ones, we need a tender heart and a gentle tongue. Easy to irritate the wound instead of healing it. Words may either

Scorch like drops of burning gall,
Or soothe like honey-dew.

Deep distress and despondency not to be cured by moral and religious aphorisms. To preach of patience is often the very means of stirring up all impatience [Maurice]. The tongue of the wise nowhere more needed than in the house of sorrow. The two requisites for a comforter found in Solomons virtuous woman: She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness (Pro. 31:26).

Men are miserable comforters

(1) When they comfort others with error and falsehoodas with erroneous views of God, of His dealings, or of themselves; daubing with untempered mortar; healing the hurt of the mourner slightly, saying peace, peace, when there is no peace;
(2) When they direct to improper means for reliefas drowning the remembrance of the trouble in the pleasures and pursuits of the world;
(3) When they seek merely to divert the mourners mind from the trouble, or persuade him to put away and forget his sorrow;
(4) When they fail to point him to the true source of comfortChrist as a Saviour and sympathizing Friendthe truths of the Gospel and of the Word of God. The waters of Lethe will not change the nature of sorrow, but the blood of Christ will.

To be a true comforter we require

(1) To be able to sympathize with the troubled;
(2) To understand, generally, the meaning and use of trouble. Trouble a part of our education for heaven, as well as for the right performance of our duties on earth,to be accepted as a message from abovean angel of mercy sent by the God who is love;
(3) To be acquainted ourselves with the truth with which we are to comfort others, and to have experienced in some degree the power of it on our own hearts;
(4) To possess the spirit and imitate the conduct of Him whose mission on earth was to comfort them that mourn;
(5) To speak truthfully and suitably to the case, while we present such views of God and His dealings as are fitted to impart light and comfort to the sad and sorrowing.
2. Jobs friends spoke as not realizing his sorrow. They treated him either with unfeeling reproofs, or sometimes with fine speeches (Job. 16:3). Shall vain words (Heb. words of wind,airy, empty speeches) have an end? The friends had all followed in the same unprofitable strain. Job returns the reproach of Eliphaz (ch. Job. 15:2). Too much of the spirit of angry retort in these discussions. The time and country of the speakers, however, to be remembered. The Gospel of Jesus teaches us to give the soft answer that turneth away wrath.Or what emboldeneth (or exciteth) thee that thou answerest? No ground or need for continuing such speeches. Eliphaz had spoken as a man under excitement. The style and spirit of his second speech considerably different from that of his first. Especially important for a comforter and instructor of others to exercise patience, and not to lose his temper. No small part of wisdom to know how we ought to answer every man. Every man shall kiss his lips that giveth a right answer (Pro. 24:26). Jobs friends found it easy to repeat commonplaces, and shake their head.(Job. 16:4). I also could speak as you do: if (or would that) your soul were in my souls stead, I could heap up words (string sentences and verses together) against you, and shake mine head at you (either in condolence or solemn admonition). Easy for the whole to advise the sick. The great want in Jobs friends a genuine sympathy. After the first oriental outburst of grief at their friends calamity, all was cold, heartless, and even cruel. Selfishness the common sin of our fallen nature

The proud, the cold, untroubled heart of stone,
That never mused on sorrow but its own.

In Jobs friends this coldness aggravated, if not generated, by false religious views and misinterpretations of Divine Providence. True religion softens the heart, and inclines it to kindness and compassion. A false religion generally the parent of cruelty.

Job expresses what his own conduct would be were they in his situation (Job. 16:5). I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving (or condolence) of my lips should assuage your grief (or perhaps, ironically, I could strengthen you with my mouth, and give you lip-consolation as you give me, instead of the hearty counsel of a friend, Pro. 27:9). Jobs actual practice described. Acknowledged by Eliphaz himself to have been a comforter of many (ch. Job. 4:3-4). His own testimony as to his manner of life in the time of his prosperity (ch. Job. 29:25; Job. 31:18). His friends had dealt in words which had no weight or force (ch. Job. 6:25), and which only tended to exasperate his sorrow. His words, had their places been changed, would have strengthened and relieved them. Three objects to be aimed at in comforting those in trouble

(1) To strengthen them to bear their trouble;
(2) To lighten their grief;

(3) To lead them to the right improvement of their trial. The last, the object more especially aimed at by Elihu (ch. Job. 30:15-30).

II. Renews his sorrowful complaint regarding his condition (Job. 16:6-16).

His sorrow neither mitigated by speech nor silence (Job. 16:6). Though I speak my grief is not assuaged; and though I forbear, what am I eased? Natural for grief to find relief in words. The troubled spirit also often calmed by silent meditation. Job experienced neither. No relief found in the assertion of his innocence or utterance of his sorrow. He had spoken to God, to his friends, to himself, yet his grief remained. Had sat at first in silence many days, and had spent many silent hours since then. Still no ease to his trouble. A bad case that yields to no kind of treatment.

He ascribes his troubles to God (Job. 16:7). But now he hath made me weary (quite exhausted me, or laden me with trouble). Jobs troubles accumulated and now of some continuance, with as yet no relief. The visit of his friends, instead of a balm, had proved a bitterness. All ascribed by Job to God. Good to eye Gods hand in our troubles, whoever and whatever may be the instrument of it. No trial but of His sending. When Satan was labouring to destroy Job, it was only by Gods permission and authority (ch. Job. 2:3). The part of a sanctified nature, to see God in every event of our lot, whether prosperous or adverse. So DavidThou didst it (Psa. 39:9). Let him curse, for the Lord hath bidden him (2Sa. 16:11).

He turns from man and addresses his complaint to God Himself. Thou hast. One word spoken to God in our trouble better than a hundred to man. The invitation (Psa. 7:15). The resolution (Psa. 42:8-9). Tragic and touching description of Jobs sorrows. Embraces

1. The loss of his family and alienation of his friends (Job. 16:7). Thou hast made desolate all my company (overwhelmed in calamity all my family, and struck with astonishment all my friends). Difficult to forbear recurring to grievous visitations and present troubles. All Jobs children removed by one fell swoop. His property gone. Himself a mass of loathsome ulcers. His wife and friends paralysed and alienated by his calamities. His very servants standing aloof from him (ch. Job. 19:13-19). A grievous aggravation of affliction when friends are alienated and stand a distance from us (Psa. 31:11; Psa. 38:1; Psa. 88:18). The experience of the Man of Sorrows foreshadowed in Jobs (Mat. 26:31; Mat. 26:34; Mat. 26:56).

2. His wasted appearance construed by his friends into a token of guilt (Job. 16:8). Thou hast filled me with wrinkles (or laid fast hold of me, as a person arrested by the hand of justice), which [in the opinion of my friends] is a witness against me [that I am a guilty man]; and my leanness (or liars, or, my lie) rising up in me beareth witness to my face. A marred and meagre visage may testify to our grief, but not to our guilt. Christs visage marred more than any mans, and his form more than the sons of men (Isa. 52:14). Our guilt, not His own, and our sorrows carried by Him as our Surety, marred His visage and robbed His form of comeliness and beauty (Isa. 53:2; Isa. 53:4).

3. The apprehension of Divine anger in His troubles (Job. 16:20). He teareth me in his wrath who hateth me (Heb., his wrath hath torn and violently opposed me); he gnasheth upon me with his teeth: mine enemy sharpeneth his eyes upon me (or, as my enemy he glares upon me with his eyes,looks on me with fierce, sparkling eyes, like an enraged lion, ready to pounce upon his prey.) The perverted view of God which Satan presents, and the flesh is ready to take under severe and protracted trouble. Sad that our best Friend should be viewed as a relentless foe,that the God who is love, should be converted into a furious wild beast or a wrathful demon. Such a view on the part of Job Satans especial object at present. His aim to bring him to curse God to His face. Satan but showed himself to Job, and sought to pass himself off for God. The bitterest ingredient in a believers trials, when not love but anger is apprehended in them. To see love in a cross takes out all bitterness; to see wrath, adds poison to the dart. Davids prayerRebuke me, [but] not in thine anger, chasten me, [but] not in thy hot displeasure (Psa. 6:1).

4. The bitter hostility of his friends (Job. 16:10). They have gaped upon me with their mouth; they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully; they have gathered themselves together against me (as conspirators, to effect my ruin; or, they have attacked me with combined forces). Terribly bitter cup when both God and manespecially our friends and professedly good menseem to be turned against us. The cup given to Jesus as our Surety. The words of the first clause of the verse those of the Psalm which describes His experience on the cross (Psa. 22:13). His cheek literally smitten, according to the prophecy (Mic. 5:1; Mat. 26:67; Mat. 27:30; Joh. 19:3). Jews and Gentiles, rulers and people, were gathered together against Him (Act. 4:27; (Psa. 2:12). Mans combined opposition, joined to a frowning providence, no proof either of guilt or Divine displeasure. Davids prayer: Let them curse, but bless thou (Psa. 109:28).

5. His apparent abandonment by God into the hands of wicked men (Job. 16:11). God hath delivered me to the ungodly (Heb., to an evil one), and turned me over (or, thrown me down headlong) into the hands of the wicked. His case, in his own view, like that of a criminal delivered over to the executioners of justice; or one cast into a gulf or dungeon, as the punishment of his crime. His friends appeared to him in the character, and as acting towards him the part, of wicked men. Job delivered by God into the hands of an evil one in a way that he was not then aware of. Possibly, however, some glimmering of the truth as to the immediate agent in his affliction. The doctrine of evil spirits, and of one prominent among them as their leader, not likely to have been unknown in Jobs time. The tradition of mans temptation and fall widely spread and preserved in the line of Shem. No uncommon thing for a child of God to be for wise purposes left for a time in the hands of bad men and bad angels. Divine abandonment the bitterest ingredient in the Saviours cup. The only thing that extorted a wail of sorrow from His lips (Mat. 27:46). To be left in the hands of the wicked was itself a grievous affliction. The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. To appear to be abandoned by God at the same time a fearful aggravation. The Surety actually delivered into the hands of Satan to be tempted, and of wicked men to be put to death (Mat. 4:1; Act. 2:23).

6. The sad and sudden reverse in his experience (Job. 16:12). I was at ease (in tranquillity and prosperity), but he hath broken me asunder (or, in pieces, thoroughly crushed and smashed me as an earthen vessel); he hath also taken me by my neck [as a wild beast does his prey] and shaken me to pieces (or, dashed me as on the ground, or against a rock), and set me up for his mark (to shoot his arrows at, as Saracenic conquerors sometimes did with their captives, and as his own soldiers did with Sebastian, the martyr of Gaul). Great and sudden reverses among the sorest earthly trials. The remembrance of previous comfort and prosperity an embittering of present calamity and suffering. Once none more happy and prosperous than Job; now none more afflicted and wretched. No greater contrast between past and present experience since Adam and Eve were driven out of Paradise. Labours for words to express the grievousness of the latter. Employs words of double form and intensified meaning. Broken me asunder, shaken me to pieces. No mere hurt, but utter destruction, like that of a glass or an earthen vessel dashed to the ground, and smashed into a thousand pieces, no more to be united. Children gone; property lost; wife alienated; body covered from head to foot with the most grievous and loathsome disease that ever afflicted fallen humanity; mind harassed, depressed, distracted; sleep taken away; what sleep obtained made more wretched than the absence of it by horrifying dreams; his sincerity and piety more than suspected by his friends, in consequence of his sufferings; and his bruised spirit worried and irritated by their flippant and worldly arguments, to convince him that he must not be the man he had been taken to be, and that to be delivered from his troubles he must repent and seek God. And of all these overwhelming reverses, God Himself, whom he had diligently and faithfully served, the Author! High and important object that for which God could do such violence to His nature in thus dealing with a faithful servant! Transcendently glorious end in view, when He still more terribly bruised His faithful and well-beloved Son!

7. A tragically sublime enlargement on his treatment at the Divine hand (Job. 16:13). His archers (or his mighty ones, perhaps his dartsthe many calamities with which God had visited and was still visiting him) compass me round about: he cleaveth my reins asunder (attacks me in the most vital parts, and inflicts on me deadly wounds), and doth not spare: he poureth out my gall upon the ground (His strokes of the most fatal kind, leaving no hope of life). No pity shewn in dealing with His servant, but all kinds of severity inflicted. Sometimes God appears to lay aside His attribute of mercy, even in dealing with His own. So in visiting Jerusalem for her sins: Thou hast not pitied (Lam. 3:43). Thus God spared not his own Son.(Job. 16:14). He breaketh me with breach upon breach;is continually dealing new blows, like a storming party attacking the walls of a fortressis always inflicting new griefs. So Davids complaint: Deep calleth unto deep; all thy waves and thy billows have gone over me,one after another in rapid succession (Psa. 62:7). One severe trial often found almost sufficient to crush us. Ordinarily, in the day of the rough wind, He stayeth the east wind. Rarely, as with Job, are heavy strokes repeated, successive, and accumulated. Such, however, the experience of Jesus in the last hours of His earthly life. From the traitors kiss to His dying cry upon the cross, bruised and put to grief by God, devils, and men; smitten in soul and body with one wound after another, till at last reproach broke His heart, and He was brought to the dust of death. And all this, while standing in your place, reader, and mine.He runneth upon me like a giant, or, as a warrior, sword in hand, with strength and fury. Appalling climax! Terrible experience for a child of God. Awful situation of an impenitent and Christless soul. A fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. If these things be done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?

8. The effect of this severity on the part of God (Job. 16:15). I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin. Sackcloth, a garment of coarse cloth worn by mourners and penitents. Probably assumed by Job after the death of his children, and continued ever since. Worn next to the person, and now adhering to his skin through the purulent matter issuing from his ulcers. Gods providence able very soon to change our silk into sackcloth.And defiled (or thrust) my horn in the dust,like a noble animal spent with fatigue or overpowered in conflict. Job now literally in the dust. His place still among the ashes. His condition one of the deepest misery. His experience that of sorrow and humiliation. The horn an emblem of strength and dignity. Job, as a prince or emir, naturally speaks of his horn. Easy with God to bring the loftiest horn to the dust. Witness Haman, Nebuchadnezzar, Wolsey, Masauiello, the fisherman-saviour of Naples. Soon high ambition lowly laid. (Job. 16:16).My face is foul (or red) with weeping. Job no stoic. His eye poured out tears to God (Job. 16:20). Manly to weep from a sufficient cause. Jesus wept. It is only sin which makes men callous and insensible. True religion neither makes men stones nor stoics. Scorn the proud man that is ashamed to weep.And on mine eyelids is the shadow of death. A speedy dissolution anticipated as the result of his calamities and disease. The dimness of death already appearing to him to settle on his eyes. Now viewed himself as a dying man (ch. Job. 17:1.) Figuratively also, deep and continued sorrow clouded his eyes as with the dimness of death. The effect of grief and tears on the sight frequently complained of in the Psalms (Psa. 6:7; Psa. 31:9; Psa. 38:10. See, also, 2Sa. 5:17). Faustus, son of Vortigern, said to have wept himself blind for the abominations of his parents.

III. Re-asserts his innocence and integrity (Job. 16:17).

Not for any injustice (or, although,or, connecting with what follows,because there is not any violence) in mine hands; also my prayer is pure. Maintains that his sufferings were neither on account of wrong done to his neighbour or hypocrisy towards God. The two charges alleged or insinuated against him by his friends. The gist of their speeches to shew that he must have made himself rich by oppression, or had abused his riches to the injury of his neighbour, and that the justice of God now overtook him for his crimes. This conduct towards man necessarily implied that his profession of religion towards God had been false and hollow. Job maintains, like Paul, that he had exercised himself in having a conscience void of offence both towards God and towards man. Prayer here put for religion or religious duties in generalhis duty towards God. A great part of religion consists in prayer or in communion with the Father of our spirits. Divine worship an approach of the soul to the mercy-seat. Job a man of prayer, contrary to the allegation of his friends (ch. Job. 15:4). A prayerless man is a man without religion and without God. Job speaks of

Prayer

as a matter of course, as a thing natural for a man. As natural for a man to pray as for an infant to utter cries to its mother. The natural instinct of a babe towards its earthly parent a picture of that in a human soul towards its heavenly one. Because natural, prayer is universal. Prayer to Deity in some form or other the language of man wherever found. The most degraded still sometimes prays, and pays respect to prayer when offered by another. Prayer a thing of the spirit, unconfined to time, or place, or form. In prayer, however, as in other things, the spirit seeks outward expressionin the lips, and the posture of the body, as bended knees, uplifted hands, &c. Prayer either public, solemn, formal, or private,in the family, the closet, everywhere. I will that men pray everywhere. Nehemiah prayed in the glittering banquet-hall while presenting, according to his office, the wine-cup to his royal master. Especial prominence given in the Bible to united prayer (Mat. 18:19; Act. 12:5; Act. 12:12). Prayer to be made for others as well as for ourselves. Job an intercessor (ch. Job. 1:5; Job. 42:10). Patterns for prayer given everywhere throughout the Scriptures. Especially found in the Lords Prayer. The first part of this Divine form of devotion consists in three petitions for God himselffor Gods glory, His kingdom, and His pleasure; the second part, in the remaining four, for ourselves and our neighbour. Of these four, the first is for temporal benefits; the second and third for spiritual ones; and the fourth and last, for both combined.

Job declares that his prayer was pure. Prayer pure when offered with a sincere heart and pure conscience. More particularly

1. When not in hypocrisy or out of feigned lips; when with the heart and not merely the lip or outward posture (Isa. 29:13; Mat. 15:8).

2. When not accompanied with the practice of sin. The sacrifice of the wicked an abomination to the Lord (Pro. 15:8; Pro. 31:27; Pro. 28:9) If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me (Psa. 66:17). Men to lift up holy hands.

3. When for right objects and from right motives. Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts (Jas. 4:3).

4. When addressed to the only true God (Psa. 65:2).

5. When presented in a way according to His own will, not through images or pictures, or with superstitious and humanly devised practices (Colossians 2, Col. 3:22).

6. When offered with right disposition and feelings, with benevolence and forgiveness of injuries. Lifting up holy hands, without wrath (1Ti. 2:8). When ye stand praying, forgive (Mar. 11:25).

7. When made with humility through the one Mediator, and with faith in His atoning sacrifice. To this man will I look who is poor and of a contrite spirit (Isa. 66:2). There is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. No man cometh to the Father but by me (1Ti. 2:5; Joh. 14:6). Boldness given to enter into the holiest of all by the blood of Jesus (Heb. 10:19).

IV. Apostrophizes the earth in an impassioned prayer that his innocence may be made manifest (Job. 16:18)

O earth, cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have no place (of concealment, or hindrance in its access to God). Perhaps connected with the preceding: Because I am innocent, let this be the case. Job, as an undeserving sufferer, regards himself as one whose blood is innocently shed. Probable reference to Abels murder (Gen. 4:10-11). The narrative or document containing it well known to Job. The shedder of Jobs blood either the immediate agent in his sufferings, or his friends who so cruelly persecuted him. Murder easily and often committed without actual shedding of blood. Parents often murdered by the unkindness of their children, and wives by the harsh treatment of their husbands. Words and looks kill as well as blows. Blood shed inwardly as well as outwardly,shed where no eye sees it but Gods.

Jobs prayer heard. His innocence and his friends unkindness at length revealed. No innocent blood always covered. Murder will out and be revenged. The blood of the slaughtered Huguenots visited on Charles IX., who died in a bloody sweat, crying: What blood! what blood!and still visited in the wars and revolutions of France. A day coming when the earth shall disclose her blood,the blood innocently shed on it and kept by it against a future day, and shall no more cover her slain (Isa. 26:21). Earth covers innocent blood till God uncovers and revenges it. Arabs say the dew never rests on a spot that has been wet with it. The innocent blood of the crucified One still speaks in heaven. Led to the sacking and burning of Jerusalem, with the slaughter and dispersion of its people. Is still visited on the outcast impenitent shedders of it. Speaks pardon and peace to all who, as guilty, take refuge in it as their only atonement and hope.

The cry of the helpless and oppressed never unheard. No place on earth able to hide it from God. Enters from the most humble and wretched hovel into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth (Jas. 5:4).

V. Jobs consolation (Job. 16:19-20).

1. In Gods consciousness of his innocence (Job. 16:19). Also now (besides the testimony of my own consciousness; or, even now, in the midst of these calamities and sufferings), behold (strange as you may deem my assertion) my witness (he who can and will bear testimony to my innocence) is in heaven, and my record (the eye-witness of my upright life) is on high. Jobs integrity already testified to by God in a way he was not aware of. The comfort of the righteous under oppression, that God is witness not only of their suffering, but of their integrity. Gods great all-seeing eye the terror of the sinner, the comfort of the saint. The Eye-Witness in heaven will one day speak out on earth (Mat. 25:31-45). A grievous trial for a good man to lie under suspicion of hypocrisy, especially with good men. His comfort in the record on high,the Eye-Witness unseen, but seeing all.

2. In his constant tearful waiting upon God (Job. 16:20). My friends scorn me (Heb., my mockers are my friends), but mine eye poureth out tears unto God. One of Jobs great trials, that those who should have befriended and comforted him only mocked him, by dealing in wordy harangues and persuasions to repent in order to deliverance from his overwhelming troubles. His comfort in being able to turn from them to God. While his ear was stunned with their unfeeling reflections, his eye was pouring out tears to Him in whom the fatherless findeth mercy. A relief in trouble to be able to weep, much more in being able to weep to God. Tears wept to God do not scald, but cool. The misery of the world, that they either do not weep in trouble, or do not weep to Him who is able both to pity and help them. Every tear wept to God put into His bottle. Gods lachrymatory constantly filling with the tears of the sorrowful wept into His bosom. A day coming when each tear treasured up in it will sparkle as a gem in the mourners crown. Prayers and tears the weapons of the saints. While the eye pours out tears to God, God pours in comfort and strength unto the soul. With God the eye pleads as effectually as the lips. The tearful eye an eloquent pleader when the tongue is unable to utter a word. Tears wept to God have a voice that He who sees them well understands. Those blessed troubles that open the sluices for tears to be poured out to God. Believers weep with their face to God, the world with their back to Him. Precious grace that enables a man to take his griefs and weep out his tears to God. The trouble that drives unbelievers farther from God is only driving a believer nearer to Him; as the wind that drives one mariner farther from home is wafting another nearer to it. The magnet, amid all the commotions of the earth, and sea, and sky, still keeps pointing to the north.

VI. His longing desire to have his case tried before God (Job. 16:21).

O that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbour (or, O that a man might plead, or simply as expressing the subject of his prayer,that a man,viz., himself,might plead with God as a son of man with his neighbour). Jobs constant desire, from a consciousness of his integrity, to plead his cause with God (ch. Job. 9:19; Job. 9:32-35). His aim not to establish his sinlessness, but his sincerity. His desire not to plead with God in reference to his personal acceptance with Him, but in reference to the particular matter and cause of his present sufferings. It is our happiness that we have not to plead our case with God as righteous persons, but as sinners. Even Job unable to answer God for one of a thousand charges he could bring against him (ch. Job. 9:3). It is the comfort of the Gospel

(1) That a sinner does not need to plead with God in order to establish his righteousness; God justifies the ungodly who believe in His Son;

(2) That receiving Christ as a Saviour we have one who constantly pleads for us. In Christ we have an Advocate who is God Himself while our Brother,the Man who is Jehovahs Fellow (Zec. 13:7.) Our God-man Advocate pleads not our innocence, but His obedience unto death, as the ground of our justification. Exhibits before the Divine tribunal not our tears, but His own blood. Mentions in the plea not our works, but our faith in Himself.

The reason for Jobs earnest desire (Job. 16:22).When a few years are come (or for the years numbered to me, or, my few years have come, i.e., to an end), then shall I go whence I shall not return. The apprehension of approaching death now always present with Job. His great desire that his cause might be tried and his innocence declared before he left this world. Elsewhere he comforts himself with the assurance that even if death should intervene, God would vindicate his character and manifest his innocence (ch. Job. 19:25-27). Natural to desire to see it done while living. Sad for a good man to die with a cloud of suspicion resting on his character.Things which each ought to be earnest and diligent to have done before we go whence we shall not return.

(1) Our own acceptance with God made sure.
(2) The salvation of our children secured.
(3) Our family and affairs rightly ordered.
(4) Peace and reconciliation sought with all men.

(5) Duties towards our family, friends, and neighbours discharged. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might (Ecc. 9:10).

Solemn enquiry: When a few years are come, where shall I be, and what shall be my place and experience? Like Job, I shall be done with a present world. Its joys and sorrows, its cares and anxieties, will have ceased with me for ever. Shall I be enjoying a better state? Have I a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens? Have I an interest in Christ, so as to be able to say: To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain? Do I know that God is the strength of my heart now, and that He shall be my portion for ever? That He will guide me with His counsel while here, and afterwards receive me to glory? While my body is mouldering in the grave, shall my spirit be mingling in the songs of saints and seraphim before the throne? Am I already washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

B. JOBS TRIALVINDICATION OR? (Job. 16:1Job. 17:16).

1. The words of his friends are aimless and unprofitable. (Job. 16:1-5)

TEXT 16:15

16 Then Job answered and said,

2 I have heard many such things: Miserable comforters are ye all.

3 Shall vain words have an end?

Or what provoketh thee that thou answerest?

4 I also could speak as ye do;

If your soul were in my souls stead.
I could join words together against you,
And shake my head at you.

5 But I would strengthen you with my mouth,

And the solace of my lips would assuage your grief.

COMMENT 16:15

Job. 16:1-2Jobs fourth reply continues the lamentation form and emphasizes the denunciation of enemies, who are his three friends and God. But suddenly in the midst of his response there is a sudden appeal to a witness in heaven, who will take up Jobs defense. But the speech ends, as do his previous responses, with consideration of approaching death and Sheol. He begins with statement of weariness. He has heard all of this unprofitable talk before. The A. V. translates amal as miserable, which is a good rendering. Eliphaz has offered divine consolationJob. 15:11. Using a cognate word, Job accuses them of being miserable consolers (wearisome is not strong enough).

Job. 16:3Their comfort only serves to increase his suffering. He turns their talkJob. 8:2; Job. 15:2upon them by calling them purveyors of windy words, which only irritateJob. 6:25.

Job. 16:4In Job. 16:4-5 the pronouns are plurals, thus Job is speaking to all three friends. Were our positions only reversed, I would have no difficulty playing a pious moralist, shaking my head in scandalized self-righteousness (Job, Soncino, p. 81). How Job actually conducted himself in the past in similar circumstances is projected in Job. 4:3 ff. Job further encroaches on his self-righteous friend by crying out that he too could join words together as Eliphaz had doneJob. 15:2 Off.[183] The imagery of the shaking of the head is associated with mockery and derision2Kings 19:21; Isa. 37:22; Psa. 22:8; Psa. 109:25; Lam. 2:15; Eccl. 12:18; and Mat. 27:39. As in all cultures, body language can have different meanings in different circumstances.

[183] For critical analysis of this verse, see J. J. Finkelstein, JBL, 75, 1956, 32831; and O. Loretz, CBQ, 23, 1961, 293ff, who suggests the translation I could also speak to you with mere noise.

Job. 16:5Job continues to heap scornful sarcasm on the heads of his helpers. Mere words have no power to console. The word translated solace is a noun from the root used in Job. 2:11. The original meaning of the verb was to be agitated. (Brown, Driver, Briggs, Lexicon, have quivering motion for the noun.) Time-honored cliches will not and cannot heal when removed from a sympathetic heart of the utterer.

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

XVI.

(1) Then Job answered.Job, in replying, ceases to continue the argument, which he finds useless; but, after complaining of the way his friends have conducted it, and contrasting the way in which they have treated him with that in which he would treat them were they in his case, he proceeds again to enlarge upon his condition, and makes a touching appeal to Heaven, which prepares us for the more complete confession in Job 19. He ends by declaring that his case is desperate.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

JOB’S FOURTH REPLY. Chaps. 16, 17.

1. Job answered and said He replies to their heartless speeches, that there is a vast difference between the condition of a sufferer and that of his upbraiders. Their windy words have left his grief unassuaged. The conflict rages sore around him. His friends are not his sole antagonists: his startled soul sees on all sides a glaring throng of fiendish foes, into whose power God has cast him headlong. In every form of assault known to warfare the Divine Being has attacked him, until, (so he imagines,) crushed and wounded, he lies weltering in his own blood. The darkest hour, however, is one of hope. The blood of the innocent has power with God. Job’s faith, like that of Abel, is glorified in the juncture of extreme distress. It rises to the certainty that the God who is in the heights sees and feels his woes, and, conscious of this divine sympathy, he ventures to supplicate God himself, to plead with God in his behalf (ch. 17). With the grave beneath his feet, he prays for a mediator. He makes the amazing appeal to God to be his sponsor or bondsman with God. He has faith to believe that his sufferings shall not injure the cause of virtue. “A bitter feeling at the behaviour of his friends extends itself like a red thread throughout the entire discourse.” Hitzig. See Job 16:10; Job 16:20; Job 17:2; Job 17:4; Job 17:10; Job 17:12.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Job 16:2  I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all.

Job 16:2 Comments – Job senses Eliphaz’s harsh reply.

Job 16:10  They have gaped upon me with their mouth; they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully; they have gathered themselves together against me.

Job 16:10 “They have gaped upon me with their mouth” Scripture References – Note the similar passages of the sufferings of Christ.

Psa 22:13, “They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.”

Psa 35:21, “Yea, they opened their mouth wide against me, and said, Aha, aha, our eye hath seen it.”

Job 16:10 “they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully” – Comments – Note the similar passages of the sufferings of Christ.

Isa 50:6, “I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.”

Mat 26:67, “Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others smote him with the palms of their hands,”

Mar 14:65, “And some began to spit on him, and to cover his face, and to buffet him, and to say unto him, Prophesy: and the servants did strike him with the palms of their hands.”

Luk 22:63, “And the men that held Jesus mocked him, and smote him.”

Act 23:2, “And the high priest Ananias commanded them that stood by him to smite him on the mouth.”

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

Job’s Dialogue with Three Friends – Job 3:1 to Job 31:40, which makes up the major portion of this book, consists of a dialogue between Job and his three friends. In this dialogue, Job’s friends engage in three rounds of accusations against Job, with him offering three defenses of his righteousness. Thus, Job and his friends are able to confirm each of their views with three speeches, since the Scriptures tell us that a matter is confirmed in the mouth of two or three witnesses (2Co 13:1). The underlying theme of this lengthy dialogue is man’s attempt to explain how a person is justified before God. Job will express his intense grief (Job 3:1-26), in which his three friends will answer by finding fault with Job. He will eventually respond to this condemnation in a declaration of faith that God Himself will provide a redeemer, who shall stand on earth in the latter days (Job 19:25-27). This is generally understood as a reference to the coming of Jesus Christ to redeem mankind from their sins.

Job’s declaration of his redeemer in Job 19:23-29, which would be recorded for ever, certainly moved the heart of God. This is perhaps the most popular passage in the book of Job, and reflects the depth of Job’s suffering and plea to God for redemption. God certainly answered his prayer by recording Job’s story in the eternal Word of God and by allowing Job to meet His Redeemer in Heaven. I can imagine God being moved by this prayer of Job and moving upon earth to provide someone to record Job’s testimony, and moving in the life of a man, such as Abraham, to prepare for the Coming of Christ. Perhaps it is this prayer that moved God to call Abraham out of the East and into the Promised Land.

The order in which these three friends deliver their speeches probably reflects their age of seniority, or their position in society.

Scene 1 First Round of Speeches Job 3:1 to Job 14:22

Scene 2 Second Round of Speeches Job 15:1 to Job 21:34

Scene 3 Third Round of Speeches Job 22:1 to Job 31:40

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

Comments – Job 16:1 to Job 17:16 is similar to Psalms 22 in that both passages of Scripture describe the pains of suffering.

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

Job Complains of the Unmerciful Attitude of his Friends

v. 1. Then Job answered and said, in repudiating also this speech and its insinuations,

v. 2. I have heard many such things, he had now heard arguments of this kind in a greater amount than he cared for. Miserable comforters, literally, “consolers of distress,” are ye all, men whose words, instead of comforting and lifting up, only intensified the burden of Job’s distress.

v. 3. Shall vain, windy, empty, words have an end? It was about time that they brought something more substantial if they intended to comfort him. Or what emboldeneth thee that thou answerest? What particular thing had vexed, goaded, incited Eliphaz so as to feel called upon to bring this new insult?

v. 4. I also could speak as ye do, he might serve them in the same manner, pay them in like coin; if your soul were in my soul’s stead, if they were in his place, I could heap up words against you, weaving a web of them, stringing them together, in the same form of unnatural statements which came from them, and shake mine head at you, in a gesture of questioning scorn, of malicious doubt, just as they had been doing in making him smart under their suspicions.

v. 5. But I would strengthen you with my mouth, mere words taking the place of real deeds of love, and the moving of my lips should assuage your grief, a bitter reference to the hollow consolations which Eliphaz had spoken of, 1-5:11. Such sympathy, Job insists, is easily given, since it is so cheap.

v. 6. Though I speak, my grief is not assuaged, if he gives vent to his misery, it does him no good, namely, with such poor comforters at hand; and though I forbear, what am I eased? If he desists from speaking, his pain does not leave, and his friends have no more true sympathy for him than before. Their unmerciful attitude is that of many others of their kind, whose very sympathy for those in misery has a cutting quality, which hurts more than it comforts.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

EXPOSITION

Job answers the second speech of Eliphaz in a discourse which occupies two (short) chapters, and is thus not much more lengthy than the speech of his antagonist. His tone is very despairing. He finds no help at all in the speeches of the “comforters” (verses 2-6), and turns from them to consider once more the dealings of God with him (verses 7-14). Next, he describes his own proceedings under his afflictions, and appeals to earth and. heaven, and God in heaven, to take up his cause and help him (verses 15-22). In Job 17:1-16. he continues much in the same-strain, but with an intermixture of the topics, which is somewhat confusing. In Job 17:1, Job 17:2 he bewails himself; in Job 17:3 he makes an appeal to God; in Job 17:4, Job 17:5 he reflects upon his “comforters;” in Job 17:6-9 he returns to himself and his prospects; while in the remainder of the chapter (Job 17:10-16) he alternates between reproaches addressed to his friends (Job 17:10, Job 17:12) and lamentations over his own condition (Job 17:11, Job 17:13-16).

Job 16:1, Job 16:2

Then Job answered and said, I have heard many such things. There was nothing new in the second speech of Eliphaz, if we except its increased bitterness. Job had heard all the commonplaces about the universal sinfulness of man, and the invariable connection between sin and suffering, a thousand times before. It was the traditional belief in which he and all those about him had been brought up. But it brought him no relief. The reiteration of it only made him feel that there was neither comfort nor instruction to be got from his so-called “comforters.” Hence his outburst. Miserable comforters are ye all!

Job 16:3

Shall vain words have an end? literally, as in the margin, words of wind; i.e. words which pass by a man “as the idle wind which he regards not.” Will his friends never bring their futile speaking to a close? Or what emboldeneth thee that thou anwerest? rather, what provoketh thee? (Revised Version) Job had begged that his friends would be silent (Job 13:5, Job 13:13). He supposes that they would have complied with his wish if he had not provoked them, but professes an inability to see what provocation he had given. His last speech, however, had certainly not been conciliatory (see Job 12:1-3; Job 13:4, Job 13:7, etc.).

Job 16:4

I also could speak as ye do: if your soul were in my soul’s stead, I could heap up words against you. It is only too easy to heap up rhetorical declamation against an unfortunate sufferer, whose physical and mental agonies absorb almost his whole attention. If you were in my place and condition, and I in yours, I could moralize in your tone and spirit for hours. And shake my head at you. A Hebrew mode of expressing condemnation of a man’s conduct (see Psa 22:7; Isa 37:22; Jer 18:16; Mat 27:39, etc.).

Job 16:5

But I would strengthen you with my mouth. The meaning is somewhat doubtful, and different renderings have been proposed. But the rendering of the Authorized Version is quite defensible, and is accepted by our Revisers. This gives the sense, “I, if I were in your place, would not act as you have acted, but, on the contrary, would do my best to strengthen you with words of comfort and encouragement.” The moving of my lips should assuage your grief. (So Rosenmuller and our Revisers.) The words are a covert reproach of the three “friends” for not acting as Job declares that he would have acted if the positions had been reversed.

Job 16:6

Though I speak, my grief is not assuaged: and though I forbear, what am I eased! As it is, nor speech nor silence are of any avail. Neither of them brings me any relief. My sufferings continue as before, whichever course I take.

Job 16:7

But now. These words mark a transition. Job turns from complaints against his “comforters” to an enumeration of his own sufferings. He hath made me weary. God has afflicted him with an intolerable sense of weariness. He is tired of life; tired of disputing with his friends; tired even of pouring out his lamentations and complaints and expostulations to God. His one desire is rest. So I have seen in the piombi of Venice, where political prisoners were tortured by cold and heat, and hunger and thirst, for long weeks or months, and brought to despair, such scratchings as the following: “Luigi A. implora pace, Giuseppe B. implore eterna quiete.” Job has entreated for this boon of rest repeatedly (Job 3:13; Job 6:9; Job 7:15; Job 10:18, etc.). Thou hast made desolate all my company. The loss of his children has desolated his household; his other afflictions have alienated his friends.

Job 16:8

And thou hast filled me with wrinkles. So St. Jerome, Professor Lee, Dr. Stanley Leathes, and others; but the generality of modern commentators prefer the rendering, “Thou hast bound me fast,” i.e. deprived me of all power of resisting or moving (comp. Psa 88:8, “I am so fast in prison that I cannot get forth”). Which is a witness against me; i.e. a witness of thy displeasure, and so (as men suppose) of my guilt. And my leanness rising up in me heareth witness to my face; rather, my leanness rising up against me. This emaciation is taken as another witness of his extreme sinfulness.

Job 16:9

He teareth me in his wrath, who hateth me; literally, his wrath teareth, and he hateth me. God treats Job as severely as if he hated him. That he is actually hated of God Job does not believe; otherwise he would long since have ceased to call upon him, and pour out his heart before him. He gnasheth upon me with his teeth (comp. Psa 35:16; Psa 37:12). Mine enemy (or rather, adversary) sharpeneth his eyes upon me; i.e. makes me a whetstone on which he sharpens his angry glances.

Job 16:10

They have gaped upon me with their mouth. The “man of sorrows” of the Old Testament is, in many respects, a type of the “Man of sorrows” of the New; and, in the Messianic psalms, David constantly applies to Christ expressions which Job had used in reference to himself (see Psa 22:13). They have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully (comp. Mic 5:1; Mat 27:30; Luk 22:64; Joh 18:22). They have gathered themselves together against me (see Psa 35:15, and compare, in illustration of the literal and historical sense, Job 30:1, Job 30:10-14).

Job 16:11

God hath delivered me to the ungodly. All that Job had suffered at the hands of wicked men, the gibes of his “comforters,” the insults and “derision ‘ of “base men” (Job 30:1, Job 30:8-10), the desertion of many who might have been expected to have come to his aid, being by God’s per-minion, is attributed by Job to God himself, who has “delivered” him up to these “ungodly” ones, and permits them to add to and intensify his sufferings. He was not so ruthlessly treated as his great Anti-type; he was not bound with thongs, or crowned with thorns, or smitten with a reed, or scourged, or crucifiedeven the smiting on the cheek, spoken of in verse 10, was probably metaphorical; but he suffered, no doubt, grievously, through the scorn and contumely that assailed him, through his friends’ unkindness, and his enimies’ insolent triumph, and the rude jeers of the “abjects‘” who made him their “song” and their “byword” (Job 30:9). And turned me over into the hands of the wicked. Job speaks as if God had wholly given him up, made him over to the wicked, to deal with him exactly as they chose. This, of course, was not so. If the malevolence of Satan was limited by the Divine will (Job 1:12; Job 2:6); so, much more, would the malevolence of man be limited.

Job 16:12

I was at ease (compare the picture drawn in Job 1:1-5). Job had been “at ease,” tranquil, prosperous, happy. He had been almost without a care, when suddenly “trouble came.” But he hath broken me asunder; rather, he brake me asunder (see the Revised Version). In the midst of his ease and tranquillity, God suddenly poured out his chastisements, and “brake Job asunder,” i.e. destroyed his life, ruined it and broke it down. He hath also taken me by my neck, and shaken me to pieces; or, dashed me to pieces. And set me up for his mark; i.e. as a target for his arrows (comp. Deu 32:23; Job 6:4; Psa 7:13; Psa 38:2, etc.; Lam 3:12).

Job 16:13

His archers compass me round about. God is represented, not as himself the shooter of the arrows, but as surrounding Job with a body of archers, who are under his command and carry out his will. So, generally, Scripture represents the judgments of God as carried out by interior agents (see 2Sa 24:16; 1Ch 21:15; 2Ki 19:35, etc.). He cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth not spare. The allusion is probably to Job’s physical sufferings, which included severe pains in the lumbar region. He poureth out my gall upon the ground. The rupture of the gallbladder causes the contents to be sprit upon the ground.

Job 16:14

He breaketh me with breach upon breach. As an enemy, when he besieges a town, crushes its resistance by means of “breach upon breach.” so is Job crushed by one attack after another. He runneth upon me like a giant; i.e. with overwhelming forcea force that is quite irresistible.

Job 16:15

I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin. Another transition. Job turns to the consideration of how he has acted under his severe afflictions. In the first place, he has put on sackcloth, not for a time merely, as ordinary mourners do, hut for a permanency, so that he may be said to have sewn it to his skin. There is, perhaps, also an allusion to the adhesion of the garment to his many sores. And have defiled my horn in the dust. “My horn” is equivalent to “my pride,” “my dignity.” Job, when he left his state, and put on sackcloth, and “sat down among the ashes” (Job 2:8), denuded himself of his honour and dignity, and as it were trailed them in the dust

Job 16:16

My face is foul with weeping He has wept so much that his face is stained with his tears. And on my eyelids is the shadow of death. There is an awful shadow on his eyes and eyelids, portending death

Job 16:17

Not for any injustice in mine hands; or, not that there is any violence in my hands (scrap. Isa 53:9, where the expression used of the Messiah is nearly the same). Job repudiates the charge of rapine and robbery which Eliphaz has brought against him (Job 15:28, Job 15:34). His hands have not done violence to any. Also my prayer is pure. Neither has he been guilty of the hypocrisy which Eliphaz has also charged him with (Job 15:34). His prayers have been sincere and genuine.

Job 16:18

O earth, cover not thou my blood! There was a widespread belief in the ancient world that innocent blood, spilt upon the ground, cried to God for vengeance, and remained a dark blot upon the earth till it was avenged, or until it was covered up. Job apostrophizes the earth, and be-seethes it not to cover up his blood when he dies, as he expects to do, shortly. And let my cry have no place; i.e. let it have no hiding-place, but fill earth and heaven. Let it continue to be heard until it is answered.

Job 16:19

Also now, behold, my Witness is in heaven; rather, even now (see the Revised Version). Job claims God for his Witness, looks to him for an ultimate vindication of his character, is sure that in one way or another he will make his righteousness clear as the noonday in the sight of men and angels (see Job 19:25-27, of which this is in some sort an anticipation). My recordor, he that vouches for me (Revised Version)is on highone of the so frequent pleonastic repetitions of one and the same idea.

Job 16:20

My friends scorn me; literally, my scorners are my companions; i.e. I have to live with those who scorn me (comp. Job 30:1-13). But mine eye poureth out tears unto God. It is not to his “friends” or “companions,” or “comforters,” or any human aid, that Job turns in his distress. God alone is his Refuge. Forced by his woes to pass his time in weeping and mourning (see verse 16), it is to God that his heart turns, to God that he “pours out his tears.” Hardly as he thinks God to have used him, bitterly as he sometimes ventures to complain, yet the idea never crosses him of looking for help or sympathy to any other quarter, of having recourse to any other support or stay. “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15), expresses the deepest feeling of his heart, the firmost principle of his nature. Nothing overrides it. Even “out of the depths” his soul cries to the Lord (see Psa 130:1).

Job 16:21

Oh that one might plead for a man with God! The original here is obscure. It may mean, Oh that he (i.e. God himself) would plead for a man with God! i.e. would become a Mediator between himself and man, plead for him, undertake his defence, and obtain for him merciful consideration. Or, nearly as in the Authorized Version, Oh that one might plead for man (i.e. mankind at large) with God! interest him on their behalf, and obtain a merciful judgment for them. The former rendering is to be preferred. As a man pleadeth for his neighbour; literally, as a son of man (or, as the Son of man) pleadeth for his neighbour. If we take the simpler rendering, “as a son of man,” then the meaning is simply, “Oh that God would plead for man with himself, as a man is wont to plead for his fellow-man!” But if we prefer the other rendering, “as the Son of man,” a Messianic interpretation will be necessary. (So Professor Lee and Dr. Stanley Leathes) But Messianic interpretations of passages that do not require them, and that have no such traditional interpretation, require extreme caution.

Job 16:22

When a few years are come; literally, a number of years, which generally means a small number. I shall go the way whence I shall not return. This verse would more fitly begin the following chapter, which opens in a similar strain, with an anticipation of the near approach of death

HOMILETICS

Job 16:1-6

Job to Eliphaz: 1. Unacceptable comfort and unassuaged grief.

I. UNACCEPTABLE COMFORT. Job characterizes the offered consolation of Eliphaz and his companions as:

1. In its nature common‘ place. “I have heard many such things.” Not that Job imagined self-evident and obvious maxims could not be true, or objected to a good lesson because it was common, or was himself “one of those nicelings who are always longing for I wet not what novelties, and cannot abide that a man should tell them one tale twice” (Calvin), like the Athenians (Act 17:21), and some Christians of whom St. Paul writes (2Ti 4:3); but that either he desired to rebuke the assumption of the friends, who had pretentiously styled their stale platitudes “the consolations of God” (Job 15:11), by discovering them to be exceedingly trite observations, or he wished to draw attention to the greatness of his misery which refused to be comforted by common means.

2. In its pertinence powerless. “Shall vain words [literally, ‘words of wind’] have an end?” If Job meant, by designating Eliphaz’s oration “words of wind,” to repay him for the compliment contained in Job 15:2, most unquestionably Job was wrong, since good men should be meek (Gal 5:23; 1Co 13:7; Eph 4:2), and meek men should rather hear reproach than resent it (1Pe 2:20), being called thereunto by Christ’s precept (Mat 11:29), promise (Mat 5:5), and example (1Pe 2:21); but if Job simply designed to direct attention to the fact that a truth might be precious in itself as well as eloquently set forth, and vet possess no relevancy to the subject under considerationwhistling past it, in fact, like the idle windhe gave utterance to a valuable remark. The public ear groans at the quantity of windy talk, irrelevant observation, impertinent argument, and pointless discussion to which it is obliged to listen. It is, however, a mistake to suppose that good people and religious literature enjoy a monopoly of this sort of wisdom. As much weak (Scottice “feckless”) palaver may be heard in parliaments and scientific congress as in pulpits and sermons.

3. In its spirit irascible. “What emboldeneth [literally, ‘goadeth’] thee that thou answerest?” Eliphaz had thrown off the somewhat calm and philosophic manner that had distinguished him in his first address, had given way to temper, and allowed the heat of his spirit to communicate a degree of sharpness to his tongue. Between the two, the tongue and the temper, there is an intimate connection. It is hard to pour forth floods of glowing eloquence when the soul is like an icicle; but equally it is a task for the wisest, when the whole inner man is on fire, to keep the conflagration from shooting out lambent flames, and emitting fiery sounds from the mouth. “It is good to be zealously affected in a good thing;” but “the discretion of a man deferreth his anger,” “lest there be debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, back-bitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults,” and because “the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God,” while “an angry man stirreth up strife, and a furious man aboundeth in transgression.”

4. In its utterance facile. “I also could speak as you do: if your soul were in my soul’s stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you.” The allusion seems to be to the glibness with which Eliphaz and his copartners tossed their trite maxims from their tongues; which, says Job, is not a great thing after all, but, on the contrary, is rather a poor accomplishment, in which I myself could rival you. Fluent speech is a great ornament, as well as a powerful handmaid, to fine wisdom; but, as a substitute for wisdom, it is wholly contemptible. Nimble-tongued talkers should also remember that sometimes those hear them who could eclipse them at their own trade, but are restrained from doing so, if not by regard for their fellows, by respect for themselves.

5. In its character insincere. “I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the solace of my lips would soothe you.” The same sort of consolation they offered him, he could with perfect ease present to themmere lip-salve, comfort proceeding from the teeth outward. But of course he would not, as they very well knew who had been acquainted with his previous manner of life (Job 29:11-17), and had even been constrained at the outset to acknowledge (Job 4:3, Job 4:4). Sincerity, that becomes and is binding upon all in every situation of life, is specially required of sympathizers. That which comes not from the heart never finds its way to the heart. Comfort without honesty wants the first element of success (1Co 13:1), and is as hateful to God as it is distasteful to man (Pro 27:14).

6. In its result irksome. “Miserable comforters [literally, ‘comforters of trouble’] are ye all.” Instead of soothing, it annoyed; instead of healing, it wounded; instead of helping, it weakened. And no wonder, if its character was as above depicted.

II. UNASSUAGED GRIEF. Job declares that, much as his misery demanded right and effectual consolation, he was not able to find it in God, his friends, or himself.

1. No comfort from God. Not because God failed to appreciate his need of comfort (Gen 21:17; Exo 3:7; Isa 40:7), or that his case exceeded the Divine resources (2Co 1:3), or that the will on God’s part was wanting to alleviate his sorrow (Psa 103:13; Isa 27:8; Isa 42:3; Isa 66:13; 2Co 7:6); but that God sometimes, for wise and good purposes of trial and discipline, hides his face from afflicted saints (Isa 54:7, Isa 54:8).

2. No help from man. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar had only proved “comforters of trouble,” broken reeds that pierce the hand of those who lean upon them. Job had not gone to them for consolation; it was they who had proffered comfort to him. But, in either case, the result would have been the same. Man’s resources in the shape of sympathy are soon exhausted.

3. No ease from himself. If he spoke, his grief was not assuaged; if he remained silent, he experienced no alleviation (verse 6). Common woes are usually relieved by tears or talking; and great sorrows, at least by great souls, full-orbed, self-contained, self-sufficient men, can be restrained, if not abated, by silent endurance; but Job’s misery refused to yield to any medicine. This should have moderated Job’s indignation against his friends, since if he, who best knew his own trouble, was unable to find a crumb of comfort in it, it was worse than foolish to expect that men, who in a manner only spoke at a venture, would be successful in ministering to a malady which they did not understand.

Learn:

1. That truths which seem original to ordinary minds are often recognized by wiser and better-informed persons as exceedingly trite and commonplace.

2. That well-meaning people sometimes bandy words with one another, and call each other bad names, like vulgar scolds and common sinners.

3. That it is no uncommon thing for men in trouble, whether saints or sinners, to meet with miserable comforters and physicians of no value.

4. That the three requisites for comfort are sincerity. sympathy, and sagacity.

5. That God can place the most capable of men in positions which shall reveal their insufficiency.

Job 16:7-17

Job to God: resumption of the third controversy: 1. The sorrows of a weary man.

I. DIVINELY SENT. Whether directly addressed in the second person (verses 7, 8), or indirectly alluded to in the third (verses 7, 9, 12, 14), it is ever God to whom Job traces back his sufferings. It is faith’s function, as well as faith’s delight, to recognize God’s hand in affliction as in felicity; but not seldom sense intervenes to misconstrue the end and motive of God’s dealings with the saint, and to regard as indicative of anger and enmity what, rightly viewed, is rather symptomatic of affection and care (verse 17; Psa 94:12; Pro 3:12; Heb 12:6; Rev 3:19). From the first Job had connected his adversity with God’s appointment (Job 1:21; Job 2:10). For a long time he had struggled bravely, against the eloquent representations of his friends, to maintain his confidence in God’s affection, notwithstanding all untoward appearances. But now, under extreme pressure of misery, he is on the eve of giving waytalking quite openly of God as his enemy, whose wrath tears him and makes war upon him, and whose teeth sharpen themselves against him (verse 9). The stern facts which appear to shut him up to so reluctant an inference are three.

1. The inward testimony of his own consciousness. Though it would be wrong to say that this witness of an anguish-laden spirit expressed the maturely formed and definitely fixed judgment of the patriarch, it would yet be equally erroneous not to recognize that, for the moment, Job did believe that God had turned against him. Such a complete reversal of a good man’s consciousness was exceptional; the result, not of affliction alone, however severe and protracted, but of Satanic influence and temptation. It discloses the extraordinary power the devil has to work upon the human spirit. If he can so handle “a perfect man and an upright,” it is not at all surprising he should be able to lead captive at his will “silly women, laden with sins, led away with divers lusts” (2Ti 3:6), and even proud and imperious men who oppose themselves to the truth (2Ti 2:26). It reveals also how far a saint may go in a course of unbelief and backsliding without renouncing his integrity; and is fitted to suggest hope concerning many who are supposed to have lapsed entirely from the truth. It sheds a light upon the Divine Father’s forbearance and mercy, that he can see a saint misconstrue his providences, and calumniate his character, and yet lay not his sin to his charge (Job 42:7).

2. The expressed judgment of his fellow-men. Eliphaz had cited, as one of the items in the sinner’s doom, the desolation of his family (Job 15:34), and the obvious allusion to this remark in Job’s language, “Thou hast made desolate all my household” (verse 7), seems to intimate that Job regarded the cruel verdict of his friends upon his case as substantially correct. He could see, from a comparison of his sad condition with the sentiments they had uttered, that they, as well as he, had arrived at the inference that God was against him.

3. The palpable witness of his misery. His emaciated body, his weary and pinched face, his feeble and wasting frame, all covered over with ulcers, seemed to rise up and tell him to his face that God was dealing with him as with a convicted criminal. According to the theology of the period, this was strong circumstantial evidence against the patriarch; but circumstantial evidence often lies. Here it notoriously did, as afterwards it did in the case of Christ, whose marred face was no proof that he was “stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted” (Isa 53:4). “A marred and meagre visage may testify to our grief, but not to our guilt” (Robinson).

II. EXTREMELY SEVERE.

1. Their variety. Almost every form of calamity was heaped upon the patriarch.

(1) Bodily distress; consisting of complete exhaustion of physical vigour (verse 7), unsightly enunciation of the countenance (verse 8), lamentable wasting of the once strong and goodly frame (verse 8).

(2) Mental anguish; occasioned by the overthrow of his family (verse 7), the alienation of his friends, who beheld in his miseries a witness to his condemnation (verse 8); the opposition and insolence of wicked men, to whose mercy God had apparently abandoned him, who gaped upon him with their mouths, rejoicing in his misfortune, smote him upon the cheek reproachfully, adding insult to enmity, and conspired against him, in order to complete his destruction (verse 10)an experience which in all its parts was predicted of Messiah and fulfilled in Christ (cf. Psa 22:12-21 with Mat 26:59, Mat 26:67; and Psa 2:1 with Act 4:25-27).

(3) Spiritual sorrow; arising, as above explained, from a sense of abandonment by God.

2. Their unexpectedness. Job had been at ease, prosperous and contented, fearing God and eschewing evil, when all at once misfortune leaped upon him, and God. seizing him, broke him in pieces. And this was an aggravation of the sufferers distress, that without apparent cause, and certainly without warning, he was hurled from the pinnacle of prosperity to the lowest depths of adversity; as the wicked will eventually be (Psa 73:19), and as at any moment, though not for the same reason, the godly may be. Therefore let no one indulge in a vain confidence like David, that his mountain shall stand strong for ever (Psa 30:6, Psa 30:7); or like Job, that he shall die in his nest (Job 29:18); or like the daughter of the Chaldeans, that she shall be a lady for ever (Isa 47:7); but being forewarned, as the patriarch of Uz was not, let him also be forearmed.

3. Their violence. Job pictures the dreadful hostility of God against himself by means of three striking figures, in which he represents God as

(1) a mighty Hunter, with wrathful soul and gnashing teeth and flaming eyes (verse 9) pursuing a poor frail, timid creature with a pack of fierce and yelping curs (verse 10), to which the prey when caught is mercilessly thrown (verse 11);

(2) a gigantic Wrestler, strong in thew and sinew, seizing his antagonist by the neck, triumphantly holding him aloft in his clenched fist, and then furiously dashing him to the ground (verse 12); and

(3) a skilful Archer, who, tying up his helpless enemy to a post, makes his arrows whistle for a time round the wretch’s head, so as to fill him with consternation without inflicting mortal injury, and then, having sported with him for a while, as a tiger might do with its prey, sends a shaft into a vital part (on the emptying of the gall-bladder, consult the Exposition), so that the miserable victim writhes in mortal agony.

4. Their degradation. The abject humiliation to which Job had been reduced by his sufferings is set forth in four particulars.

(1) The sewing of sackcloth upon his loins. Sackcloth, the symbol of mourning (Gen 37:34; 1Ch 21:16; Psa 35:13; Jon 3:5, Jon 3:6), is here represented as not only put upon the patriarch’s person, but sewed upon his skin; partly, perhaps, because of the ulcerous condition of his body, but partly also, it is probable, to indicate the depth of Job’s abasement.

(2) The defiling of his horn with dust; the horn being the emblem of personal dignity and social honour (Psa 132:17), and the meaning being that all Job’s glory was completely tarnished and laid low. This is one of the expressly designed results of affliction; and they who defile their horns in the dust before God when overtaken by his chastisements have taken the first step towards the final exaltation of their horns (Psa 89:17).

(3) The reddening of the eyes with weeping. Great grief makes strong men weep. Yet weeping for a sufficient cause is not unmanly. Examples: Abraham (Gen 32:2), Joseph (Gen 43:30), David (2Sa 18:33), Hezekiah (2Ki 20:3), St. Paul (Php 3:13), Jesus (Luk 19:41; Joh 11:35).

(4) The shading of the eyelids with gloom; an indication of approaching death. Death makes the eyelid droop, and wraps the eye itself in darkness. It was an aggravation of Job’s misery that it had brought him to the confines of the grave.

III. WHOLLY UNDESERVED.

1. His life had not been wicked. There had been no injustice, wrong, or evil deed of any kind in his hand, as his friends asserted. The hand being the instrument of action, clean hands are the symbol of an upright life (Job 17:9; Psa 24:4). Where the hands are not clean the heart cannot be pure.

2. His devotions had not been insincere. Notwithstanding the imputations of his friends to the contrary (Job 15:4), his conscience told him that his prayer was pure. Genuine sincerity is one of the first requisites of devotion. “When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are” (Mat 6:5).

Learn:

1. That the same God who makes a saint weak and weary beneath life’s burdens can also impart strength and cheerfulness to bear them.

2. That one of the hardest works faith has to do is to oppose those representations of the Divine character and providence that are g yen by sense.

3. That, while the saint’s calamities are not always sent in punishment of sin, they are mostly designed to produce within the saint a spirit of self-humiliation.

4. That God never abandons a saint to the ungodly, though he will yet deliver over the ungodly to perdition.

5. That, next to the comfortable shining of God’s face upon a human soul, which Job at this time wanted, the best lodestar, while struggling over and through a sea of trouble, is the ineradicable conviction of one’s own sincerity, the testimony of a good conscience before God.

Job 16:17

Acceptable prayer.

I. WHEN ADDRESSED TO THE RIGHT OBJECT. God (Psa 65:2). Not, however, the God of our imaginations, or the God of nature simply; but the God of revelation and the God of grace, the God who hath manifested forth his glory in the Person of Jesus Christ.

II. WHEN PRESENTED THROUGH THE RIGHT MEDIUM Jesus Christ, the one Mediator between God and man (1Ti 2:5), the one Advocate for sinful men (1Jn 2:1), the one High Priest over the house of God (Heb 7:25), the Daysman for whom Job longed (Job 9:33), the Redeemer to whom he looked forward (Job 19:25).

III. WHEN OFFERED IN THE RIGHT SPIRIT.

1. Sincerely (Isa 29:13; Mat 15:8).

2. Humbly (Gen 32:10; Isa 66:2; Luk 18:13).

3. Believingly (Mat 21:22; Heb 11:6; Jas 1:6).

4. Holily (1Ti 2:8); i.e. with renunciation of sin (Pro 15:8; Pro 21:27; Pro 28:9; Psa 66:18), and with kind and forgiving dispositions (Mar 11:25).

IV. WHEN ASKING FOR THE RIGHT THINGS. Things contained within the promises. These give to prayer a scope at once ample and sufficient.

1. Ample; since the promises are exceeding great and precious in their variety (2Pe 1:4).

2. Sufficient; since they contain all things pertaining to life and godliness.

Job 16:18-22

Job to God: 2. An appeal to God against God.

I. A SUBLIME INVOCATION. “O earth, cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have no place!” (verse 18).

1. The explanation of the language. The allusion seems to be to Gen 4:10, where the blood of Abel is represented as crying to God from the ground for vengeance upon its destroyer; and Job, in the lofty consciousness of his innocence, while momentarily anticipating death, calls upon the earth not to drink up his blood, but to permit its cry to “urge its way unhindered and unstilled towards heaven without finding a place of rest.” But the student may consult the Exposition.

2. The import of the language. It contains a declaration on the part of Job that, though about to perish, he was innocent; and, since he regarded God as the Author of all his sufferings, it was virtually an accusation of God as the Shedder of his innocent blood. The style of address here employed is certainly not one that a good man may with safety imitate.

II. A CONFIDENT APPEAL.

1. To what quarter? Not to his friends who had mocked him (verse 20), but to God himself who had assailed him, to whom nevertheless he clung as for dear life, and whom he describes by a threefold characteristic.

(1) His name; Eloah, the All-powerful Supreme, in contrast to man, to strong men and weak men alike, who are all at the best but dust; the mighty Maker of this universal frame, who giveth power unto the faint, and to them that have no might increaseth strength (Isa 40:29), and who hath revealed himself most graciously as a Refuge for the oppressed (Psa 9:9; Deu 33:27; Jer 16:19).

(2) His occupation; that of a Witness, an Eye-witness, whose eyes are in every place, beholding the evil and the good (Pro 15:3), as those of Christ, the faithful Witness, are in the midst of the golden candlesticks (Rev 2:1); and in particular whose eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in behalf of them whose hearts are perfect toward him (2Ch 16:9). The thought that God is a constant Eye-witness of everything on earth, and a silent Spectator of all that transpires within the deep places of the human heart, may fill the wicked with alarm, but is fraught with special comfort to the saint.

(3) His dwelling-place; the heights, or heaven. God has three dwelling-placeseternity, the Church, and the saint’s heart (Isa 57:15); and he is never really absent from the third any more than from the second or the first. But when the saint, by reason of doubt, sorrow, or sin, cannot perceive him in the second or third, he may always find him in the first, seated on his high and glorious throne of grace.

2. In what spirit? Clearly

(1) with firm faith. “Behold, my Witness is in heaven;” the first personal pronoun pointing to the existence of appropriating faith. So David says, “The Lord is my Shepherd” (Psa 23:1). And

(2) with confident expectation. “Behold!”a note of triumph, as if a gleam of bright exultant hope had already begun to make sunshine in the sufferer’s soul.

III. A FERVENT SUPPLICATION.

1. The earnestness of Job‘s prayers. They were:

(1) Persistent. His friends mocked him, accused him of impiety, insinuated that he had abandoned the habit of devotion; but, in spite of slander and misrepresentation, he continued “instant in prayer.” Not fitful and intermittent devotion succeeds with God, but habitual and continual. Therefore pray without ceasing. It is a high mark of grace to be able to persevere in well-doing, and to keep on praying in face of opposition and ridicule from friends.

(2) Tearful. Job presented not cold, formal, and listless petitions to the throne of grace, but warm, urgent, and forceful entreaties. When the eye waters, the heart melts. It is the stream of penitential feeling, or the flood of believing desire, which, welling up from the soul’s depths, sends liquid drops through the open gateway of the eye. David mourned after God with tears (Psa 42:3). The father of the lunatic boy cried out with tears, “Lord, I believe” (Mar 9:24).

2. The burden of Job‘s prayers.

(1) That God would plead with himself in behalf of man; i.e. that he would vindicate Job against himself, by declaring him (Job) to be innocent, What Job here desired for himself has in a more exalted sense been done for all men by Christ, who through his cross has made intercession for the transgressors’ not to demonstrate their sinlessness or integrity, but to establish their righteousness before God.

(2) That God would plead for the son of man against his friend; i.e. for Job against his friends, who wished to put him down as a hypocrite. This also God will do for all, if not here, in a future world. “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Mat 13:43).

IV. A PATHETIC REASON.

1. The brevity of life‘s term. “When a few years are come” (verse 22). The short period of life that still remained would soon be ended. Time flies with all, but especially with the dying.

2. The hopelessness of man‘s return from the tomb. “Then I shall go the way whence I shall not return (cf. Job 10:21).

Learn:

1. That the God of faith alone is the true God.

2. That faith’s God is found in the page of revelation and in Jesus Christ, not in the mere conceptions of the human mind.

3. That faith’s God is the enemy of no man, but the Friend of all.

4. That the ear of faith’s God is never heavy that it cannot hear, or his hand shortened that it cannot save.

HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON

Job 16:1-22

Deep dejection and irrepressible hope.

In this reply Job refuses to make a direct rejoinder to the attack upon him; he is too utterly bowed down in his weakness. But

I. The first part of his speech consists of A BITTER SARCASM UPON THE IDLE TALK OF HIS FRIENDS. (Verses 1-5.) Their speeches are useless. They mean to comfort (Job 15:11); but their reasonings produce an opposite effect on his mind. They should cease; there must he something ailing those who are thus afflicted with the disease of words. Words will not heal the broken bones nor soothe the wounded heart. Were it so, then Job could act the part of comforter as well as they, in the case of their affliction. Thus with scorn he repels their futile attempts to “charm ache with air, and agony with words,” to “patch grief with proverbs.”

“Brother, men
Can counsel, and speak comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting if,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air, and agony with words;
No, no; ’tis all men’s office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow;
But no man’s virtue, nor sufficiency,
To be so moral when he shall endure
The like himself: therefore give me no counsel:
My griefs cry louder than advertisement.”

II. Next, he relapses into a MELANCHOLY CONTEMPLATION OF HIS EXTREME MISERY. (Verses 6-17.)

1. The alternative of silence or of speech is equally unbearable. (Verse 6.) A healthy man can give vent to his feelings in talk; but no words suffice to check the flow of this immense grief. Would he do well to be silent? But, then, what grief would depart from him? None! There is no riddance either way. Speak or not, his suffering remains the same.

2. The instinct to pour forth his woe proves irrepressible, and he proceeds with the description of his terrible sufferings. (Verses 7-14.) His strength is exhausted. His house is desolate. His wrinkled and emaciated body is a spectacle to move his own pity. But still keener are the sufferings of his mind. The thought that God has inflicted this suffering, that he is, as he supposes, an object of the Divine wrath, fills his mind with intolerable gloom. And not only is God against him, but evil men seem to be employed as instruments of his wrath. They, envious of his former prosperity, and of his goodness, now gather around to heap every insult upon his head. Tracing again all to God, Job conceives of him under the image of a furious warrior, who has advanced against him in utmost violence, caused a shower of arrows to fall upon him, pierced him as with a sword, battered him into ruins as a strong wall is battered into breaches by the violence of the battering-ram.

3. His present condition. (Verses 15-17.) Humbling himself beneath the rod, he has adopted all the symbolic language of penitence and grief. He has put on the sackcloth; bowed his head to the dust; given himself to weeping until his eyes are heavy and his face is red. And all this “though there is no wrong in his hand, and his prayer is pure.”

III. THE HEAVEN–PIERCING CRY OF INNOCENCE. (Verses 18-22.) So soon as in the course of these sad reflections Job once more recurs to the consciousness of his innocence, new courage is born to his heart; in his very exhaustion he can still cry to Heaven in the might of a confidence that will yet wring an answer from God. He calls upon the earth not to hide his blood, and may his cry have no resting-place. The allusion is to the ancient sacred custom of blood-revenge (Gen 4:10, Gen 4:11; comp. Isa 26:21; 2Sa 1:21). But the circumstances under which the desire net to die unavenged here appears are quite unusual As one persecuted, not merely by man, but far more by God, near to death, he maintains his innocence before man and God. Here is a seeming contradiction between the dark thoughts just expressed of God, and this profound faith in the invisible and just Judge. Grief is full of inconsistencies and contradictions, arising from the imperfection of the understanding. They cannot be solved by thought, only as here by faith. Thus we come to another moment of calm amidst this terrible tempest of griefanother break in the sky amidst these storms. The chapter leaves the deposit of a noble consolation at our feet.

1. The existence of the Witness in heaven. An all-intelligent Witness, a feeling Witness, an all-remembering Witness of innocent suffering, is our heavenly Father. There may be ever an appeal to him from the unfeeling conduct and the mocking observation of men.

2. The certainty of a just decision in the end. “If we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.” In all the sense of life’s mystery, and the temptation to doubt whether God be perfectly good and kind, let Patience, supported by faith, have her perfect work. Let us “remember Job,” and “consider the end of the Lord”J.

HOMILIES BY R. GREEN

Job 16:6

Sorrow without hope.

Unalleviated by the words of his friends, Job turns round upon them, and in painful, half-passionate words retorts upon them their incompotency to give him consolation. “Miserable comforters are ye all.” He is driven almost to despair. The painful alternative of speech or silence is before him; but neither offers him any hope, and he is compelled to reflect upon his helpless condition. He is exhausted. The future presents no prospect of alleviation. He has sorrow without hope. Such sorrow distinguished

I. BY ITS EXTREME PAINFULNESS. To endure pain of body or mind is hard enough, and many succumb to it. But if there be a gleam of hope the aching spirit clings to it and is upborne. When, however, no ray of brightness is apparent, when only the darkness of an undiminished sorrow is present, then is the painfulness of the circumstances in which the sufferer is placed heightened in a great degree. To suffer without hope of a termination is the very perfection of suffering. The poor heart searches for some avenue of escape, but none is present. It is thrown back again and again upon itself. This is extremest sorrow. To see only the long, unvaried line of suffering drawn out to the utmost future, and no break appearing, robs the soul of its one consolation in extreme trialthe hope of release. If a bound be put to sorrow it may be endured; but if no limit can be traced, and all probability of limitation be cut off, the case is desperate. The worst that can be said of any evil isIt is hopeless.

II. Sorrow without hope is AN EXCESSIVE STRAIN UPON THE ENDURANCE OF THE SUFFERER. To lose hope is to lose heart. The strong can bear up under the heavy burden, but the weak must yield. It is to add to the weight of the burden by every hour that elapses. Time, which so often comes to relieve the sorrowful, but brings a heavier load. The exhausted spirit bravely fighting against its oppressive surroundings is more and more driven to the conclusion that all effort is unavailing, and the added experience of every hour but confirms the assurance that there is no hope left. It is the severest of all strains that the spirit can be subjected to. It is the inevitable precursor of despair.

III. Such sorrow reaches a climax of severity when, as in this case, THE APPEAL TO GOD, THE GREAT HELPER, IS UNAVAILING. “He hath made me weary.” He hath exhausted me. It is true a real help is in reserve for Job, but he does not know it. He suffers without hope. He has turned to man and found no relief. His cry to God is unavailing. If he “speak,” his “grief is not assuaged.’ His cry returns upon him. If he “forbear,” still he is not “eased.” The world is indebted to this sufferer for the painful experiment of which he is the subject. Now the world knows that in patient endurance and unswerving fidelity there is assured hope. The hand of help may be hidden, but it is there. God may seem to be inattentive to the sorrowful cry, but he is only testing and proving his faithful servant, and the severity of the test marks the measure of the final award. Hence may we learn

(1) that the apparent hopelessness of human sorrow is not a perfect representation;

(2) the wisdom of maintaining the spirit of hope, even when we seem to have no encouragement to do so;

(3) the certainty of a final relief and reward to the faithful.R.G.

Job 16:11-17

The severity of the Divine judgments.

The mystery of the Divine dealings is revealed in this book. The view from a human standpoint is given. Job and his friends see not the spiritual side of the whole transaction. The Divine purpose is hidden. Job knows not that it is “Satan” that has instigated all these afflictions. He knows not that God has given permission for his trial. Nor does he know the limitations put upon that trial, nor the final issue. The severity of the Divine judgments (so are they in Job’s view) is represented in striking language.

I. AS A DELIVERING OVER TO THE UNGODLY. He is cast into the hands of the evil-doer.

II. As A DESTRUCTION OF EXTERNAL PROSPERITY. “I was at ease, but he hath broken me asunder.”

III. As AN INFLICTION OF SEVERE PAINS. “He cleaveth my reins asunder.”

IV. As A SUCCESSION OF REPEATED INFLICTIONS. “He breaketh me with breach upon breach.” These judgments evoke from Job:

1. The lowliest humiliation. He bows in “sackcloth,” and lays his “horn in the dust.”

2. He pours out his soul in penitence, and his face is even “foul with weeping.”

3. Over him hangs the gloom “the shadow””of death.”

4. In the consciousness of integrity he makes his “pure” prayer to God. The interest of these few lines is very great in the general working out of the plot of the history. Happy he who in the midst of his sorrows can bow in lowly penitence under the severities of the Divine judgments, still retaining the assurance of his sincerity, and waiting the final award.R.G.

Job 16:19, Job 16:20

The appeal of innocence to the highest tribunal.

Job now turns from man to God. He has the assurance of faiththe full assurance which faith gives- that God will requite the injured and justify the pure. Man’s judgment is imperfect. He sees only the outboard circumstance; God looketh upon the heart. To him who knoweth all things Job turns; and to God his “eye poureth out tears.” Before man can commit his cause to God with confidence the following is needful

I. A THOROUGH CONVICTION OF THE INSUFFICIENCY OF HUMAN JUDGMENTS. Job had thoroughly proved this. Howsoever wise the sayings of his friends, or however just their reflections, Job knew that their accusations of him were unfounded, and that therefore their conclusions were unjust. Hence he turned from them to that “record” of his life which was “on high.”

II. But this must be supported by A CONSCIOUS INTEGRITY. None can truly commit his cause to God who knows within himself that he is guilty. At the final bar he knows most assuredly that his sin will find him out. But he whose spirit bears him witness of his uprightness, as Job’s did, and as the Divine judgments afterwards affirmed, may with calmness commit his way unto God. He knows that his true “Witness is in heaven.” He shall bear testimony to Job’s integrity, uprightness, and purity.

III. Further, AN UNHESITATING FAITH IN GOD‘S RIGHTEOUS DEALINGS is needed in order to a calm committal of all to his arbitrament. Job, the “servant” of God, knew in whom he could confide. He feared God. On that fear faith builds with safety and assurance. A conception of God which is so low that it inspires no faith must preclude all loving, helpful hope in him.

IV. On such foundations may rest A CALM PATIENCE TO AWAIT THE FINAL DIVINE AWARD. The upright, sincere, but misunderstood sufferer leaves all to the final judgment. The “witness” and the “record” are “on high.” To that tribunal which is also on high he appeals, and with the “scorn” of his “friends’ breaking his already afflicted spirit he turns his tearful eyes “unto God.” Self-assured integrity may always thus make its appeal to God, “the righteous Judge” to whose judgment-seat it is the highest wisdom of assailed innocence to appeal.R.G.

HOMILIES BY W.F. ADENEY

Job 16:2

Miserable comforters.

Job is able to rise above his foolish, narrow-minded friends, and look down upon them with good-humoured, pitying irony. So little do they understand him! So proudly do they trust in their empty words! And it is all a delusion. Job is almost ready to forget their impertinence as he turns to the far more important question of God’s dealings with him. But first he gives them their true character. They are all “miserable comforters.”

I. MISERABLE COMFORTERS FAIL FOR LACK OF SYMPATHY. This thought is continually recurring in the course of the dramatic dialogue. It is at the root of the whole controversy. All the elaborate argumentation of the three wise men is so much empty wind, because they lack the first condition of consolation. We can never be reminded too often that sympathy is the first and absolute condition of all mutual helpfulness. But how is it that well-meaning friends lack it? There can be but one answer. The enemy of sympathy is selfishness. While we think much of ourselves, our own opinions, position, conduct, we must fail in sympathy, and our attempts to help others must come to the ground without any good results. In visiting the poor, nursing the sick, raising the fallen, saving the lost, teaching children, sympathy is the primary requisite for success. Christ is the true Friend of the suffering, because Christ sympathizes profoundly with all sufferings. We make a mistake when, like Job’s comforters, we try to console by offering advice. The sufferer wants not advice, but sympathy. Why should his misfortune give us a right to pose as his counsellors? He is more fitted to be our teacher, for he has been to the best of schools, the school of affliction.

II. MISERABLE COMFORTERS ADD TO THE GRIEFS WHICH THEY VAINLY TRY TO ASSUAGE. Thus Rousseau writes, “Consolation indiscreetly pressed upon us, when we are suffering under affliction, only serves to increase our pain and to render our grief more poignant.” The reasons for this are not difficult to discover.

1. Disappointment. We expect something better from a friend. He should give us his sympathy, and if he fails to do so we feel ourselves to be unkindly treated, or at least we miss a comfort for which we were looking.

2. Weariness. The sufferer wants quiet. The look and tear of sympathy may console him, but many words are wearying to him. He is too full of iris own sad thoughts to find room for the ill-judged observations of untimely advisers.

3. Injustice. You cannot be just to a man without sympathy, because you cannot understand him till you enter into his deeper feelings. But nothing is more distressing than unjust treatment. Much of Job’s greatest trouble came from this source.

III. WE NEED DIVINE GRACE TO HELP US TO BE TRUE COMFORTERS. Perhaps we shrink from the task, seeing its difficulties. We would avoid the house of mourning lest our bungling attempts at consolation should add to its sorrows. But this is not brotherly. The Christian duty is to “weep with them that weep” (Rom 12:15). To be true sympathizers we need to have self conquered by the grace of Christ. Perhaps one reason why some of us have much trouble is that we may be able to understand the trouble of other people, and so may become true comforters.W.F.A.

Job 16:6

Incurable grief.

Job does not know what to do; neither speech nor silence will assuage his grief. It appears to be incurable.

I. GREAT GRIEF SEEMS INCURABLE TO THE SUFFERER.

1. It cannot be measured. Feeling destroys the sense of proportion. Every one who suffers much is tempted to think himself the greatest of sufferers. A passion of emotion sweeps away all standards of comparison. The stormy sea appears to be unfathomable.

2. It excludes the thought of anything but itself. The black cloud shuts out the heavens and narrows the horizon. The world of sorrow is shrunken to the range of present, personal experience, Thus in overwhelming grief there is no room or power in the soul to conceive of a means of escape. The absorbing interest of pain will not allow a rival consciousness.

3. It is found to be irresistible. If a man thought he could conquer his grief or escape from it, surely he would not tamely submit to his torments unless he were a fanatic of asceticism. But if the pain cannot be set aside at once, it is difficult to believe that it will not endure for ever, for agony destroys the sense of time.

II. GREAT GRIEF MAY NOT BE CURABLE BY MAN. There are diseases that no medicine can heal, and sorrows that no human aid can touch. Grief naturally tends to endure by its own creation of a habit of grieving.

“Sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell,
Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes:
Then little strength rings out the doleful knell.”

(Shakespeare)

Some sorrows are evidently incurable by man.

1. The loss of those greatly beloved. No human comforter could bring back Job’s seven sons and three daughters from the dead. What word or work of man could touch his sorrow of utter bereavement? We know only too well that nothing on earth can make up for our greatest losses by death.

2. The discovery of a wasted life. When the old man comes to himself and finds that he has been living in a delusion, when he sees with bitter remorse that he has been squandering his years in folly and sin, what can man do to comfort him? The past can never be recovered.

3. The despair of guilt. If this is soothed by flattery and falsehood, a fatal mischief is done. But if the conscience is fairly roused, it cannot be thus soothed. To man sin is incurable.

III. GRIEF THAT APPEARS TO BE INCURABLE MAY YET BE ALL CURED BY GOD. No child of God should despair, for infinite love and almighty energy can know of no impossibility. The gospel of Christ offers complete cure.

1. Present peace.

(1) If the trouble is from sin, the peace is in pardon. All sin is curable by Christ, for “he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him” (Heb 7:25).

(2) If the trouble is from any other cause, the peace is in the love of God. This love, which also brings the peace of forgiveness, is itself an infinite consolation. It is better to be Lazarus with God than Dives with purple and fine linen.

2. Future blessedness. The dead will not return to us. But we shall go to them. Christ promises to his people a home in the great house of God. There “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes” (Rev 7:17). The old wasted life cannot be given back in its pristine innocence. But the renewed soul may live a new life in God’s eternity.W.F.A.

Job 16:12

Shattered when at ease.

This was Job’s awful fate. All was calm when the thunderbolt fell and dashed him to the ground.

I. GOD GIVES TIMES OF EASE. This should be acknowledged even in the hours of suffering. Take life as a whole, and the intervals of ease are with most people much longer than the periods of trouble. Yet we are tempted to neglect them when giving the story of our life, and, like Jacob, to describe our days as “few and evil” (Gen 47:9). Quiet times come from God quite as much as troublous times. It is an unjust view of providence to suppose that our ease comes from ourselves and the world, and only our trouble from God.

II. TIMES OF EASE WILL NOT ENDURE FOR EVER. It is needless to be anticipating future trouble. Christ bids us not be anxious for the morrow. But we should be prepared for trouble. The man who has insured his house against a fire need not be always dreaming that it is in flames. Having made a proper provision, he can set aside all thoughts of danger. We require to have just so much perception of the uncertainty of life as to lead us to make the requisite provision for a reverse of fortune. The storm may come. Where shall we be when it is upon us?

III. TIMES OF EASE ARE NOT IN THEMSELVES SECURITIES AGAINST TIMES OF TROUBLE. As they may give place to very different times, they cannot ward off the unacceptable succession. The great temptation of the rich man is to trust in his wealth for what it can never purchase. Seeing that its range is wide, he is in danger of missing its limits. So the prosperous man is tempted to trust to his good fortune, as though the mere occurrence of what is agreeable were a cause of the same in the future. But trouble comes from outside a man’s circumstances, or from his own heart, which may be bankrupt while his estate is perfectly sound.

IV. TIMES OF EASE SHOULD HELP US TO PREPARE FOR TIMES OF TROUBLE. Joseph laid up stores during the seven years of plenty in preparation for the coming seven years of famine. The prudent man will always try to put something by for a rainy day. Old age must be provided for by the forethought of earlier years. Thrift is a duty a man owes to his family whom he ought to support, and to his neighbours to whom he ought not to become a burden. Higher considerations require the same method of conduct. These present calm days afford us good opportunities for spiritual preparation. It is rare indeed that a man has power and disposition to enter into the deeper religious experiences on his death-bed if he has not made himself acquainted with them during the days of health and strength. Then death may surprise us at any time, and the only safety is in being always ready. A good use of the long, quiet, prosperous summer-time of life should leave us prepared to meet whatever wintry storms it may please God to send us. If we have the peace of God in our hearts, the most shattering blows will not destroy it, and that peace even in trouble will be far more precious to us than the times of ease of the lotus-eaters, with whom it was “always afternoon,” but who knew not the deeper blessedness of peace in sorrow.W.F.A.

Job 16:17

(last clause, “My prayer is pure”).

Purity of prayer.

The impure prayer cannot be heard by God. It may be earnest, passionate, vehement, yet it must fall back rejected and confounded. Let us, then, consider in what purity of prayer consists.

I. REALITY. The prayer that is not felt and meant in the heart is an impure offering of hypocrisy. Though it be uttered in the becoming phrases of devotion, it is to God as the howling of blasphemous demons. If there be no other sin in our prayer, insincerity is fatal. But it is not easy to be always true and real, especially in public acts of devotion, when a multitude of people are expected to be joining in the same prayer at the same moment. If, however, the heart is set on truly seeking God, he will not count the wandering thought of casual distractions as a mark of insincerity. The spirit may be willing while the flesh is weak (Mat 26:41), and God looks to the heart. What is essential is a true purpose and effort to worship God, who is a Spirit, in spirit and i, truth (Joh 4:24).

II. PENITENCE. We are all sinners, and therefore can only come to God as suppliants confessing our sin. Any other method of approach is false to our character and deeds. In the parable of the publican and the Pharisee it is just the contrition of the publican that meets with God’s approval. If we hold to our sin we cannot be received m our prayer. Though we may forget the ugly thing, or suppose that we have left it behind us, it is with us in the very house of God; it is even standing between us and God, a black and impenetrable barrier.

III. FAITH. We cannot pray purely till we trust God. The prayer of unbelief is a wild cry in the darkness wrung from a soul by its utter distress. Surely God will pity such a cry, and in his infinite compassion he will do what is possible to save his benighted child. But the strength of communion with God that comes in prayer is only possible when we can trust God as our Father and completely confide in him. It is by believing, by trusting God, that we win great blessings in prayer.

IV. SUBMISSION. If Our prayer is a self-willed mandate claiming certain things from God which must be just according to our mind, it is defiled by impurity. We have not to dictate to God what he is to do for us. Our duty is to lay our case before God and then to leave it with him. He must do what he thinks best, not what we demand. The pure prayer will be submissive, saying, “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

V. UNSELFLSHNESS. Even in our submission we may still be selfish, for we may be convinced that it is best for ourselves that God should do with us what he thinks best, and may think of nothing else. Such prayers as “Bless me; save me; comfort me; fill me with good things,” are narrow, and when they stand alone they are selfish. Christ’s model prayer is in the plural number,” Our Father give us,” etc. We need to enlarge our petitions with intercession for our brethren, and to include the wants of the world in our prayers. The purest prayer is one that chiefly seeks the glory of GodChrist’s prayer, “Father, glorify thy Name.”W.F.A.

Job 16:19, Job 16:20

The Witness in heaven.

Job turns from man to God. On earth he is misjudged, but in heaven there is One who sees all, and can witness both his woe and his integrity. More than this; he turns from God as the source of his calamity to God as his Saviour. Dr. S. Cox has pointed out that Job has here made a great discovery. He has found a higher God, a God of love, above the God who torments. Or rather, he has seen the true God above the false, conventional idea of God. To this God he appeals as his Witness in heaven.

I. THERE IS A WITNESS IN HEAVEN.

1. He is far above us. “In heaven.” God is not to be confined to the narrow range of earthly experiences. He sits above the dust and din of the battle, above all the clouds and storms of earth. He is free from the passion, the limited vision, the personal prejudice of the immediate actors in the earthly scene. Though intimately associated with all we are and do, he is yet so great as to enjoy that detachment of mind which allows of fair and impartial judgment. He looks with other eyes than ours; from his high station he sees all things in their right proportion, and he takes in the whole panorama of existence.

2. He takes note of earthly things. A “Witness.” God is not uninterested in earth, like an Epicurean divinity. He looks lute all human affairs, and they are all open to him Every human deed is done under the eye of God; even the darkest and most secret crimes are perfectly open to his all-penetrating scrutiny. He too sees things truly, as they are; and the greatest wrong and injustice is quite clear to him. God never misunderstands any of his children.

3. He can be appealed to. Job even calls God “my Witness.” He feels that God is on his side, and he believes that he may call upon God to testify against the enormous wrong that is being done to him. God does not reserve his knowledge uselessly, like a student who is always learning, hut never employing what he acquires. We may appeal to God to come and speak and act for our deliverance, pouring out tears unto him.

II. THE WITNESS IN HEAVEN IS TRUE AND GOOD. It is useless to appeal to a false witness, or to one who will give an unfavourable version of what he sees. Satan was a witness of Job’s life; but Satan’s testimony was one-sided, suspicious, and as damaging as the facts could allow. Job appeals without fear to the supreme Witness, knowing that his testimony can be relied upon. Goodness and truth are supreme. The lower earthly experiences of God are contradictory and confusing. What we see in this world of nature and providence perplexes us with hard thoughts of apparent indifference, injustice, cruelty. Some have even supposed that the Creator of a world with so much evil could not be good. Browning’s Caliban imagined, in his poor, dim, low-minded speculation, that his god Setebos made the world “out of spite.” This was a common belief with the Gnostic sects. But Caliban, like the Gnostics, saw that there was a Supreme who did justly. The notion appears in modern times. Dr. Jessopp relates a conversation in which an old countryman said that Providence was always against him. This year it was the potato-disease, and last year the oats were blighted. But looking up, he added, “I reckon there’s One above that will call him to account.” The delusion is in separating the two divinities. We have to see that the one God appears in lower scenes of darkness and mystery, and also in the heights above as perfect love. Clouds and darkness are round his footstool But his countenance is gracious.W.F.A.

Job 16:21

Pleading with God.

Job still maintains the higher strain of thought which he took up when he appealed to his Witness in heaven. The one desire of his heart is to be right with God, and he is persuaded that only God himself can make him so.

I. OUR GREATEST NEED IS TO BE RIGHT WITH GOD. What is the use of the flattery of man if God, the one supreme Judge with whom we have to do, condemns us? But, then, where is the mischief of man’s censure when our Judge acquits us? Far too much is made of the opinion of the world, and far too little of the verdict of Heaven. We need to rise above the little hopes and tears of human favour to the great thought of God’s approval. When we think first of that, all else becomes insignificant. The reasons for doing so should be overwhelming.

1. God knows all.

2. He is Almightyable to bless us or to east us off.

3. He is our Father. And it is better for the child to stand well with his parent than with all the world.

II. WE HAVE TO OWN THAT WE ARE NOT RIGHT WITH GOD.

1. This is apparent in the experience of life. Job felt there was something wrong between him and God, though the foolish error of his friends had confused his mind, so that he could not see where the wrong lay. The dark shadows that creep between us and God, and hide from us the joy of heaven, are felt in experience. They certainly bear witness to some condition of error or evil.

2. This is also confirmed by the testimony of conscience. A voice within interprets the dark scene without. We learn from Job’s distresses that calamities are not necessarily indicative of sin. But we must all own that nothing puts us so wrong with God as our own misconduct.

III. WE NEED AN ADVOCATE TO SET US RIGHT WITH GOD. We cannot represent our own case aright, for we do not understand ourselves, and our “hearts are deceitful above all things.” We certainly do not know the mind and will of God. How, then, can we find our way back to him? A trackless desert lies between, and the night is dark and stormy. Even if we were before him we could not answer him “one of a thousand.” Thus there is a general feeling among men that some mediator, intercessor, advocate, priest, is required.

IV. GOD IN CHRIST IS THE ADVOCATE WITH GOD THE FATHER. Job could not see as far as this; but he saw the essential truth, i.e. that God must provide the way of reconciliation. Only God can plead with God for man. Therefore we flee” from God to God.” We escape from the lower experiences of the Divine in life which strike us as harsh, and even as unjust, to the higher vision of God which reveals him as all truth and goodness. We call upon God in his love to reconcile us with himself. This, the New Testament teaches, he does in Christ, who is the Revelation of God’s love. “We have an Advocate with the Father,” etc. (1Jn 2:1). We want no human priest to plead our cause, for we have a great High Priest who “ever liveth to make intercession for us.” When we truly pray in Christ’s Name we have a right to trust that he will plead for us. By all the merits of his cross and Passion his pleading is mighty to prevail for the sinner’s salvation.W.F.A.

Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary

CHAP. XVI.

Job expostulates with his friends on their unkind treatment; and declares, that if they were in the like distress he would behave to them in a different manner. He sets forth the greatness of his sufferings, but still maintains his integrity.

Before Christ 1645.

Job 16:1. Then Job answered and said Job, above measure grieved that his friends should treat him in this cruel manner, expostulates very tenderly with them on the subject. He tells them, that he should, in the like circumstances, have behaved to them in a very different way: Job 16:2-6; That he, as well as every one about him, was in the utmost astonishment to find a man whom he imagined to be his friend accuse him falsely, and give him worse treatment than even his greatest enemies would have done. But that he plainly saw that God was pleased to add this to the rest of his calamities; that he should not only be deprived of the comfort and assistance which he might have expected from his friends, but that he should be used by them in the most relentless way: Job 16:7-14 That he had voluntarily taken upon him all the marks of humility used by the guilty, though he was really innocent of their charges; that God above knew his innocence, though his friends so slanderously traduced him: Job 16:15-22 that he was sensible he was nigh his dissolution: chap. Job 17:1-3 that he made no doubt, that whenever the cause came to a decision the event would prove favourable to him. In the mean time, they would do well to consider what effect this their treatment of him must have on mankind; and how great a discouragement it must be to the lovers of virtue and holiness, to see a man whose character was yet unstained, on bare suspicion, dealt with so cruelly by persons pretending to virtue and goodness: Job 16:4-9. Would they but give themselves time to reflect, they must see that he could have no motive to hypocrisy, since all his schemes and hopes, with regard to life, were at an end; and, as he expected nothing but death, with what view could he play the hypocrite? Job 16:10 to the end. Heath.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

B.Job: Although oppressed by his disconsolate condition, he nevertheless wishes and hopes that God will demonstrate his innocence, against the unreasonable accusations of his friends

Job 16-17

(A brief preliminary repudiation of the discourses of the friends as aimless and unprofitable):

Job 16:1-5

1Then Job answered and said:

2I have heard many such things:

miserable comforters are ye all.

3Shall vain words have an end?

or what emboldeneth thee that thou answerest?

4I also could speak as ye do;

if your soul were in my souls stead,
I could heap up words against you,
and shake mine head at you.

5But I would strengthen you with my mouth,

and the moving of my lips should assuage your grief.

1. Lamentation on account of the disconsolateness of his condition, as forsaken and hated by God and men:

Job 16:6-17

6Though I speak, my grief is not assuaged;

and though I forbear, what am I eased?

7But now He hath made me weary:

Thou hast made desolate all my company.

8And Thou hast filled me with wrinkles, which is a witness against me;

and my leanness rising up in me
beareth witness to my face.

9He teareth me in His wrath, who hateth me;

He gnasheth upon me with His teeth;
mine enemy sharpeneth his eyes upon me.

10They have gaped upon me with their mouth;

they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully;
they have gathered themselves together against me.

11God hath delivered me to the ungodly,

and turned me over into the hands of the wicked.

12I was at ease, but He hath broken me asunder;

He hath also taken me by my neck, and shaken me to pieces,
and set me up for His mark.

13His archers compass me round about,

He cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth not spare;
He poureth out my gall upon the ground.

14He breaketh me with breach upon breach;

He runneth upon me like a giant.

15I have sowed sackcloth upon my skin,

and defiled my horn in the dust.

16My face is foul with weeping,

and on my eyelids is the shadow of death;

17not for any injustice in mine hands;

also my prayer is pure.

2. Vivid expression of the hope of a future recognition of his innocence:

Job 16:18 to Job 17:9

18O earth, cover not thou my blood!

and let my cry have no place!

19Also now, behold, my witness is in heaven,

and my record is on high.

20My friends scorn me:

but mine eye poureth out tears unto God.

21O that one might plead for a man with God,

as a man pleadeth for his neighbor!

22When a few years are come,

then I shall go the way whence I shall not return.

Job 17:1My breath is corrupt,

my days are extinct,
the graves are ready for me.

2Are there not mockers with me?

and doth not mine eye continue in their provocation?

3Lay down now, put me in a surety with Thee;

who is he that will strike hands with me?

4For Thou hast hid their heart from understanding?

therefore shalt Thou not exalt them.

5He that speaketh flattery to his friends,

even the eyes of his children shall fail.

6He hath made me also a byword of the people;

and aforetime I was as a tabret.

7Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow,

and all my members are as a shadow.

8Upright men shall be astonished at this,

and the innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite.

9The righteous also shall hold on his way,

and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger.

3. Sharp censure of the admonitory speeches of the friends as unreasonable, and destitute of all power to comfort:

Job 17:10-16

10But as for you all, do ye return, and come now;

for I cannot find one wise man among you.

11My days are passed,

my purposes are broken off,
even the thoughts of my heart.

12They change the night into day:

the light is short because of darkness.

13If I wait, the grave is mine house;

I have made my bed in the darkness.

14I have said to corruption, Thou art my father;

to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister.

15And where is now my hope?

as for my hope, who shall see it?

16They shall go down to the bars of the pit,

when our rest together is in the dust.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

1. Heartlessly repulsed by his friends, and left without comfort, Job turns, more trustfully than in his previous apologies, to the God who evidenced Himself in his good conscience, of whom he cannot believe that He will leave him forever without testifying to his innocence, however cheerless a night of despair may in the meanwhile surround him. It is in the expression of his confidence, and of his inward yearning and waiting for this Divine testimony to his innocence (Job 16:18 to Job 17:9) that the significance of this discourse culminates, so far as it gives pleasing evidence of progress beyond Jobs former frame of mind. Along with this indeed it gives evidence that the spirit of hopeless and bitter complaint is, if not intensified, at least substantially unchanged and undiminished. The first principal division of the discourse (Job 16:6-17) which precedes that expression of yearning confidence in Gods help contains in particular an expression of cheerless lamentation over his condition, as one forsaken by God and men; while a shorter introduction prefaced to this division (Job 16:2-5), as well as the concluding section, or third division (Job 17:10-16) are particularly occupied with a bitter complaint on account of the misunderstanding and heartless conduct of the friends.The whole discourse comprises six long strophes, the first of which constitutes the introduction, extending through four verses, or ten stichs (Job 16:2-5), while the first and second divisions contain each two strophes (of 6, 7 verses, or 14 stichs), the third division, however, only one strophe (of 7 verses, or 14 stichs).

2. Exordium of the discourse, or introductory strophe: A short preliminary repudiation of the discourses of the friends as aimless, and destitute of all power to comfort: ch Job 16:2-5.

Job 16:2. I have heard (already) many such things (, multa, as in ch, Job 23:14), and miserable comforters are ye all. , lit. comforters of distress [Gen of attribute, Green, 254, 6] are burdensome comforters (consolatores onerosi, Jer.), who, instead of comfort, minister only trouble and distress; comp. Job 15:11.

Job 16:3. Are windy words (now) at an end? Comp. Job 15:2, where Eliphaz reproaches Job with windy speecha reproach which Job now pays back in the same coin.Or what vexes thee [addressed more particularly to Eliphaz] that thou answerest?, Hiph. of , to be sick, weak (see on Job 6:25), signifies to make sick, to afflict (Ewald, Schlott., Dillm.), or again to goad, incite, vex (Del.) [see the examples in notes on Job 6:25 favoring this definition]: not, to make sweet, to sweeten, as the Targ. interprets, as though were without further qualification = moreover is not = quum (Hirz.), but as in Job 6:11 quod: what vexes thee that thou answerest, or to answer.

Job 16:4. I also indeed would speak like you, i.e., would be minded to serve you with such like discourses as your own [Dillmann, Conant, Renan, Rodwell, etc., with good reason prefer to render the subjunctive I could, or might, rather than would].If your soul were instead of mine;i.e. in case you had my place, your persons were instead of mine. [Conant, however: Your soul is not to be taken as a periphrasis of the personal pronoun. Soul, the seat of intelligence, mental activity and emotion, stands as the representative of these faculties in man, and is specially appropriate here, where there is immediate reference to what is thought, felt and suffered. The force of the expression is lost therefore by substituting ye and me.]Would [or could] weave words against you. is not to make a league with words (Gesen. [Rodwell], etc.), nor again: to affect wisdom with words (Ewald), but to combine words, string them together like pearls. Instead of the simple accus of the object , the more choice construction with instrum. is used; comp. the following member, also Job 16:10; Jer 18:16; Lam 1:17 (Gesen. 138 [ 135] 1, Rem. 3). [When he says: I would range together, etc., he gives them to understand that their speeches are more artificial than natural, more declamations than the outgushings of the heart. Del.]And shake my head at you;viz., as a gesture of scorn and malicious pleasure; comp. Psa 22:8 [7]; Isa 37:22; Jer 18:16; Sir 12:18; Mat 27:39. It should be borne in mind that what is hateful in such conduct is not to be charged upon Job (who indeed only states what he could do if he had before him the friends, weak and miserable as he is now, and should then follow the promptings of the natural man), but on the friends, before whom Job here holds up as in a mirror the hatefulness of their own conduct. [In regard to the rendering of by against, and the explanation of as a gesture of scorn, see below on Job 16:5]

Job 16:5. Would [could] strengthen you with my mouth:i.e. with mere words, instead of with deeds of a love that wins the heart. [On the form with Tsere shortened to Hhirik, see Green, 104, h.]And the sympathy of my lips (, commisseration, sympathy, only here; comp. the phrase, similar in sound, , fruit of the lips, Isa 57:19) should assuage, soil, your grief. , to soothe, restrain, check, here without an obj. as in Isa 58:1. The following verse easily enables us to supply , as the object. [The E. V., Wem., Bar., Elz., etc., render this as a contrast with Job 16:4, as though Job, after there describing what he might do if they were in his place, describes here what, on the other hand, he really would do. But there is nothing to indicate such a contrast. Job 16:5 is most simply and naturally the continuation of Job 16:4.The irony of the passage is most keen and cutting. If you were in my place, says Job, if your soul were tried as mine is, I could speak windy words in abundance as you have done, I could string them out one after another, and nod my head to comfort: oh, yes! all such comfortsympathy of the head, of the mouth, of the lips, I could lavish upon youthat is cheap enough, as your conduct showsbut as for the heart, that is quite another matter! It will be seen from this paraphrase of Jobs language that a somewhat different view is taken of one or two expressions, particularly in Job 16:4, from that given above by Zckler, It seems unnecessary and unnatural to suppose that Job would in Job 16:4 describe himself as framing words against them, and indulging in gestures of malicious mockery, and then in Job 16:5 as strengthening and soothing them with wordsbut nothing more. Moreover the expressions of Job 16:4 would thus lose their point, there being no reason to suppose that the friends had shown any such malignity as would be thus suggested. What Job says is, that he could multiply words of cold formal sympathy, that he could string out such words upon them, or towards them; and again that he could make with his head the customary oriental gesture of condolence ( here like , see above, Job 2:11 and comp. Gesen. sub. 5.), this being by implication all the sympathy he had received from them.E.]

3. First Division. A lamentation concerning the cheerlessness of his condition, as one forsaken and persecuted by God and men. Job 16:6-17.

First Strophe: Job 16:6-11. From the friends, the miserable comforters, who leave him in his helplessness, he turns to himself, who is so greatly in need of sympathy, because God has delivered him over to the scorn and the cruelty of the unrighteous.

Job 16:6. [He bethinks himself whether he will continue, the colloquy further. Already in the lamentation of Job 3. Job had given vent to his grief, and solicited comfort. The colloquy thus far had shown that from them he had no comfort to expect. Should he then speak further, in order to procure at least some alleviation of his grief? but he cannot anticipate even this as the result of his speaking. He must accordingly be silent; yet even then he is no better off. Dillm.]If I speak (voluntative after , see Ew. 355, b) my grief is not assuaged; if I forbear (voluntative without , as in Job 11:17; Psa 73:16, etc.), what departs from me, viz. of my pain? how much of my pain goes away from me, do I lose? The unexpressed answer would naturally be; Nought! On , comp. Job 14:20.

Job 16:7. Neverthelessnow He hath exhausted me, viz. God, not the pain (, Job 16:6), which the Vulg., Aben-Ezra, etc., regard as the subj. The particle , which belongs to the whole sentence, signifies neither: of a truth, yea verily! (Ew.) nor only [=entirely], as though it belonged only to (Hirz., Hahn, etc.), but it has here an adversative meaning, and states, in opposition to the two previously mentioned possibilities of speaking and being silent, what is actually the case with Job; hence it should be rendered still, nevertheless, verum tamen: [Renan: Mais quoi! He is absolutely incapable of offering any resistance to his pain, and care has also been taken that no solacing word shall come to him from any quarter, Del. See the next clause].Thou hast desolated all my circle. here not rabble, as in Job 15:34, but sensu bonocircle of friends and family dependents (Carey: all my clan). [This mention of the family is altogether in place, seeing that the loss of the same must be doubly felt by him now that his friends are hostile to him. Schlott,]. The Pesh. reads all my testimony (), i.e., all that witness in my behalf, all my prosperity (so also Hahn among the moderns), to which however is not particularly suitable. Note moreover the transition, bearing witness as it does to the vivid excitement of the speakers feelings, from the declarations concerning God in the third person (which we find in the first member, and which appear again Job 16:9 seq.), and the mournful plaintive address to Him here and in Job 16:8, in which the description before us is directly continued.

Job 16:8. And hast seized me (not Thou makest me wrinkled, Vulg., Luther [E. V., Lee, Rodwell] or shrivelest me together, Del.for signifies to press together, to fasten firmly together; comp. Job 22:16. [Wordsworth attempts somewhat peculiarly to combine the two definitions: Thou hast bound me fast with wrinkles, as with a chain].It is become a witness, viz., the fact that thou hast seized me; the circumstance that God makes him suffer so severely isso at least it seemsa witness of his guilt. [This clause, taken in connection especially with the following parallelism, seems certainly to favor the rendering of the Vulg., E. V., etc. thou hast filled me with wrinkles. The witness against Job is naturally something which like his leanness is visible. The corrugation of the skin was a feature of elephantiasis more marked even than the emaciation of the body, and would hardly be omitted in so vivid a description of his condition as Job here gives. The primary signification of seizing, or compressing should not however be lost sight of; indeed it adds much to the terrible, force of the representation to retain it, and, with Wordsworth, to combine the two definitions, only in a somewhat different way from his; the true conception being that Godwho in Job 16:12 is represented as seizing Job and dashing him in pieces,is here represented as seizing, compressing him, until his body is shriveled, crumpled up into wrinkles.E.]. In opposition to Ewald, who changes into (= , see Job 6:2; Job 30:13), and translates accordingly: and calamity seized me as a witness comp. Del. and Dillm. on the passage: [who object that it would leave without much of its force and emphasis, and that the construction would be too condensed and artificial].And my leanness has appeared against me, accusing me to the face (speaking out against me, comp. Job 15:6 b). On = consumption, emaciation, comp. Psa 109:24. The signification rests on a metaphor similar to that by virtue of which a dried-up brook is called a liar (Job 6:15 seq.).

Job 16:9. His anger has torn and made war upon me; He has gnashed against me with His teeth; as mine enemy He has whetted His eyes against me. God, who is now again spoken of in the third person, is imagined as a ferocious beast of prey, who is enraged against Job. So above in Job 10:16.As to the tearing, comp. Hos 6:1; the making war, Job 30:21; the whetting or sharpening of the eyes, Psa 7:13 [12]: also the acies oculorum of the Romans, and the modern expression, to shoot a murderous look at any one

Job 16:10. Men also, like God, fall upon Job, as his enemies, resembling beasts of prey.They have opened wide their mouth against me (a gesture of insolent mockery, as in Psa 22:8 [Psa 22:7]; Jer. 57:4); with abuse (i.e., with abusive speech) they strike me on the cheeks (comp. Mic. 4:14 [Mic 5:1]; Lam 3:30; Joh 18:22; Joh 19:3); together they strengthen themselves against me, or again: they complete; fill themselves up [= fill up their ranks] against me, for means to gather themselves together to a (Isa 31:4), a heap; not to equip themselves with a full suit of armor, as Hirzel would explain, supplying .The whole of this lamentation, which reminds us of Psalms 22., is general in its form; it contemplates nevertheless the hostile attacks made by the friends on Job, as in particular the word together in the third member showsin hearing which the friends could not help feeling that they were personally aimed at in the strong expressions of the speaker, even as he on his part must have had his sensibilities hurt by such expressions as those of Eliphaz in Job 15:16 (see on the passage).

Job 16:11. God delivers me (comp. Deu 23:16 [15]) to the unrighteous, and casts me headlong into the hand of the wicked. , Imperf. Kal. of (contracted from , Ges., 70 [ 68], Rem. 3). [The preformative Jod has Metheg in correct texts, so that we need not suppose, with Ralbag, a similar in meaning to . Del.], prcipitem me dat; comp. LXX. and Symmachus . in the first member, the perverted one, the reprobate, the unrighteous, or againthe boy [der Bube, or the boyish, childish, knavish one] as Del. explains it, (referring to Job 19:18; Job 22:11), is used collectively for the plur., as the parallel term in b shows.

Second Strophe: Job 16:12-17. Continuation of the description of the cruel and hostile treatment he had received from God, notwithstanding his innocence.

Job 16:12. I was at ease, and He then shattered me. , secure, unharmed, suspecting no evil; comp. Job 21:23; Job 3:26., Pilp. of with strong intensive significationto shatter, to crush in pieces; so also the following , from , to beat in pieces, to dash to pieces. [He compares himself to a man who is seized by the hair of his head, and thrown down a precipice, where his limbs are broken. He probably alludes to some ancient mode of punishing criminals. Wemyss]. Observe the onomatopoetic element of these intensive forms, which furthermore are to be understood not literally or physically, but in a figurative sense of the sudden shattering of prosperity, and peace of soul.And set me for a mark. (from , , like from ), target, mark, as in 1Sa 20:20; Lam 3:12; comp. above in Job 7:20.

Job 16:13 expands the figure in Job 12. c.His arrows whirred about me. , not his troops, his archers (Rabb. [E. V., Noy., Con., Car., Rod., Elz., etc.]), but according to the unanimous witness of the ancient versions: his arrows, darts (from , , jacere, Gen 49:23; comp. Gen 21:10).(He cleaves my reins without sparing, pours out on the earth my gall (comp. Lam 2:11). Job here describes more specifically the terrible effect of Gods arrows, i.e., of the ailments inflicted on him by a hostile God (comp. Job 6:4, also the well-known mythological representations of classical antiquity), representing in accordance with the Hebrew conception the noblest and most sensitive of the inner organs of the body as affected, namely the reins, and also the gall-bladder. In view of the highly poetic character of the description, it is not necessary to inquire whether he conceives of the outpouring of the gall as taking place inwardly, without being at all perceptible externally, or whether, with a disregard of physiological possibility or probability, he represents it as something that is externally visible. It is moreover worthy of note that according to Arabic notions the rupture of the gall-bladder may really be produced by violent painful emotions. Comp. Delitzsch on the passage; also his Biblical Psychology [p. 317, Clark]; also my Theol. Naturalis, p. 618.

Job 16:14. He breaks through me breach upon breach. , comp. Job 30:14, here as accus. of the object, united to its cognate verb; comp. Gesen., 138 [ 135] Rem. 1.He runs upon me like a mighty warrior. In this new turn of the comparison Job, and in particular his body, appears as a wall, or a fortress, which is by degrees breached by missiles and battering-rams, and which God himself assaults by storm.

Job 16:15. I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, i.e. I have girded around myself, and stitched together (about the loins) a closely fitting mourning garment of close hair (comp. in Isa 3:24; Isa 20:2; Isa 32:11; 1Ki 21:27; 2Ki 6:30, etc.). The sewing upon the skin is doubtless to be understood only figuratively of the laying on of a closely fitting garment, which it is not intended to lay off immediately. Possibly, indeed, there may be an allusion to the cracked swollen skin of one diseased with elephantiasis, in which the hair of the sackcloth (cilicium) must of necessity stick (see my Kritische Gesch. der Ascese, p. 82 seq.). [See also Art. Sackcloth in SmithsBib. Dict. Job does not say of it that he put it on, or slung it around him, but that he sewed it upon his naked body; and this is to be attributed to the hideous distortion of the body by elephantiasis, which will not admit of the use of the ordinary form of clothes. Delitzsch]. In any case in referring to this stiff, almost dead skin, as a part of his fearfully distorted body, he chooses the term , which appears in Hebrew only here (though more common in Aram. and Arab.), and in contrast with , the sound, healthy skin, may be translated hide; comp. the of the LXX.And have lowered (lit. stuck, see below) my hornthe symbol of power and of free manly dignity, comp. 1Sa 2:1; 1Sa 2:10; Psa 89:18 [Psa 89:17], Psa 89:25 [Psa 89:24]; Psa 92:11 [sa 92:10]; etc., Luk 1:69into the dust:this being a sign of his humiliation, of his consciousness of the defeat, and of the deep sorrow which he has been called to endure. For this lowering of the horn into the dust of the earth is the direct opposite of lifting up the horn (Psa 83:3 [2] as a symbol of the increase of power and dignity. is with Saad., Rosenm., Ew., Hirz., Dillm., etc., to be derived from , introire, of frequent use in the Aram, and Arab., and thus signifies to stick into, to dig into. If it were the Pil. of , to act, meaning accordingly to abuse, or to defile (Targ., Pesch., Delitzsch [E. V., Schlott.] etc.), the before the object would not be wanting; comp. Lam 1:22; Lam 2:20; Lam 3:51. To be preferred to this is the translation I roll my horn in the dust (Umbr., Vaihing., Hahn), a rendering which is etymologically admissible.

Job 16:16. My face is burning red with weeping. (instead of which we ought perhaps with the Kri to read the plural , unless we explain the fem., like in Job 14:19, in accordance with Gesen., 146, [ 143], 3), Pualal of , an intensive passive form, expressing the idea of being exceedingly reddened, glowing red (comp. Lam 1:20; Lam 2:11). [From the same root comes the name Alhambra, applied to the building from its color. See Delitzsch].And on mine eyelashes is a death-shade, i.e., by reason of continuous weeping, and the weakening thereby of the power of sight, my eyes are encompassed by a gloom of night: [an explanation which Schlottmann characterizes as flat and prosaic. The idea is rather that in Jobs despondent mood he conceived of the shadow of death as gathering around. He had well-nigh wept himself out of life].

Job 16:17. Although no violence is in my hands (or clings to them) and my prayer is pure.Job emphasizes his innocence here in contrast not only with Job 16:16, but with the whole description thus far given of the persecution which he had endured, Job 16:12-16. is used here, as in Isa 53:9, as a conjunction. in the sense of notwithstanding that, although, (Ewald, 222, b), not as a preposition, as Hirzel explains it (in spite of non-violence).

4. Second Division. A vivid expression of the hope of a future recognition of his innocence: Job 16:18Job 17:9.

First Strophe: Job 16:18ch. Job 17:2. [His confidence in God as his witness and vindicatorhis only hope in view of the speedy approach of death].

Job 16:18. Earth, cover not thou my blood. i.e., drink it not up, let it lie open to view, and cry to heaven as a witness to my innocence, Comp. Gen 4:10; Eze 24:7 seq.; Isa 26:21. [As according to the tradition it is said to have been impossible to remove the stain of the blood of Zachariah, who was murdered in the court of the temple, until it was removed by the destruction of the temple itself. Delitzsch. According to the old belief no rain or dew: would moisten the spot marked by the blood of a person murdered when innocent, or change its blighted appearance into living green. Ewald]. The second member also expresses essentially the same meaning: and let my cry have no resting-place, i.e., let not the cry for vengeance arising from my shed blood (or the cry of my soul poured out in my blood, Gen 9:4, etc.), be stilled, let it not reach a place of rest, before it appears as my (Job 19:25) to deliver and avenge me. [Therefore in the very God who appears to him to be a bloodthirsty enemy in pursuit of him, Job nevertheless hopes to find a witness of his innocence: He will acknowledge his blood, like that of Abel, to be the blood of an innocent man. It is an inward irresistible demand made by his faith which here brings together two opposite principlesprinciples which the understanding cannot unitewith bewildering boldness. Job believes that God will even finally avenge the blood which His wrath has shed, as blood that has been innocently shed. Delitzsch].

Job 16:19. Even now behold in heaven my witness, and my attestor (, LXX. , an Aram, synonym of , witness, comp. Gen 31:47) in the heights.In regard to as a synonym, of , comp. Job 25:2; Job 31:2. , even now, (not now however, Ewald) sets the present condition of Job, apparently quite forsaken, but in reality still supported and upheld by God as a heavenly witness of his innocence, in contrast with a future period, when he will be again publicly acknowledged and brought to honor. This more prosperous and happy future he does not yet indeed realize so vividly as later in Job 19:25 seq. That of which he speaks here is only the contrast between his apparent forsakenness, and the fact that, as he firmly believes, God in heaven is still on his side. [If his blood is to be one day avenged, and his innocence recognized, he must have a witness of the same. And reflecting upon it he remembers that even now, when appearances are all against him, he has such a witness in God in heaven. Dillm.].

Job 16:20. [The conduct of the friends in denying, nay in mocking his innocence, compels him to cling to this God in heaven. Dillm.].They who mock me (lit., my mockers, with strong accent on mockers) are my friends. [It is worthy of remark that the word here used, melits, signifies also an interpreter, an intercessor, and is employed in that sense; below, Job 33:23; comp. Gen 42:23; 2Ch 32:31; Isa 43:27; and some, as Professors Lee and Carey, have assigned that sense to the word here, My true interpreters are my friends; and they suppose in this word, here and in Job 33:23, a prophetic reference to the Mediator. But the Auth. Ver. appears to be correct; and the similarity of the words serves to bring out the contrast between the unkindness of man, and the mercy of God. Words.].To Eloah mine eye poureth tears:i.e. although my friends mock me, instead of taking me under their protection, and attesting my innocence, I still direct to God a look of tearful entreaty that He would do justice, etc.[An equally strong emphasis lies here on subj. and predicate: My friends stands in contrast with God; my mockers in contrast with my witness, Job 16:19; and finally also my mockers in contrast with my friends. Schlottm.]. Ew., Dillm., etc., take the first member, less suitably, as assigning the reason for the second: because my friends are become such as mock me, mine eye pours out tears to Eloah, etc.

Job 16:21 states the object of the weeping (i.e., the yearning) look which he lifts up to God. This object is twofold: (1) That He would do justice to a man before God: lit. that He would decide (, voluntative expressing the final end, as in Job 9:33) for the man against Eloah, or with Eloah ( as in Psa 55:19 [18]; Job 94:16 [15] of an opponent); i.e., that before His own bar He would pronounce me not guilty, that He would cease to misunderstand and to persecute me as an enemy, but would rather assist me to my right, and so appear on my side. (2) (That He would do justice) to the son of man against his friend, that He would justify me against my human friend ( distributively for ), and set me forth as innocentwhich would result immediately upon his justification before Gods bar. For the interchange of man and son of man in poetic parallelism, comp. Psa 8:5. It is not necessary to adopt Ewalds suggestion (Jahrb. der bibl. Wissenschaft, IX. 38) to read , instead of , in order to acquire a more suitable construction for . The construction according to the common reading presents nothing that is objectionable, scarcely anything that is particularly harsh. The influence of the of the first member extends forward to (as in. Job 15:3), and the before = in respect to, against, supplies the place of the of the first member. It would be much harsher were we, with Schlottmann, Ewald (in Comm.), and Olsh. to translate the second member: and judges man against his friend, a rendering which is condemned by the usage of the language, for with accus. of person never signifies to judge, but always to punish, reprove. [Job appeals from God to God: he hopes that truth and love will finally decide against wrath. Schlottmann aptly recalls the saying of the philosophers, which applies here in a different sense from that in which it is meant: Nemo contra Deum, nisi Deus ipse. Del. The prayer of Job is fulfilled in Job 42:7; and that too in a sense quite otherwise than that which Job had ventured to hope for, even in this life. This is again one of the passages where the poet permits his hero, in an exalted moment, to enjoy a presage of the issue. Dillm.] Concerning the theological significance of the wish here expressed by Job, that he might, be justified by God before God as well as before men; comp. the Doctrinal and Ethical Remarks.

Job 16:22. Giving the reason why Job longs to be vindicated, arising from the fact that his end is near, and that for him who has once died there is no prospect of a return to this life, [This, however, is not to be understood as a reason given why God should interpose speedily to vindicate him before his death. Rather the argument, is drawn from the hopelessness of his physical condition. Death was sure and near; that recovery which the friends promised on condition of repentance was out of the question: hence if he is to be vindicated, it must be by God, who can do it when he is gone.]For years that may be numbered are coming on, and by a path without return shall I go hence.The thought is substantially the same as in Job 7:7-10; and Job 10:20 seq. , lit. years of number (Gen 34:30; Psa 105:12), are years that may be numbered, i.e. a few years (LXX: ), by which we are naturally to understand those which still remain before his death, the remaining years of his life (not all the years of his life, as Hahn and Del. explain). For (in regard to the form, comp. on Job 12:6) can only mean: they are coming on, they stand before me, not: they are passing away (transeunt, Vulg., etc.), nor: their end is coming on (Hahn, Del.). That Job here announces the sad issue in which the rapid and inevitably fatal course of the elephantiasis generally resulted, is shown by the conclusion of the discourse, Job 17:11-16.

Job 17:1 [the chapter-division here being manifestly errroneous] continues the statement of the reason given in Job 16:22. It consists of abrupt sob-like ejaculations of which it may be truly said with Oetinger that they form the requiem, which Job chants for himself even while yet living.My spirit is disturbed, so correctly most moderns, taking in the sense of the spirit or power. The translation: my breath is corrupt, or destroyed (De Wette, Del. [B.V., Rod., Elz., Con., Ber.], etc.), is less suitable here to the connection, which requires, as the subject of Jobs expression, not that single symptom of a short and fetid breath [which would be a much less conclusive indication that his days were numbered than others which he might have mentioned], referred to also in Job 7:15; Job 19:17; but requires rather some sign of the incipient dissolution of the whole psychical bodily organism, a failure of the vital principle.My days are extinct ( = , Job 6:17, which some MSS. exhibit here also); graves await me [Rodney: for me the tombs!]. Comp. the Arabic proverb: to be a grave-companion (Sschib el-kubr); also the familiar saying of Luther: to walk on the grave; and the modern expression: to stand with one foot in the grave.

Job 17:2. Verily mockery surrounds me: and on their quarreling mine eye must dwell.So substantially Welte, Arnh., Del., Dillm. [Schlott,, Con., Words.], whose rendering of this difficult verse is the most satisfactory; for (1) It is best to take , as in Job 1:11; Job 22:20; Job 31:36, etc., as a formula of asseveration=verily, truly. (2) (or according to another reading is an abstract term, formed from = mockery, scoffing (not deception, as Hirzel renders it); to render it as a concrete term in the sense of mockers [E. V., Noyes, etc.], or beguiled, is at variance with the laws governing the formation of Hebrew words (see Ew. 153, a; 179, a, b).(3) is Inf. Hiph. with suffix, from , which means in Hiph. to make refractory, to incite to strife, to contend with one. The word is written with Dagh. dirimens in , comp. Job 9:18; Joe 1:17, etc.(4) , Jussive or Voluntative form of , to lodge, to tarry (comp. Job 19:4; Job 29:19; Job 31:32), is a pausal form for , which occurs also in Jdg 19:20, the use of which in a non-pausal position seems to be purely arbitrary, or rests possibly on euphonic grounds (the liquids l and n in juxtaposition being treated as though they were gutturals: comp. Ewald, 141, b, Rem. 2). (5) The sense of the entire verse, according to the construction here given, is decidedly more suitable to the context: Of a truth it is mocking me ( , lit. mockery is with me, befalls me) to force me, who am standing on the verge of the grave to confess a guilt from which I know myself to be free; and such hateful quarrelsome conduct it is that I must have continually before my eyes!Other renderings are e.g.a. That of the Pesh., Vulg., and recently of Hirzel, which takes in sense of deception, illusion. Thus Hirzels rendering is: If deception is not with me, then let them continually henceforth quarrel. b. That of Rosenmller: annon illusiones mecum, et in adversando eorum pernoctat oculus meus.c. That of Ewald (in part also of Eichhorn, Umbr.): If only I were not mocked and mine eye were not obliged to dwell, etc.d. The rendering in part similar to the latter, of Vaih. and Heiligst.Oh, that mockery did not surround me! then could mine eye abide in peace with their contention!e. That of Stickel and Hahn: Or are there not around me those who are deluded? must not mine eye dwell on their contention?[f. That of Renan: May it please God that traitors might be far from me, and that mine eye be never more afflicted with their quarrels!]

Second Strophe: Job 17:3-9. Repetition of the yearning and trustful supplication to God as the only remaining attestor or witness of his innocence now remaining to him in view of the heartless coldness, nay the hostility of his human friends.Oh, lay down [now], be Thou bondsman for me with Thyself! who else will furnish surety to me? The thought is not substantially different from that in Job 16:21, only that the representation which there predominates of an adjudication in favor of Jobs innocence is here replaced by that of pledging or binding ones self as security for it. For all the expressions of the verse are borrowed from the system of pledging. With the Imper. is to be supplied, as the following lowing shows, an accus. of the object, a pledge, security. It is not necessary with Reiske and Olsh. to change to , arrhabonem meam. The following , indicating the person with whom the pledge is deposited, again represents God, precisely as in Job 16:21, as being, so to speak, divided, or separated into two persons. The word of entreaty (which appears also in Isa 38:14. and Psa 119:122, and which is here used with the accus. of the person following in the sense of representing any one mediatorially as or ) is replaced in the second member by the circumstantial phrase , to give surety by striking hands. For this is the meaning of the phrase, which elsewhere reads , or (Pro 6:1; Pro 17:18; Pro 22:26), or simply (Pro 11:15). Here, however, where, instead of the person, the hand of the person is mentioned (, instead of the simple , which, according to Pro 6:1, we might be led to expect), the reflexive Niphal is used; hence literally: who will strike himself [scil. his hand] into my hand; i. e. who will (by a solemn striking of hands, as in a pledge) bind himself to me to vindicate publicly my innocence? What man will do this if Thou, God, doest it not?

Job 17:4 assigns a reason for this prayer for Gods intervention as his security in the shortsightedness and narrow-mindedness of the friends: for Thou hast closed [lit. hid] their heart to [lit. from] understanding (to [from] a correct knowledge in respect to my innocence), therefore Thou wilt not let them prevail: lit. wilt not exalt them, i. e. above me, who am unjustly injured by them, but wilt rather at last confound them by demonstrating my innocence (as actually came to pass, Job 42:7). , Imperf. Pil. of with plur. suffix, is a contraction of , with omission of Dagh. forte in on account of the preceding long . The correction (suggested by Dillm. with a reference to Job 31:15; Job 41:2 Kri) is unnecessary, as also the explanation of as a Hithpael noun, signifying striving upward, improvement, victory (Ew.).

Job 17:5 continues the consideration of the unfriendly conduct of the friends. Friends are delivered for a spoil, while the eyes of their (lit. of his) children languish., a share of booty, spoil (according to Num 31:36) denotes here in particular, as the word makes probable, mortgaged property, an article in pledge, distrained from a debtor by a judicial execution; (for , comp. 1Ki 14:2; Jer 13:21) signifies to advertise and offer for sale such a pledged article in court; or, more simply and briefly, to distrain, to seize upon by means of a judicial execution. The subject of is indefinite [one exposes friends, i. e., friends are exposed] (comp. Job 6:20). In the object Job certainly points immediately to himself, for certainly he only was the victim of the heartless conduct of the three. He purposely, however, expresses himself by a general proposition; for his whole description is as yet only ideal, imaginative. In the second member, as the sing, suffix in shows, he again speaks only of himself as the one who was ill-treated, continuing the description (by means of an enallage of number, similar to that in Job 18:5; Job 24:5; Job 24:16; Job 27:23), as though he had in a written or . Hence literally: and the eyes of his children languish, or although the eyes of his children languish (Ewald, Stickel, Heiligst., Hahn, Dillmann, etc.). Many of the ancients, and also De Wette, Delitzsch [Noyes, Con., Renan, Barnes, Wem., Car., Wordsw., Rod.], etc., translate: Whoso spoileth friends, the eyes of his children must fail (or, optatively, may the eyes of his children fail! So Rosenmller, Vaihinger). [The E. V. adopts the same view of the general construction, but less appropriately takes in the sense of flattery: He that speaketh flattery to his friends, even the eyes of his children shall fail.] In this way, doubtless, the harshness of that change of number is avoided; but so to predict (or even to wish for) the punishment of the evil-doer seems here too little suited to the context, and especially does not agree with the contents of the following verse. [But it certainly agrees very well with the last member of the preceding verse, the thought of which it both confirms and expands. God would not, could not, favor the friends, for they had betrayed friendship, and thus had incurred judgment in which their posterity would share. Job 17:5 may be, as conjectured by some, a proverbial saying quoted by Job to emphasize Job 17:4 b. The pining of the eyes is a frequent figure for suffering. This last construction has in its favor, therefore: (1) That it is suitable to the connection. (2) That it avoids the harshness of the other construction, with its sudden change of number, and its strained introduction of the reference to the betrayed ones children, which is particularly pointless when applied to the childless Job. (3) It takes away from Job 17:4 the isolation which belongs to it, according to the other construction, and provides a much simpler transition from Job 17:4 to Job 17:5.E.]

Job 17:6 seq. Continued description of the unfriendly conduct of the friends, only Unit the same is now directly charged on God. And He (viz., God, who is manifestly to be understood here as the subject of the verb) has set me for a proverb to the world., a substant. infinitive (comp. Job 12:4), means a proverb, simile, sensu objective, hence an object of ridicule [or, as in E. V., by-word]. , lit. nations, denotes here not the races living around Job (e. g., those gipsy-like troglodytes who are more fully described in Job 24:30, and who, Delitzsch thinks, may possibly be intended here), but the common people generally (vulgus, plebs), hence equivalent to the great multitude, the world; comp. Pro 24:24. And I must be one to be spit upon in the face. (only here in the O. T.) denotes spittle, an object spit upon; is in the closest union with it (comp. Num 12:14; Deu 25:9). A is accordingly one into whose face any body spits, the object of the most unqualified public detestation. Comp. Job 30:9 seq., from which passage it also appears that Job speaks here not only of that which his friends did to him, but that he uses in a more comprehensive sense.

Job 17:7. Then mine eye became dim with grief (, as in Job 6:2; and comp. Job 16:16; Psa 6:8 [7]; Job 31:10 [9]), and all my members (lit. my frames, bodily frames, or structures) are as shadows [better on account of the generic , as a shadow], i. e., so meagre and emaciated, like intangible shadows, or phantoms; comp. Job 19:20.

Job 17:8. The upright are astonished at thisbecause they cannot understand how things can come to such a pass with one of their sort. And the innocent is roused against the ungodlylit. stirred up by angerin an opposite sense to that of Job 31:29, describing the innocent mans sense of justice as being aroused on account of the prosperity of the , comp. Psa 37:1; Psalms 73. Hirzel.

Job 17:8. Nevertheless the righteous holds fast on his way (the way of piety and rectitude in which he has hitherto walked), and he that is of clean hands (lit. and the clean-of-hands, , as in Pro 22:11) increaseth in strength (, of inward increase, or growth of strength, as in Ecc 1:18).The whole verse is of great significance as an expression of the cheerful confidence in his innocence and deliverance which Job reaches after the bitter reflections of Job 17:5 seq. So far from realizing the reproach of Eliphaz in Job 15:4, that he would destroy piety and diminish devotion before God, he holds fast on his godly way, yea, travels it still more joyously and vigorously than before (comp. Doctrinal and Ethical Remarks). [These words of Job (if we may be allowed the figure) are like a rocket, which shoots above the tragic darkness of the book, lighting it up suddenly, although only for a short time. Del.]

5. Third Division: Sixth Strophe. Severe censure of the admonitions of the friends, as devoid of understanding, and without any power to comfort, Job 17:10-16.

Job 17:10. But as for ye all ( for as in 1Ki 22:28, and Mic 1:2 [corresponding more to the form of a vocative clauseDel.]; the preceding is here written , with sharpened tone, for the sake of assonance)come on again, I pray., instead of the Imper. , which we might have expected, but which cannot stand so well at the beginning of the clause (comp. Ew., 229) [besides that, as Delitzsch remarks, the first verb is used adverbially, iterum, denuo, according to Gesen., 142 ( 139), 3 aand not either of a physical return, as though, irritated by his words, they had made a movement to depart (Renan), or of a mental return from their hostility (see Job 6:29).E.]. In this sense it is followed by the supplementary verb in the Imperf., connected with it by . I shall nevertheless not find a wise man among youi. e., your heart remains closed against a right understanding of my condition (see Job 17:4), however often and persistently you may attempt, to justify your attacks upon me. [He means that they deceive themselves concerning the actual state of the case before them; for in reality he is meeting death without being deceived, or allowing himself to be deceived, about the matter. Del.]

Job 17:11 seq. prove this charge of a defective understanding on the part of the friends by setting forth the nearness of Jobs end, and the almost complete exhaustion of his strength: this fact is fatal to their preconceived opinion as to the possibility of a joyful restoration of his prosperity, such as they had frequently set forth as depending on his sincere repentance. My days are gone (being quite near their endcomp. Job 16:22), my plans are broken off (, lit. connections, combinations, from , to bind together, the same as elsewhere, Job 21:27; Job 42:2;but not sensu malo, but in the good sense of the plans of his life which had been destroyed), the nurslings [Pfleglinge] of my heart. are things which are coveted and earnestly Bought after, favorite projects, plans affectionately cherished; comp. , to long after, Psa 21:3 [from which root Dillmann suggests the present noun may be derived ( for , like for from ), which would give at once the meaning, desires, coveted treasures. So apparently Zckler. If, according to the prevailing view, it be taken from , the meaning will be peculia, cherished possessions.E.] Not so suitable is the definition possessions (from , possidere, after Obad. 17:17 and Isa 14:23), while the rendering (LXX.), cords or bands [or, as Del. suggests, joints, instead of valves of the heart] (Gekat., Ewald) is entirely unsupported, and decidedly opposed to the laws of the language.

Job 17:12. They change night into day (comp. Isa 5:20), inasmuch, to wit, as they picture before me joyous anticipations of life (thus Eliphaz in Job 5:17 seq.; Bildad in Job 8:20 seq.; Zophar in Job 11:13 seq.), while not-withstanding I have before me only the dark night of death. Light is to be near (lit. is near, i. e., according to their assertions) in the presence of darkness, i. e., there where the darkness is still present, or in conspectu;, here therefore = coram, comp. Job 23:17 (so Umbreit, Vaih., Del.). Others (Ew., Hirz., Stick., Dillm.) take in the comparative sense: light is nearer than the face of darkness, i. e., than the visible darkness, which, however, is less suitable in the parallelism. The same is true of the explanation of Welteand they bring the light near to the darkness; of Rosenmllerlight is near the darkness, and similarly the LXX.; of Schlottmannlight, to which the darkness already draws near; of RenanAh! but your light resembles the darkness! etc.Note still further that here in Job 17:11-12, where the tone of lamentation is resumed, those short, sob-like ejaculations appear again, which we have already met with above in Job 17:1-2. [The explanation here given does not seem to harmonize perfectly with the context. With Job 17:10 Job seems to dismiss the friends from his present discourse. He flings that verse at them as a parting contemptuous challenge, and so takes his leave of them. With Job 17:11 he enters on the pathetic elegiac strain with which he closes each one of his discourses thus far (see Job 7:22; 10:20 seq.; Job 14:18 seq.). Job 17:11-12 are characterized, as Zckler justly remarks, by brief, sob-like ejaculations (as in Job 17:1-2), which are more befitting the elegy of a crushed heart than the sarcasm of a bitter spirit. Job makes himself the theme of the whole passage from Job 17:11 to Job 17:16. He is pre-occupied exclusively with his own lamentable condition and prospects, not with the course of his friends, any reference to which after Job 17:10 would interrupt the self-absorption of his sorrow. Supposing Job then to be occupied with himself solely, it follows that is to be taken impersonally, and the verse may be explained eithera. With Noyes: Night, hath become day to me (i. e. I have sleepless nights; I am as much awake by night as by day), the light bordereth on darkness (i. e. the day seems very short; the daylight seems to go as soon as it is come). Or b. We may translate: Night will (soon) take the place of day, light (in which I am tarrying for a brief season, awaiting my abode in Sheol, Job 17:13) is not far from darkness ( , prope abest ab; LXX. = ., according to Olympiodorus.The use of with , which Delitzsch objects to this rendering, is finely poetic. The darkness faces him, stares upon him, close at hand, just on the other side of this narrow term of light which is left to him). In favor of b may be urged: (1) The use of the fut. , following the preterites in Job 17:11.(2) The analogy of Isa 5:20, where means to put for, exchange, substitute. (3) It preserves the continuity of Jobs reflections on his own condition, and his immediate prospects. (4) The thought is in admirable harmony with the description which immediately follows, in which he represents himself as lingering on the verge of Sheol, awaiting his speedy departure thither, preparing his couch in that darkness which is so near, etc.E.]

Job 17:13 seq. show how far Job was right in seeing before his eyes nothing but night and darkness, and in giving up the hope of a state of greater prosperity which was held up before him by the friends, Job 17:13-14 form the conditional protasis, introduced by on which all the verbs in both verses depend, Job 17:15 being the apodosis, introduced by consec. [Of which view of the construction, however, Delitzsch remarks) There is no objection to this explanation so far as the syntax is concerned; but there will then be weighty thoughts which are also expressed in the form of fresh thoughts, for which independent clauses seem more appropriate, under the government of as if they were pre-suppositions. And see below.]

Job 17:13. If I hope for the underworld as my house [or abode], have spread in the darkness my couch.[Delitzsch agrees with the E. V. in the construction: If I wait, it is for Sheol as my house. Gesenius, Frst and Conant take = , Lo! as in Hos 12:12; Jer 31:20.]

Job 17:14. If I have cried out to the grave: Thou art my father!, grave (comp. Job 9:31) in Heb. is strictly speaking feminine, here, however, it is construed ad sensum as a masculine (as is the case elsewhere with such feminines as , ,, etc., comp. Ges., Thes., p. 1878). It is unnecessary with the LXX., Vulg., Pesh., to take here in the sense of death, or with Nachman, Rosenm,, Schlottm., Del. [E. V., Con., Car.], etc., to assign to it the meaning: corruption, rottenness as though it were derived from , not from , fodere: moreover the existence of such a second substant. = corruption is susceptible of certain proof from no other passage. In regard to the bold poetic expression here given to the inward familiarity of Job with the state of death which lay before him, comp. Ps. 88:19 [Psa 88:18]; Pro 7:4; also below Job 30:29.

Job 17:15. Apodosis: Where then (as to , which, notwithstanding the accents, is to be drawn into union with the preceding , where? comp. on Job 9:24) is (now) my hope? Yea, my hope, who sees it?i. e., I who exhibits it to me as really well founded? who discloses it to me? In both clauses one and the same hope is intended, that viz. of the restoration of his prosperity in this life, even before death [this hope, Dillmann remarks, being the hope which, according to the friends, he should have, not the hope which, according to Job 17:13, he really has].

Job 17:16. To the bars of the grave it sinks down, when at the same time there is rest in the dust.The subject here also is , Job 17:15, this hope being regarded as single, although the expression there was doubled. is a poetic alternate form for (Ew., 191, Gesen., 47, Rem. 3), not third pers. plur., as the old translators [and E. V.] rendered the form, and as among moderns [Green, 88, Schlottm.], Bttcher and Dillmann take it, the latter supposing that the hope which Job really had, mentioned in Job 17:13, and the hope attributed to him by the friends in Job 17:15, are the two subjects of the verb. are bars of the underworld, of the realm of the dead, not its clefts (Bttcher), nor its bounds (Hahn); for again in Exo 25:13 seq.; Job 27:6 seq.; Hos 11:6, signifies carrying poles, or cross-beams (vectes). And whereas, according to many other passages, Sheol is represented as provided with doors or gates (Job 38:17; Isa 38:10; Psa 9:14 [ Psa 9:13]; Psa 107:18), its cross-beams or bars signify essentially the same with its gates (comp. Lam 2:9). In , at the same time (not together [E. V.], as Hahn renders it, understanding it to be affirmed of the descending hope, and of Job at his death). Job expresses a thought similar to that in Job 14:22, the thought, namely, that the rest of his body in the dust coincides in time with the descent of the soul to Hades. , pausal form for , rest, signifies here the rest of the lifeless body in the grave: comp. Isa 26:19; Psa 22:30 [29].

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. The central point of this new reply of Jobsand it is that which principally shows progress on the part of the sorely afflicted sufferer out of his spiritual darkness to a clearer perception and a brighter frame of mindlies in the expression of a yearning hops in his future justification by God, which is found in the last section but one of the discourse, and which constitutes the real kernel of the argument. Inasmuch as the friends, instead of ministering to him loving sympathy and true comfort were become his mockers (Job 16:20), he finds himself all the more urgently driven to God alone as his helper, and the guardian of his innocence. Hence it is that he now suddenly turns to the same God, whom he had just before described in the strongest language as his ferocious, deadly enemy and persecutor, as well as the author of the suffering inflicted on him even by his human enemies, and, full of confidence, calls Him his witness in heaven, and his attestor on high (Job 16:19), who is already near to him, and who will not permit the earth to drink up his blood, which cries out to heaven, and thus to silence his self-vindication (Job 16:18). Nay, more: he lifts up his tearful eye with courageous supplication to God, praying Him that He would do justice to him before Himself, that He would represent him before His own judicial tribunal, interceding in his behalf, acquitting him, and thus vindicating his innocence against his human accusers (Job 16:21). We see distinctly here how Jobs idea of God becomes brighter in that it becomes dualized (in that he prays to God Himself, the author of his sufferings, as his deliverer and helper). The God who delivers Job to death as guilty, and the God who cannot leave him unvindicatedeven though it should be only after deathcome forth distinct and separate as darkness from light out of the chaos of temptation.Thus Job becomes here the prophet of the issue of his own course of suffering; and over his relation to Eloah and to the friends, of whom the former abandons him to the sinners death, and the latter declare him to be guilty, hovers the form of the God of the future, which now breaks through the darkness, from whom Job believingly awaits and implores what the God of the present withholds from him (Del. i. 310311).The same duality between the God of the present as a God of terror, and the Redeemer-God of the future, becomes apparent in the earnest entreaty which is further on addressed to God, that He would become a bondsman with Himself for Job, seeing that He is the only possible guarantor of his innocence (Job 17:3). Not less does this duality between a God of truth, who knows and attests his righteous conduct, and a God of absolute power and fury, lie also at the foundation of the confident declaration which concludes this whole section, according to which the righteous man, untroubled by the suspicions and attacks of his enemies, holds fast on his way, and in respect of his innocence and purity only increases in strength (Job 17:9). That to which Job here gives expression, primarily indeed in the form of entreaty, of yearning desire, or as an inference from religious and ethical postulates, acquires, when considered in its historical connection with his deliverance, the significance of an indirect prophecy, referring not only to the actual historical issue of his own suffering (which in fact ends with just such a vindication as he here wishes for himself), but also in general to the completed reconciliation of God with sinful humanity in Christ.For this work of reconciliation was accomplished, according to 2Co 5:19, precisely as Job here wishes for it. God was in Christ, and reconciled the world to Himself. He officiated as Judge, acquitting, and as Advocate, vindicating, in one person. He became in Christ His own Mediator with humanity (Gal 3:20), and caused that suretyship with Himself to come to pass, which Job here wishes and longs for, in that He sent His own Son to be the Mediator (, 1Ti 2:5; Heb 12:24), or a surety (, Heb 7:22) of the New Covenant, and so established for fallen humanity, subject to sin and to death, its penalty, an eternal redemption, which is ever renewed in each individual. The older expositors have for the most part failed to recognize this profounder typical and prophetic sense of the passage, obscured as it is by the erroneous translations of the verses in question given by the LXX. and the Vulgate. Comp. however the remarks of Cocceius below on Job 16:19 seq.

2. Although however Job seems by the profound truth and the striking power of these bold prophetic anticipations of his future vindication to be making most significant advances in the direction of more correct knowledge, and to be at any rate far above the limited and elementary conceptions of his friends, there is nevertheless in the midst of all this soaring of his purer and better consciousness to God one thing perceptibly wanting. It is the penitent confession of his sins. He not only calls himself a righteous man, and pure of hands, (Job 17:9), but with all earnestness he regards himself as such (comp. Job 16:17). He will by no means admit that his suffering is in any sense, or in any degree whatever, the punishment of his sins. In this particular he falls short of that which he himself has before this expressly conceded (Job 14:4). As the friends, in consequence of their superficial judgment, greatly exaggerated his guilt, so he, by no means free as yet from Pelagian self-righteousness, exaggerates his innocence. The justification which he wishes and hopes for, is not the New Testament , that Divine act of grace declaring the repentant sinner righteous. It is only the Divine attestation of an innocence and freedom from sin, which he deems himself to possess in perfection. It thus stands very nearly related to that lawyers willing to justify himself which is mentioned in Luk 10:29; and is altogether different from that disposition which at last the actual justification and restoration of Job to favor produced (Job 42:6). Againwhat he says in Job 16:15 seq. of thrusting his horn into the dust, of continuous weeping, of wearing sackcloth, has no reference to signs of actual repentance (a view often met with in the ancient commentators); these things are simply indications of physical pain, referring to a humiliation which proceeded less out of a complete and profound acquaintance with sin, than out of the sense of severe painful suffering (comp. above on this passage). With this defective knowledge of self, and partial self-righteousness, in which Job shows himself to be as yet entangled, is closely connected the gross harshness of the judgment concerning the friends, with which he requites their inconsiderate words against himself; characterizing them as windy phrase-mongers (Job 16:3), as unwise (Job 17:4; Job 17:10), as impudent mockers (Job 16:20; Job 17:2), as hard-hearted extortioners and distrainers (Job 17:5), yea, as belonging to the category of children of the world (Job 17:6), of the unrighteous and wicked (Job 16:10-11), of the profligate (Job 17:8). Closely connected with it in like manner is the harsh and extreme judgment in which he indulges of that which God does against him; the description which he gives of Him as a mighty warrior rushing upon him with inexorable, nay with bloodthirsty cruelty (Job 16:12-14), attributing to Him as the higher cause all the ignominy and injustice which he had suffered through the friends (Job 16:11 seq.; Job 17:6 seq.). And finally here belongs the gloomy hopelessness in respect to the issue of his life into which his spirit sinks down again, (Job 17:11-16) from the courage and confidence to which it had been raised in the last section but one. This despair is in palpable contradiction with the better confidence which like a flash of light had illuminated the darkness of his anguished soul, although it is in unison with the state of the sufferers heart in this stage of his education in the school of suffering, lacking as it does as yet the complete exactness and purity of moral self-knowledge, and as a consequence the real stability and joyfulness of faith in Gods power to save. So it is that the hope, which again emerges in his next discourse, that his innocence will be acknowledged in a better hereafter, is by no means held by him with a firm and decided grasp, but rather appears only as a transient flash across the prevailing darkness of his soul.

3. Job suffers as a righteous man, comparatively, and for that reason the complaints of his anguished heart in this discourse resemble even in manifold peculiarities of expression that which other righteous sufferers of the Old Testament say in the outgushings of their hearts, e. g., the Psalmist in Psalms 22. (comp. above on Job 16:10), Ps. 44. and 69. (comp. especially the words: I am made a byword to the world, Job 17:6, with Psa 44:15 [Psa 44:14], and Psa 69:12 [Psa 69:11]); also the servant of Jehovah in the second division of Isaiah; comp. Job 17:8, the righteous are astonished thereat, with Isa 52:14; also Job 16:16-17My face is burning red with weeping, etc., although no wrong cleaves to my hands, etc., with Isa 53:9although he hath done no violence, neither is any deceit found in his mouth:likewise Job 16:19Even now behold in heaven my witness, with Isa 50:8 seq. (He is near that justifieth me, who will condemn me? etc.). Notwithstanding these and the like correspondences with the lamentations and prayers of other righteous sufferers, Seinecke (Der Grundgedanke des B. Hiob, 1863, p. 34 seq.) goes too far when, on the ground of such correspondences in this and in other discourses of Job, he regards Job as being in general an allegorical figure of essentially the same significance with the servant of God in Isaiah, and hence as a poetic personification of the suffering people of Israel. Scarcely can it be definitely said that the poet by the relation to the passion-psalms stamped on the picture of the affliction of Job, has marked Job, whether consciously or unconsciously, as a typical person; that by taking up, and not unintentionally either, many national traits, he has made it natural to interpret Job as a Mashal of Israel (Delitzsch I. 313). There is too evident a lack of distinct intimations of such a purpose on the part of the poet to justify us in assuming anything more than the fact that the illustrious sufferer of Uz has a typical significance for many pious sufferers of later (post-patriarchal, and post-solomonic) times, and that consequently later poets, the authors of the Lamentation-Psalms, or prophets (such as Isaiah, possibly also Ezekiel and Zechariah) borrowed many particular traits from the picture of his suffering. Moreover, in view of the uncertainty touching such a relation of the matter, we can only warn against any homiletic application of this Messianic-allegorical conception of Job as being essentially identical with the servant of God. The exposition for practical edification of the section Job 16:18 to Job 17:9, with its rich yield of thought in biblical theology and the history of redemption, would gain little more by any attempts in this direction than the obscuration of the simple fact by useless and barren subtleties.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

Job 16:7 seq. Oecolampadius: He makes use of three motives most suitable for conciliating pity, to wit: the manifest severity of his sufferings (Job 16:7-14), repentance (??Job 16:15-16), and innocence (Job 16:17-21).

Job 16:10 seq. Brentius: There is this in Gods judgment that is most grievousthat He seems to favor our adversaries, and to stand on their side, by prospering their counsels and efforts against us. Nor is there any one who can endure this trial, unless thoroughly fortified by the word of God. Thus Christ Himself laments, saying: Dogs have compassed me; the assembly of the wicked enclosed me (Psalms 22.).Cramer: O soul, remember here thy Saviour, to whom also such things happened; for He suffered pain in body and soul, was persecuted by His enemies, and forsaken, afflicted, and tortured by God Himself.

Job 16:19 seq.: He intimates that Gods tribunal is above all tribunals; and when his mind and conscience, his faith and love toward God, cannot be recognised, appreciated or judged by any judge or witness, other than the Supreme, how can he do otherwise than appeal to Him? So the Apostle (1Co 4:3-4) repudiates every judgment but that of God (On Job 17:3.) Here he calls God, in whose power he is, his Surety; which is simply to ask that He would approve his appeal, and judge in accordance with it, so that if his adversary should carry the day, He would satisfy his claims. So we find elsewhere the pious, when wronged by an unrighteous judgment, appealing to the judgment of God, requesting Him to be their surety, as though they wished God to say to the adversary: This man is mine; enter thy suit, if any thing is due to thee, I will render satisfaction (Isa 38:14 : Psa 119:122).

Job 16:22. Brentius: Death is here called a path, by which we do not return. For take away the Word, or Christ, and death seems to be eternal annihilation; add the Word and Christ, and death will be the beginning of the resurrection.(On Job 17:11 seq.). This despair of Job is described for our instruction, that we may learn: first, that no one can endure the judgment of death without God the Father; next that we may know by clear testimony that God alone is good, but every man a liar.

Job 17:11 seq. Starke: We see here how unlike are Gods ways and thoughts, and those of men. Job had no other thought but that now it was all over with him, he would neither continue in life, nor again attain his former prosperity. And God had notwithstanding joined both these things together so wondrously and so gloriously, as the wished-for issue of Jobs sufferings sufficiently proves. Delitzsch: Job feels himself to be inevitably given up as a prey to death, and as from the depth of Hades into which he is sinking, he stretches out his hands to God, not that He would sustain him in life, but that He would acknowledge him before the world as His. If he is to die even, he desires only that he may not die the death of a criminal. When then the issue of the history is that God acknowledges Job as His servant, and after he is proved and refined by the temptation, preserves to him a doubly rich and prosperous life, Job receives beyond his prayer and comprehension; and after he has learned from his own experience that God brings to Hades and out again (1Sa 2:6; comp. on the other hand above, Job 7:9), he has forever conquered all fear of death, and the germs of the hope of a future life, which in the midst of his affliction, have broken through his consciousness, can joyously expand.

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

CONTENTS

Job in this chapter is again entering upon his defense. He complains of the unkindness of his friends; pleads for more tenderness from them; shows the pitifulness of his case: and again, as to the charge of hypocrisy, contends that he is not guilty.

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

(1) Then Job answered and said, (2) I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all.

The retort Job makes on Eliphaz, is to the same amount as before. He had already heard much reasoning of the same kind; but what can reasoning do to assuage the sorrows of an heavy heart. He had before told both Eliphaz and his companions, that they were physicians of no value, (chap. 13:4.) and here he adds that they were miserable comforters. But, Reader! is not the same kind of observation still more applicable, when considered as referring to a soul seeking salvation; to an awakened sinner, who is truly anxious to be informed how to find peace with GOD: are not those miserable comforters, who would send the poor distressed creature to his best endeavours, to his repentance, tears, and the like, instead of directing him to JESUS, to GOD’S pardoning love and mercy in the blood and righteousness of his dear Son, and to the sweet comforts and influences of the HOLY GHOST? Can anything be more plain, than that a guilty sinner needs a holy Saviour; and short of this, the enquiring soul comes short of all! Precious LAMB of GOD! be thou my consolation, for without thee I should be miserable forever.

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Job 16:2

In no respect was Mrs. Grote’s knowledge of the human heart more apparent than in her intercourse with a mariner. With the unfailing freshness she put into all she said, she called herself ‘a good affliction woman’. In the first place she admitted the reality of the trial, without which no one attempting to help no matter in what can be either just or kind. Then she dealt in no commonplaces on any subject in the world, least of all on that of deep grief. She knew that nothing could soothe which had not the ring of truth. There was therefore no prescribing this or that nostrum (which prescribes here never proved) for the cure of sorrow no pharisaical reproofs for its supposed indulgence. Diversion of thought was given in the least suspected way: the languor of the mind stimulated by healthy counter-interests; while as to cases where the anguish was still fresh, no words ever more truly hit the mark; ‘Let the wound bleed’.

Lady Eastlake’s Mrs. Grote: A Sketch, p. 156.

It is a barbarous part of inhumanity to add unto any afflicted parties misery, or endeavour to multiply in any man a passion whose single nature is already above his patience. This was the greatest affliction of Job, and those oblique expostulations of his friends a deeper injury than the downright blows of the devil.

Sir Thomas Browne.

Job 16:13

In the introduction to A Mortal Antipathy, Dr. O. W. Holmes describes the case of a doctor ‘who was the subject of a slow, torturing, malignant, and almost necessarily fatal disease’. During his illness ‘his wife, who seemed in perfect health, died suddenly of pneumonia. Physical suffering, mental distress, the prospect of death at a near, if uncertain, time always before him, it was hard to conceive a more terrible strain than that which he had to endure. When, in the hour of his greatest need, his faithful companion, the wife of many years of happy union, whose voice had consoled and cheered him, was torn from him after a few days of illness, I felt that my friend’s trial was such that the cry of the man of many afflictions and temptations might well have escaped from his lips: “I was at ease, but He hath broken me asunder: He hath also taken me by my neck, and shaken me to pieces, and set me up for His mark. His archers compass me round about, He cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth not spare; He poureth out my gall upon the ground.” I had dreaded meeting him for the first time after this crushing blow. What a lesson he gave me of patience under sufferings which the fanciful description of the Eastern poet does not picture too vividly.’

References. XVI. 22. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiii. No. 1373. XVII. 1. Spurgeon, Sermons, No. 2868. XVII. 9. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (4th Series), p. 125. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiii. No. 1361. J. Clifford, Daily Strength for Daily Living, p. 325.

Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson

Miserable Comforters

Job 16

“I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all…. I also could speak as ye do: if your soul were in my soul’s stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you” (Job 16:2 , Job 16:4 ).

There was no reserve between the men or amongst them who sustained these wondrous colloquies. They spoke to one another with startling simplicity. It was altogether more like a controversy than an exercise of condolence. We are, however, endeavouring to understand the narrative, and not endeavouring to reinvent or reconstruct it. Still, it is noticeable that all the men were marked by extreme frankness of spirit. Nearly each speech begins with words which could hardly be deemed courteous in modern days. Job was equal to the occasion; whenever anything was said to him that was unwelcome, unsuitable, he answered in the tone of the speaker to whom he replied. But it is equally noteworthy that begin as the speeches might they ended in great sublimity. In this respect they are beautiful types of the best kind of human growth; difficulty at the first, and some rudeness and brokenness, but soon settling down into right relation, proportion, ultimate meaning, the whole culminating in brightness and glory. Job now puts himself into a position which we can easily comprehend. He says: I could talk as you do, if I were as unrestrained. There are no limits to the audacity of ignorance. The less a man knows the more eager is he to make it known. Some men cannot be fluent, because they see on the road spectres, angels, difficulties, possibilities, that do not come within the sweep of the unspiritual imagination; so they halt, they balance sentences, they go round the whole wealth of words to see if there be one that will fitly and precisely express the passing thought. Job says: I could be a fluent speaker if I had a fluent mind: you talk easily because you have nothing to say; not one of you has made a solitary original contribution towards the solution of my difficulty; you have a genius for quotation; you are clever in recalling what other men have said; you are reciters, not authors or creators; you act a dramatic part; you speak what other men have written: but Job, continuing, says, in effect, I am the sufferer; it is into my own soul that the iron has entered; I am dying; I cannot fail to see the end, and it is one to which I look as the promise of escape from unendurable torment. Now, here is a great principle the principle that non-restraint would allow us to do many things we cannot at present do; or, otherwise, the spirit of restraint keeps us back, in thought, in speech, and in social relation. What a wide field of thought and practical application is opened up by that principle! Christian men may say, basing their speech upon this principle We, too, could be infidels; there is nothing so very daring, original, or mentally brilliant about being an unbeliever. We could walk without faith, release ourselves from all obligations such as impose themselves upon so-called Christian consciences. Or We, too, could be worldly; we could cut off this one little world, and make an island of it; God looks upon it as part of a universe, but we could insulate it, and live upon it, and be happy upon it, and pile up upon it a tombstone. Or We, too, could be really bad; we, too, could swear in tornadoes; we, also, could serve the devil with both hands; we could outspeak the loudest at the evil festival; we could keep up the devil’s dance longer than many who have served the devil faithfully: but . Then comes into operation the spirit or principle of restraint; whilst we could do these things in one sense, we could never do them in another. Sometimes the possible is impossible. We must distinguish the uses of terms. All things within a given sphere are possible, and yet not one of them could any man do who retained his reason and a sense of moral responsibility. This idea we have elaborated at some length: shall we give an illustration or two? It is perfectly possible for a man to break every piece of furniture he has in his house, and yet it is impossible to every rational being. It is perfectly possible for a man of business to dismiss every servant, and to say to each, You shall never serve me any more; and yet it is absolutely impossible that he can do anything of the kind. We are thus watched, restrained; we have only liberty between two points a pendulum liberty of a limited oscillation: we go to come again, and whilst we swing in little segments we think we command a universe. It must, therefore, not be supposed that Christian people could not be worldly, selfish, bad, unfaithful; all that little sphere is open even to Christian men: yet, whilst it is possible for them to do and to be all that is bad and shameful, it is also impossible, because before doing it they would have to slay reason, conscience, sense of justice; they would have to commit self-slaughter.

Job says that he would strengthen his friends with his mouth, and the moving of his lips should assuage their grief ( Job 16:5 ). He supposes that they would sympathise rather than argue. But even Job is not to be taken at his word, for he did not know what he was talking about throughout the whole of this controversy: he will have to recall many a word, re-shape many a sentence, and by process of modification will have to adjust himself to the higher line of purpose and providence. Meanwhile, who does not think himself ill-treated when he is suffering? Who does not say, in his heart at least, If you were in my stead I would treat you better than you are treating me? Possibly nothing of the kind. Yet this is profoundly human. Who has escaped wholly the domination of the spirit of reproach? Who has not said to his sick attendant, You should be more gentle; I should be so were I in your place? Who has not said to his friend, You should lend me more money, be more liberal to me, be more generous in your consideration of me; I should be so were I in your stead? All this is false argument. Why is the argument false? Because the mental state is vitiated by moral conditions. Job supposed he would be rich in sympathy, but Job has proved that whatever was lacking in his mental constitution there was no lack of acerbity in his speech.

The great question to ask in view of this answer to Eliphaz would be, Knowing the conditions under which the history began, how has the devil carried out his part of the contract? Recall the case: the Lord said, Go, touch him, afflict him; only spare his life. How has the devil accepted the situation? How does Job describe his own position and feeling?

“His archers compass me round about, he cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth not spare; he poureth out my gall upon the ground. He breaketh me with breach upon breach, he runneth upon me like a giant. I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and defiled my horn in the dust. My face is foul with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death” ( Job 16:13-16 ).

This is the devil’s work! Whoever has been unfaithful in this melancholy business, the devil cannot be charged with infidelity. He makes men weep; he sends his darts and arrows into every point of body and estate; he breaks man with breach upon breach, he runs upon man like a giant, and he brings down the horn of power to the dust. What good thing did the devil ever do? Can any poor woman say, My home was unhappy until we yielded ourselves to the dominion of the evil one, so-called; and after that the fire burned brightly, the table was spread with plentifulness, the spirit of peace ruled the domestic circle, and children burdened with unspeakable grief expanded like showers in the sunshine, and were glad all the twenty-four hours of the day? Is any man hardy enough to say that so long as he attempted to pray, and to obey divine truth, and to walk by the light of Christian conscience, he was unhappy and miserable: but the moment he began to give way to appetite and desire and passion, the moment he threw the reins upon his baser nature, he became a really happy man; he sang all day and turned life into a festival of music? Not one. On the other hand, what have we? All history testifies with unbroken witness. When Christ came into the house, all was peace; the crust was turned into a loaf, the loaf was turned into a banquet, and the little oil we had in the cruse became like a plentiful fountain. We cannot turn aside the argument of history, or deny with any justice the logic of facts.

But this description of satanic work shows us the devil under restraint. Observe, this is a chained devil. Note well that this is the devil working under restraint, working permissively only; not having all his evil will, but limited. How sudden are his blows! how terrific the blasts of his mouth! how unsparing the cruelty of his spirit! Nothing touches him; nothing brings him to tears: he cannot cry; he is all cruelty, all vindictiveness, all wrong. Is it far from this reflection to a third and most appalling one namely, if this is the devil’s work, and the devil’s work when he himself is under restraint, what must be his work when there is no chain to bind him, when he is limited only by his own perdition? Do not let us turn away from such questions as if we were men of dainty taste and dare not look such matters in the face; do not let us murder ourselves at the altar of sentimentality. It would be most pleasant to say, There is no devil, there is no hell, there is no everlasting punishment, there is no worm that dieth not; it would be delightful: but would it be true in spirit? Let us not victimise ourselves by dwelling on the literal description, and asking small and narrow questions about what are so-called facts, but let us look at the spirit of the matter; and that spirit to us says distinctly, “The way of transgressors is hard.” We see that now: what hinders us from carrying forward the immediate hardness of transgression into some other state of impenitent consciousness? What has the transgressor now? Alas! he eats bitter bread:; he lays his head upon a pillow of thorns; he burns from head to foot with a secret but inextinguishable fire: call it self-reproach, or remorse, or compunction, or what you please, he has a harder time of it than even his best friends know. What must: it be to fall into the hands of the unrestrained enemy? It makes one’s heart sink when we hear fair, gentle, generous souls coming forward to say there is no such issue: we cannot but feel that they are speaking sentimentally rather than argumentatively; we cannot but feel that they are drawing upon their sensibilities rather than justifying themselves by the revealed Word. If you will, get rid of the Bible, have nothing to rely upon but your own sentiment, your own consciousness, your own conception of justice and penalty: then the case will be different: but you cannot keep the Bible and deny the future punishment of the wicked.

But was not Job sustained by a good conscience? He refers to that point in the seventeenth verse:

“Not for any injustice in mine bands: also my prayer is pure.” ( Job 16:17 )

Do we not sometimes say that a good conscience will help a man to bear anything? There is a sense in which that is true, but there is another sense in which it is perfectly untrue and simply impossible. Suffering unjustly calls up the conscience to question-asking. Unjust suffering excites suspicion. The sufferer says Why is this? If this is the way a righteous man is treated, where is the spirit of justice, the spirit of law, the genius of rectitude? Unjust suffering discourages prayer. Unjust suffering tempts the enemy to triumph, saying, “Where is now thy God?” Stuff thy throat with thine unanswered prayers, thou poltroon, thou Christian fool! Why serve a God who treats thee so? But these were temporary questions. Again and again we have had to say that if the whole discourse lay within four given points, no man could vindicate much that occurs in human life: but nothing is to be judged by a short line, by a limited and empty hour; everything is to be judged by God’s line and by God’s eternity. There are men who can say that all that happened in their lives of an adverse kind has come to be explained, and has been proved to be needful to the larger and better culture of the life. If we could establish one such instance in our own experience, that one instance would carry the whole case. The mountains are very high when we stand at their base, but could we be elevated just above the surface of the earth, and see the little globe wheeling round, we should be unable to discover that there is a single mountain upon it. We must, therefore, take the astronomic view, and not look upon the great disparities of the surface, when those disparities are crowding themselves upon our vision, but look upon them from some distance, and then the Dawalagiri, the Rocky Mountains, the Himalayas, sink into the surface, and the earth seems to be without wart or scar or tumulus. So it will be in the end!

Job gets some notion of the reality of things when he traces all to God, saying,

“God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked” ( Job 16:11 ).

We begin to feel that even the devil is but a black servant in God’s house. There is a sense, perhaps hardly open to a definition in words, in which the devil belongs to God as certainly as does the first archangel. There is no separate province of God’s universe: hell burns at the very footstool of his throne. We must not allow ourselves to believe that there are rival powers and competing dynasties in any sense which diminishes the almightiness of God. If you say, as some distinguished philosophers have lately said, God cannot be almighty because there is evil in the world, you are limiting the discussion within too narrow a boundary. We must await the explanation. Give God time. Let him work in his eternity. We are not called upon now to answer questions. Oh! could we hold our peace, and say, We do not know: do not press us for answers: let patience have her perfect work: this is the time for labour, for education, for study, for prayer, for sacrifice: this poor twilight scene is neither fair enough nor large enough to admit the whole of God’s explanation: we must carry forward our study to the place which is as lofty as heaven, to the time which is as endless as eternity. We all have suffering. Every man is struck at some point. Let not him who is capable of using some strength speak contemptuously of his weak brother. It is easy for a man who has no temptation in a certain direction to lecture another upon going in that direction. What we want is a juster comprehension of one another. We should say, This brother cannot stand such and such a fire; therefore we try to come between him and the flame: this other brother can stand that fire perfectly well, but there is another fire which he dare not approach; therefore we should, interpose ourselves between him and the dread furnace, knowing that we all have some weakness, some point of failure, some signature of the dust. Blessed are they who have great, generous, royal, divine hearts! The more a man can forgive, the more does he resemble God.

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

(See the Job Book Comments for Introductory content and general conclusions and observations).

VI

THE SECOND ROUND OF SPEECHES

Job 15-21.

In this chapter we take up the second round of speeches, commencing with the second speech of Eliphaz. This speech consists of two parts, a rejoinder to Job’s last speech and a continuation of the argument.

The main points of the rejoinder (Job 15:1-16 ) are as follows:

1. A reflection on Job’s wisdom (Job 15:1-3 ). A wise man would not answer with vain knowledge, windy words, nor reason with unprofitable words.

2. An accusation of impiety (Job 15:4-6 ). Job is irreverent, binders devotion, uses a serpent tongue of craftiness whose words are self-condemnatory. (Cf. what Caiaphas said about Christ, Mat 26:65 .)

3. A cutting sarcasm (Job 15:7-8 ). Wast thou before Adam, or before the creation of the mountains, and a member of the Celestial Council considering the creation, that thou limitest wisdom to thyself?

4. An invidious comparison (Job 15:9-10 ). What knowest thou of which we are ignorant? With us are the gray-headed, much older than thy father.

5. A bigoted rebuke (Job 15:11-16 ). You count small the consolation of God we offered you in gentle words [the reader may determine for himself how much “comfort” they offered Job and note their conceit in calling this “God’s comfort,” and judge whether it was offered in “gentle” words]. Your passions run away with you. Here a quotation from Rosenmuller is in point: Quo te tuus animus rapit? “Whither does thy soul hurry thee?” Quid oculi qui tui vibrantes? “What means thy rolling eyes?” It turns against God; this is presumptuous: A man born of woman, depraved, against God in whose sight angels are imperfect and the heavens unclean. How much more an abominable, filthy man drinking iniquity like water.

The points in the continuation of the argument are as follows:

1. Hear me while I instruct thee (Job 15:17 ). I will tell you what I have seen.

2. It is the wisdom of the ancients handed down (Job 15:18-19 ). Wise men have received it from their fathers and have handed it down to us for our special good.

3. Concerning the doom of the wicked (Job 15:20-30 ). This is a wonderful description of the course of the wicked to their final destruction, but his statements, in many instances, are not true. For instance, in his first statement about the wicked (Job 15:20 ), he says, “The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days,” which is in accord with his theory, but does not harmonize with the facts in the case. The wicked does not travail with pain “all his days.” They are not terrified “all the time” as Eliphaz here pictures them. In this passage Eliphaz intimates that Job may be guilty of pride (Job 15:25 ) and of fatness (Job 15:27 ).

4. The application (Job 15:31-35 ). If what he said about the wicked was true, his application here to Job is wrong. It will be seen that Eliphaz here intimates that Job was guilty of vanity and self-deception; that he was, perhaps, guilty of bribery and deceit, and therefore the calamity had come upon him.

The following is a summary of Job’s reply (Job 16-17) :

1. Your speech is commonplace. I have heard many such things. Ye are miserable comforters (Job 16:2 ).

2. You persist when I have urged you to desist. It is unprovoked. Your words are vain, just words of wind (Job 16:3 ).

3. If our places were changed, I could do as you do, but I would not. I would helo and comfort you (Job 16:4-5 ).

4. You ask me to cease my complaint, but whether I speak or forbear, the result is the same. I have not ensnared my feet, but God has lassoed me (Job 16:6 ).

5. He gives a fearful description of God’s assault (Job 16:7-14 ): (1) as a hunter with hounds he has harried me; (2) he has abandoned me to the malice of mine enemies; (3) as a wrestler he has taken me by the neck and shaken me to pieces; (4) as an archer he has bound me to the stake and terrified and pierced me with his arrows; (5) as a mighty conqueror he opened breach after breach in my defenses with batteringrams; and (6) as a giant he rushes on me through the breach in the assault.

6. As a result, I am clothed in sackcloth and my dignity lies prone in the dust; my face is foul with weeping, my eyelids shadowed by approaching death, although no injustice on my part provoked it and my prayer was pure (Job 16:15-17 ).

7. I appeal to the earth to cover my blood and to the heavenly witness to vouch for me. Friends may scorn my tears, but they are unto God. (See passages in Revelation and Psalms.) Note here the messianic prayer, “that one might plead for a man with God, as a son of man pleadeth for his neighbor.” But my days are numbered and mockers are about me (Job 16:18-17:2 ).

8. The plea for a divine surety (messianic) but God has made me a byword, who had been a tabret. Future ages will be astonished at my case and my deplorable condition (Job 17:3-16 ).

There are several things in this speech worthy of note, viz: 1. The messianic desire which finds expression later as David and Isaiah adopt the words of Job to fit their Messiah. 2. Job is right in recognizing a malicious adversary, but wrong in thinking God his adversary; God only permitted these things to come to Job, but Satan brought them.

There are two parts of Bildad’s second speech (Job 18 ), viz: a rejoinder (Job 18:1-4 ) and an argument (Job 18:5-21 ). The main points of his rejoinder are:

1. Job hunts for words rather than speaks considerately.

2. Why are the friends accounted as beasts and unclean in your sight?

3. Job was just tearing himself with anger and altogether without reason.

4. A sarcasm: The earth will not be forsaken for thee nor will the rock be moved out of its place for thee (Job 18:1-4 ).

The argument (Job 18:5-21 ) is fine and much of it is true, but it is wrong in its application. The following are the points as applied to the wicked:

1. His light shall be put out.

2. The steps of his strength shall be straightened.

3. His own counsel shall be cast down.

4. There shall be snares everywhere for his feet.

5. Terrors of conscience shall smite him on every side.

6. He shall be destroyed root and branch and in memory.

There are also two parts to Job’s great reply: His expostulation with his friends (Job 19:1-6 ) and his complaint against God (Job 19:7-29 ). The points of his expostulation are:

1. Ye reproach me often without shame and deal hardly with me.

2. If I have sinned, it is not against you but my error remains with myself.

3. The snares you refer to are not because of my fault but they are from God, for he has subverted me and compassed me with his net.

The items of his complaint against God are as follows:

1. He will not hear me, though I am innocent; surely there is no justice.

2. He has walled me up and set darkness in my path.

3. He has stripped me of my glory and he has broken me down on every side.

4. He has plucked up my hope like a tree and his fiery wrath is against me.

5. He has counted me an adversary and I am besieged by armies round about.

6. He has put away from me my brethren, friends, kindred, family, servants, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.

7. I appeal to you, O ye my friends, for pity instead of persecution.

8. Oh that my words were written in a book or were engraved with a pen of iron in the rock forever, but I know that my redeemer liveth and will at last stand upon the earth, and I shall behold him in my risen body, then to be vindicated by him.

9. Now I warn you to beware of injustice to me lest the sword come upon you, for there is a judgment ahead. Here it may be noted that Job 19:23-24 refer to the ancient method of writing and that Job expresses in Job 19:25-27 a great hope for the future. Compare the several English translations of Job 19:26 with each other and the context and then answer:

1. Does Job intend to convey the idea that he will see God apart from his body) i.e., when death separates soul and body?

2. Or does he mean that at the resurrection he will see God from the viewpoint of his risen body?

3. If you hold the latter meaning, which version, after all, is the least misleading, the King James, the Revised, the American Standard Version, or Leeser’s Jewish translation? The answer is, Job here means that he will see God from the viewpoint of his risen body, as the King James Version conveys.

Zophar’s second speech is harsher than his first, and consists of a rejoinder (Job 20:1-3 ) and an argument (Job 20:4-29 ).

The points of his rejoinder are:

1. Haste is justified because of his thoughts;

2. The reproach of Job 19:28-29 , “If ye say, How may we pursue him and that the cause of the suffering is in me, then beware of the sword. My goel [redeemer] will defend me,” he answers thus: “Thus do my thoughts answer me and by reason of this there is haste in me; I hear the reproof that puts me to shame and the spirit of my understanding gives answer.

The points of his argument are:

1. Since creation the prosperity of the wicked has been short, his calamity sure and utter, extending to his children.

2. The very sweetness of his sin becomes poison to him.

3. He shall not look on streams flowing with milk, butter, and honey.

4. He shall restore and shall not swallow it down, even according to all that he has taken.

5. In the height of his enjoyment the sword smites him and the arrow pierces him,

6. Darkness wraps him, terrors fright him, and heaven’s supernatural fires burn him.

7. Heaven reveals his iniquity and earth rises up against him. This is the heritage appointed unto him by God. Certain other scriptures carry out the idea of milk, butter, and honey, viz: Exo 3:8 ; Exo 13:5 ; Exo 33:3 ; 2Ki 18:32 ; Deu 31:20 ; Isa 7:22 ; Joe 3:18 , and several classic authors refer to them, also, as Pindar, Virgil, Ovid, and Horace. It will be noted that Zophar intimates that Job might be guilty of hypocrisy (Job 19:12 ), of oppressing the poor (Job 19:19 ) and of greediness (Job 19:20 ).

Job’s reply (Job 21 ) is more collected than the former, and the points are as follows:

1. Hear me and then mock. This is only fair and may afterward prove a consolation to you.

2. Do I address myself to man for help? My address is to God and, because I am unheard, therefore I am impatient?

3. Mark me and be astonished. What I say even terrifies me.

4. The prosperity of the wicked who defy God is a well known fact.

5. How seldom is their light put out. They are not destroyed as you say.

6. Ye say God visits it on his children. What is that to him?

7. Here are two cases, one prosperous to the end and the other never so. The grave is sweet to both.

8. God’s reserved judgment is for the wicked. Do you not know this?

9. In conclusion I must say that your answers are falsehoods.

In this second round of speeches we have observed that Job has quieted down to a great extent and seems to have risen to higher heights of faith, while the three friends have become bolder and more desperate. They have gone beyond insinuations to intimations, thus suggesting certain sins of which Job might be guilty. While Job has greatly improved in his spirit and has ascended a long way from the depths to which he had gone in the moral tragedy, the climax of the debate has not yet been reached. Tanner says, “While the conflict of debate is sharper, Job’s temper is more calm; and he is perceptibly nearer a right attitude toward God. He is approaching a victory over his opponents, and completing the more important one over himself.”

QUESTIONS

1. Of what does the second speech of Eliphaz consist?

2. What the main points of the rejoinder (Job 15:1-16 )?

3. What the points in the continuation of the argument?

4. What summary of Job’s reply Job 16:16-17 )?

5. What things in this speech are worthy of note?

6. What the two parts of Bildad’s second speech Job 18:18 )?

7. What the main points of his rejoinder?

8. What can you say of his argument and what the points of it?

9. What the two parts to Job’s great reply?

10. What the points of his expostulation?

11. What the items of his complaint against God?

12. Explain Job 19:23-24 ,

13. What great hope does Job express in Job 19:25-27 ?

14. Compare the several English translations of Job 19:26 with each other and the context and then answer: What great hope does Job express in Job 19:25-27 ?

15. How does Zophar’s second speech compare with the first and what the parts of this speech?

16. What the points of his rejoinder?

17. What the points of his argument?

18. What scriptures carry out the idea of milk, butter, and honey, and what classic authors refer to this?

19. What can you say of Job’s reply (Job 21 ) and what his points?

20. What have we found in the second round of speeches?

Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible

Job 16:1 Then Job answered and said,

Ver. 1. Then Job answered and said ] Although he had little or nothing to answer unto but what he had answered before, yet that he might not say nothing, he replieth to Eliphaz’s painted speech, and giveth him to know, that prudentibus viris non placent phalerata sed fortia (as Bishop Jewel was wont to say), that is, that wise men look for matter, and not for words only, from those that accost them.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Job Chapter 16

Now we come to Job’s answer (Job 16 ). “I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are ye all. Shall vain words have an end? Or what emboldeneth thee that thou answerest? I also could speak as ye do. If your soul were in my soul’s stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you. But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should assuage your grief. Though I speak, my grief is not assuaged.” And no doubt Job spoke perfectly truly. He would have been a comforter of sorrow; he would not have been a physician without any medicine. They brought poison into his wounds instead of something to assuage. He said, ‘I have been pouring out my sorrow, but I am no better for it’ – “Thou hast made desolate all my company. And thou hast filled me with wrinkles.” He now speaks of his own person too. “He teareth me in his wrath, who hateth me.” He does not say it was God. I think it is rather too much to suppose that he means that; but he does mean that God allowed it; and therefore, in a euphemistic way he says “He.” But it was God allowing the devil to do it – his enemy – otherwise it would be a dreadful inconsistency with the rest of his language which we are not bound to carry out to more than a superficial inconsistency; it is not radical. “God hath delivered me to the ungodly” – and he in the most graphic manner describes his intense affliction. But now (ver. 17), we find Job in the midst of this making complaint as to prayer being restrained. “Not for any injustice in mine hands” – that he could say truly. It was not a question of injustice; it was a question of Job’s too great complacency in himself. “Also my prayer is pure. O earth, cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have no place.” He regards himself as if he were a victim to all this enmity that is shown him. “Also now, behold, my witness is in heaven.” You do not find the others saying that. They did not know as much about heaven as Job; they did not know God as Job did – not one of the three. “My record is on high.” It is the beginning of a little light that is piercing through the clouds. “My friends scorn me; but mine eye poureth out tears unto God. Oh that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbour!” How the heart of Job was made to pine for the very thing that Christ must do!

Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)

answered = replied. See note on Job 4:1.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Chapter 16

So Job answered and said, I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are you all. Shall empty words ( Job 16:1 )

Talking about vanity, he said,

Shall empty words have an end? or what emboldens you that you answer? I also could speak as you do: if you were in my place, I could heap up words against you, and shake my head at you ( Job 16:1-4 ).

So, here now, visualize it when they’re talking. They’re just shaking their head, and they do that, they shake their head and yell at each other. And he said, “Hey, if I were in your place and you were in my place, I could yell at you and shake my head at you too. You know, it’s nothing to that. I could do it.”

But I would rather to strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should assuage your grief. Though I speak, my grief is not assuaged: and though I forbear, what am I eased? ( Job 16:5-6 )

If I’m quiet, you tell me to be quiet, I ought to be quiet. What good would it do? You guys will mouth off.

But now he hath made me weary: you have made me desolate all my company. And you have filled me with wrinkles, which is a witness against me: and my leanness rising up in me bears witness to my face. He tears me in his wrath, who hates me: he gnashes upon me with his teeth; mine enemy sharpeneth his eyes upon me ( Job 16:7-9 ).

So here they’re talking through their teeth at him, and they’re looking, sharpening their eyes, squinting as they’re looking at him and yelling in his face. And, oh man, what a sight this must have been.

They have gaped upon me with their mouth; they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully; they have gathered themselves together against me. God hath delivered me unto the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked. I was at ease ( Job 16:10-12 ),

Until you came.

but he also has taken me by my neck, and shaken me to pieces, and set me up for his mark ( Job 16:12 ).

Now he’s referring to God again.

His archers compass me round about, he cleaves my reins asunder [he cuts me in two], he does not spare; he pours out my gall upon the ground. He breaks me with the branch upon branch, he runs upon me like a giant. I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and defiled my horn in the dust. My face is foul with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death; Not only for any injustice in mine hands: also my prayer is pure. O earth, cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have no place. Also now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high ( Job 16:13-19 ).

Okay, “God is my witness,” is what he is saying. “My record is on high. God has the records, my witness is there in heaven. I’m not even going to try to justify myself before you guys. Think what you will of me. God knows the truth.”

It’s comforting when we are misunderstood by others. Totally misunderstood sometimes. Our motivations are misread by others. Many times we are accused of things of which we are not at all guilty. Someone has totally misread our thought, our ideas, our motivations. They’ve imputed wicked, evil motivations to us when they weren’t there. But my witness is in heaven; God knows the truth about me. And that’s to me a comfort. That God keeps the books. He knows the truth. He knows what’s in my heart. He keeps the records.

My friends scorn me: but my eye pours out tears unto God. Oh that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleads for his neighbor! ( Job 16:20-21 )

“Oh, that you’d intercede for me, that you’d pray for me.” I wonder why they hadn’t thought of that. Here their friend’s in trouble, why didn’t they come and pray, intercede for the guy? As one intercedes for his friends, instead of just heaping all kinds of abuse upon him.

When a few years are come, I’m going to go the way from which I shall not return ( Job 16:22 ). “

Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary

Job 16:1-5

Introduction

Job 16

JOB’S FIFTH DISCOURSE:

JOB’S REPLY TO ELIPHAZ AND THE OTHER “COMFORTERS”

Eliphaz had just finished blasting Job with his allegations that, “If Job had been as good as he claimed to be, he would never have had all those troubles. Since the troubles came, they meant, of course, that Job was wicked; and now that he would not even admit it, he was, in addition to everything else, a hardened hypocrite.” It is difficult to imagine a more unjust, unfeeling or more evil personal assault upon a suffering human brother than was this devil-inspired diatribe by Eliphaz against Job.

“There was absolutely nothing new in the speech that Eliphaz had just concluded, if we except the bitterness and invective in it.” “Eliphaz was merely repeating what he and the others had already said; but, instead of being silent as Job had begged them to be (Job 13:5),” they were merely adding to his troubles by forcing their words upon him.

Job 16:1-5

JOB’S REJECTION OF THEIR SO

-CALLED “COMFORTING”

Job 16:1-5

“Then Job answered and said,

I have heard many such things:

Miserable comforters are ye all.

Shall vain words have an end?

Or what provoketh thee that thou answerest?

I also could speak as ye do;

If your soul were in my soul’s stead,

I could join words together against you,

And shake my head at you,

But I would strengthen you with my mouth,

And the solace of my lips would assuage your grief.”

“Miserable comforters are ye all” (Job 16:2). Job in these words rejected the speeches of his friends as worthless to him.

“Shall vain words have an end” (Job 16:3)? This was Job’s way of asking if they were ever going to shut up!

“I could speak as ye do … but I would strengthen you … assuage your grief” (Job 16:4-5). Job promised here, that if their roles should be reversed, he would comfort instead of torment them, as they were doing him.

E.M. Zerr:

Job 16:1-2. Miserable is rendered “troublesome” in the margin and it is supported by the lexicon. It means that the speeches which they made on pretense of consoling him were only a bother to him. They did not tell him anything but what he knew, and it had no bearing on his situation.

Job 16:3. Vain words were those that were empty or useless, and their words were such because they did not touch the subject, much less solve the problem.

Job 16:4. This verse shows the wellknown idea expressed in the statement, “Put yourself in my place and see how it will appear to you.” If that were done, Job would have as much reason to reproach the “friends” as they professed to have against him.

Job 16:5. But if Job could actually exchange places with them, he would speak real words of comfort to them instead of debasing them as they were doing him.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

Job immediately answered. His answer dealt less with the argument they suggested than before. While the darkness was still about him, and in some senses the agony of his soul was deepening, yet it is impossible to read the whole of this answer without seeing that through the terrible stress he was at least groping after light, if at the moment we may not say that he saw any gleam of it. He first manifested his impatience with these men. Their philosophy was not new. He had heard many such things. Their comfort was nothing; they were “miserable comforters.” Their pertinacity was his chief trouble. The folly of criticizing sorrow from the vantage point of prosperity is declared. Job said that he could speak as they if they were in his place, but he would not do it. He would attempt to strengthen them.

Following this outburst of scorn, we have a new statement of his grief. It was helped neither by speech nor silence. In describing his suffering he spoke of God’s relentless method. In the midst of this he said:

Mine adversary sharpeneth his eyes upon me.

The word is not the same as that translated “Satan,” but it indicates an enemy. Whether Job so understood it or not may be very doubtful; but in the light of what we know of the preliminary controversy in heaven it is quite possible to read this section as though he had seen some faint outline of the shadow of the foe.

Immediately following, he said: God delivereth me to the ungodly.

He was evidently conscious of a definite force against him. Perhaps there was more than he knew in what he said.

Continuing, Job now cried out in his distress, and here again it is most remarkable to see how his faith triumphed over his doubt. He declared that his witness was in heaven. He prayed that God would maintain his right with God.

Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible

Turning from Miserable Comforters unto God

Job 16:1-22

With bitterness the sufferer turns from his comforters to God. As the r.v. makes clear, he says that if he were in their place and they in his, instead of joining words together and evincing the pride of the immaculate, he would set himself to speak strengthening words and to assuage their grief by tender sympathy.

He compares his pains to the attack of a wild beast, Job 16:7-14; and from this he proceeds to describe the anguish of his grief, Job 16:15-20. But toward the end of the chapter a new thought begins to shape itself; and from his lowest despair he catches sight of a Vindicator and a vindication that must someday be his. Job 16:21 should be read as in the r.v., margin. Job wanted a son of man to plead for him; and his prayer has been more than answered in the Son of man, who pleads for us not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an indissoluble life, Heb 7:16. O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul, Lam 3:58.

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

CHAPTERS 16-17 Jobs Reply to Eliphaz

1. Miserable comforters are ye all (Job 16:1-5)

2. Oh God! Thou hast done it! (Job 16:6-14)

3. Yet I look to Thee (Job 16:15-22)

4. Trouble upon trouble; self-pity (Job 17:1-12)

5. Where is now my hope? (Job 17:13-16)

Job 16:1-5. How masterfully he meets their wrong accusations and how he brings forth his suffering afresh, yet always with that horrible nightmare, God is not for me, but against me! Such things Eliphaz spoke he had heard before. What are you anyway? Nothing but miserable comforters. If they were in the condition in which he is, he would also speak. But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the solace of my lips should assuage your grief. I would never treat you as you treat me.

Job 16:6-14. And now he charges God with being responsible for all. What does he say? Thou hast made me desolate…. Thou hast laid fast hold on me…. He hath torn me in His wrath and persecuted me…. He has gnashed upon me with His teeth…. He hath delivered me to the ungodly. Remarkable is verse 10. They have gaped upon me with their mouth; they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully; they gather themselves against me. This was done to another Sufferer, the Lord Jesus Christ. But He murmured not; He did not dishonour God as Job did, but glorified Him. It is interesting to make a contrast between these two sufferers. It brings out the perfection and loveliness of our Saviour.

Job 16:15-22. But in all these ravings, faith, which slumbers in his breast, asserts itself, and tries to awake. He says my witness is in heaven, and He that voucheth for me is on high. Thus he clings to God. How beautiful this word suits us, who know Him who has gone on high and who voucheth for us there, needs hardly to be pointed out. But Job knew Him not as we know Him. Once more he desires that daysman. O that one might plead for man with God, as a man pleadeth for His neighbour!

Job 17:1-12. What a pathetic description of his troubles! And he cannot deliver himself from the obsession that God is the author of it all.

Job 17:13-16. And what is his hope now? How dark and evil his thoughts! The grave is to be his house, the darkness his bed. Corruption, his father, the worm his mother and his sister. He and his hope will go down to the bars of the pit, and rest together in the dust. But we shall soon hear another confession from his lips.

Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)

Job 16:1. Then Job answered and said Job, above measure grieved that his friends should treat him in this cruel manner, expostulates very tenderly with them on the subject. He tells them he should, in the like circumstances, have behaved to them in a very different way, Job 16:2. That he, as well as every one about him, was in the utmost astonishment, to find a man, whom he imagined his friend, accuse him falsely, and give him worse treatment than even his greatest enemies would have done. But that he plainly saw God was pleased to add this to the rest of his calamities; that he should not only be deprived of the comfort and assistance he might have expected from his friends, but that he should be used by them in a most relentless way, Job 16:7-14. That he had voluntarily taken on him all the marks of humility used by the guilty, though he was really innocent; that God above knew his innocence, though his friends so slanderously traduced him, Job 16:15-22. That he was sensible he was nigh his dissolution, otherwise he could return their own with interest, Job 17:1-3. That he made no doubt, whenever the cause came to a decision, the event would prove favourable to him. In the mean time, they would do well to consider what effect this their treatment of him must have on all mankind, and how great a discouragement it must be to the lovers of virtue, to see a man, whose character was yet unstained, on bare suspicion, dealt with so cruelly by persons pretending to virtue and goodness, Job 16:4-9. Would they but give themselves time to reflect, they must see that he could have no motive to hypocrisy; since all his schemes and hopes, with regard to life, were at an end, and, as he expected nothing but death, with what view could he play the hypocrite? Job 16:10, to the end. Heath.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Job 16:2. Miserable comforters are ye all. The Vulgate, burdensome comforters, who afflicted instead of consoling their friend.

Job 16:3. Shall vain words have an end. He plainly tells Eliphaz that he did not understand his case.

Job 16:9. He who hateth me teareth me in his wrath. So the text should be transposed. They have gaped upon me, and smitten me. Not God, for he loves those whom he chastens; not Satan, for he is invisible; but an envious rival, who thought that Jobs prosperity was his right, and therefore rejoiced at his fall.

Job 16:14. Like a giant. Men about nine feet high. See Gen 6:4.

Job 16:15. I havedefiled my horn. The horn designates majesty, power, and prosperity. The horn of the righteous shall be exalted. Psa 112:9. The horn was defiled in the dust when the beast was slain; so Job laid his case at the Lords feet.

Job 16:18. Oh earth, cover not thou my blood. Conceal not my wrongs when I am dead: for he adds in Job 16:22, I go whence I shall not return.

REFLECTIONS.

Job rises under feelings differing widely from his friends. Though afflicted and borne down, he is only depressed. He replies with a conscious mind; he feels a superiority in liberal views of providence, and in excellence of sentiment. Had they been in his case, he would have comforted them, and upheld their hands; whereas all their artillery of argument were pointed to cast him down.

He next recites his anguish, and the reproaches of his enemies, which should have excited their compassion. He was a prince fallen and desolate, the wrinkles of age were on his face, and leanness had wasted his flesh. His envious neighbours gnashed their teeth against him, while others gazed, with ungracious aspects, as on one going to execution. His face was besmeared with weeping, but not for injustice to his neighbour; in that view his hands were clean, and his devotion pure. Thus impressed in mind, and affected in heart, he utters the sublimest apostrophe to heaven which could possibly proceed from man. Oh earth, cover thou not my blood, and deny not a record to my cry. For now behold, my witness is in heaven, and my testimony in the highest. The true sublime in fine writing is always simple in expression, and copies the grandeur of nature, whether of sentiment or of action, just as she is.

Job having now no comfort left on earth, and perceiving that in a few years he must go the final journey, whence he should not return, groans in spirit for the aids of religious society. Oh that one might plead for a man with God. To the sick and dying, the society of holy and heavenly-minded people, affords the sweetest consolation that can be enjoyed on earth. But in this tragic case, the three prophets who attended Job were so misguided and employed by Satan, as to pierce his soul with the keenest darts of anguish and grief. If an enemy had done this, I could have borne it; but you my three friends, alas, alas!

Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Job 16:1-5. Job has had enough of his tormenting comforters (Job 16:2 f.). He could, if the positions were reversed, well enough offer them such mere verbal consolation (the stress in Job 16:5 is on mouth and lips). Translate Job 16:5 as a continuation of Job 16:4. I could strengthen you with my mouth, and my lips compassion I would not spare (the last clause after LXX).

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

JOB REPROVES THEIR HEARTLESSNESS

(vv.1-5)

Eliphaz had claimed to be giving Job “the consolations of God,” and this moves Job to reply bitterly, “Miserable comforters are you all!” (v.2). Instead of comfort, they had given heartless accusations, which Job terms “words of wind.” He says that if they were in his place, he could heap up words against them in similar cruel accusation, but he would not do so: he would use his words to strengthen and encourage them in order to give them some relief. He longed for this himself, but they had nothing for him.

JOB FEELS GOD HAS MOVED MEN TO PERSECUTE HIM

(vv.6-14)

Whether Job spoke or remained silent, he found no relief. He feels that God has worn him out by making all his company (his friends) desolate of any help, and thus Job was shrivelled up. In verse 9 it may be doubtful that he is referring directly to God, for in verse 10 he uses the plural “they” three times. But he evidently thought God was practically influencing others to tear Job in His wrath. Did he think God was responsible for the hatred of man? In fact, we know that God would not approve of such persecutions that Job lists in verses 9 and 10, but his friends were claiming to be speaking for God!

Because Job had found no help or encouragement from his three friends, but rather the opposite, he pathetically declares, “God has delivered me up to the ungodly, and turned me over to the hands of the wicked” (v.11). Just as Eliphaz had exaggerated Job’s condition by calling him wicked, so Job exaggerates by referring to his friends as wicked. He felt that God was taking sides with the ungodly against him. A resisting attitude will always have wrong thoughts about God and His ways, whereas a submissive attitude will find its thoughts wonderfully corrected.

Still, it is commendable that Job recognised that in the final analysis he was dealing with God, so that he looks beyond his friends to see that God was behind all that was coming upon him. This shows he was a true believer, though he made deductions that were wrong, for he was virtually blaming God as though God was doing wrong. “I was at ease,” he says, “but He has shattered me; He also takes me by the neck and shakes me to pieces. He has set me up for His target, His archers surround me. He pierces my heart and does not pity, He pours out my gall on the ground. He breaks me with wound upon wound; He runs at me like a warrior” (vv.12-14).

If Job had only realised that it was because of God’s pure love to him that He allowed such things to try him, how different would his attitude have been! Eventually he was brought to such a conclusion, however, so that the end of the history is bright with God’s praise and Job’s great blessing.

JOB LOOKS TO HEAVEN FOR HELP

(vv.15-22)

Job now draws attention to the extreme misery he was passing through, concerning which Zophar had callously said Job’s suffering was less than he deserved. “I have sewn sackcloth over my skin, and laid my head in the dust, my face is flushed from weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death” (vv.15-16). If he had been guilty of violence and hypocrisy, this would be understandable, but he insists that no violence was in his hands and his prayer was pure.

He calls to the earth not to cover his blood, that is, not to cover up the fact of his undeserved suffering; and not to let his cry have a resting place, apparently that his cry should be heard rather than silenced. For he had confidence that the witness of his innocence was in heaven, though his friends on earth had refused it and scorned him (vv.18-20).

“Oh that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleads for his neighbour!” (v.21). We today know the wonderful answer to this in the New Testament. “We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1Jn 2:1). The Lord Jesus does indeed plead for us before the Father’s face, a true and gracious Intercessor whose petitions the Father will never deny.

Even in Job’s day, his faith could have anticipated this if only he had a submissive spirit. However, in a state of despondency he says, “For when a few years are finished I shall go the way of no return” (v.22). He therefore expected to live a few years more, but thought of those years only as continuing his present misery, and says nothing of the bright prospect of eternity, which at least today should be a matter deeply precious to a believing heart, – that is, eternal glory and eternal blessing with Christ. How marvellous is the advantage the children of God have today over those of Old Testament days!

Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible

2. Job’s second reply to Eliphaz chs. 16-17

This response reflects Job’s increasing disinterest in the words of his accusers. He warned them and then proceeded to bewail his isolation.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Job’s disgust with his friends 16:1-5

Job said his visitors had said nothing new to help him (Job 16:1). He picked up Eliphaz’s word (translated "mischief" in Job 15:35) and used it to describe him and his companions as "sorry," pain-inflicting comforters (an oxymoron, Job 16:2). Eliphaz’s words had not brought the consolation he had promised (Job 15:11). Job charged his visitors with being the real windbags (Job 16:3; cf. Job 8:2; Job 15:2). He claimed that he himself would provide more comfort than they were delivering, which Eliphaz had previously admitted Job could do (Job 4:4).

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

XIV.

“MY WITNESS IN HEAVEN”

Job 16:1-22; Job 17:1-16

Job SPEAKS

IF it were comforting to be told of misery and misfortune, to hear the doom of insolent evildoers described again and again in varying terms, then Job should have been comforted. But his friends had lost sight of their errand, and he had to recall them to it.

“I have heard many such things:

Afflictive comforters are ye all.

Shall vain words have an end?”

He would have them consider that perpetual harping on one string is but a sober accomplishment! Returning one after another to the wicked man, the godless sinner, crafty, froward, sensual, overbearing, and his certain fate of disaster and extinction, they are at once obstinately ungracious and to Jobs mind pitifully inept. He is indisposed to argue afresh with them, but he cannot refrain from expressing his sorrow and indeed his indignation that they have offered him a stone for bread. Excusing themselves, they had blamed him for his indifference to the “consolations of God.” All he had been aware of was their “joining words together” against him with much shaking of the head. Was that Divine consolation? Anything, it seemed, was good enough for him, a man under the stroke of God. Perhaps he is a little unfair to his comforters. They cannot drop their creed in order to assuage his grief. In a sense it would have been easy to murmur soothing inanities.

“One writes that Other friends remain,

That Loss is common to the race-

And common is the commonplace,

And vacant chaff well meant for grain.”

“That loss is common would not make

My own less bitter, rather more:

Too common! Never morning wore

To evening, but some heart did break.”

Even so: the courteous superficial talk of men who said, Friend, you are only accidentally afflicted; there is no stroke of God in this: wait a little till the shadows pass, and meanwhile let us cheer you by stories of old times: – such talk would have served Job even less than the serious attempt of the friends to settle the problem. It is therefore with somewhat inconsiderate irony he blames them for not giving what, if they had offered it, he would have rejected with scorn.

“I also could speak like you;

If your soul were in my souls stead,

I could join words together against you,

And shake my head at you;

I could strengthen you with my mouth,

And the solace of my lips should assuage your grief.”

The passage is throughout ironical. No change of tone occurs in Job 16:5, as the opening word but in the English version is intended to imply. Job means, of course, that such consolation as they were offering he never would have offered them. It would be easy, but abhorrent.

So far in sad sarcasm; and then, the sense of desolation falling too heavily on his mind for banter or remonstrance, he returns to his complaint. What is he among men? What is he in himself? What is he before God? Alone, stricken, the object of fierce assault and galling reproach. After a pause of sorrowful thought he resumes the attempt to express his woes, a final protest before his lips are silent in death. He cannot hope that speaking will relieve his sorrow or mitigate his pain. He would prefer to bear on

“In all the silent manliness of grief.”

But as yet the appeal he has made to God remains unanswered, for aught he knows unheard. It appears therefore his duty to his own reputation and his faith that he endeavour yet again to break the obstinate doubts of his integrity which still estrange from him those who were his friends. He uses indeed language that will not commend his case but tend to confirm every suspicion. Were he wise in the worlds way he would refrain from repeating his complaint against God. Rather would he speak of his misery as a simple fact of experience and strive to argue himself into submission. This line he has not taken and never takes. It is present to his own mind that the hand of God is against him. Whether men will join him by and by in an appeal from God to God he cannot tell. But once more all that he sees or seems to see he will declare. Every step may bring him into more painful isolation, yet he will proclaim his wrong.

“Certainly, now, He hath wearied me out.

Thou hast made desolate my company;

Thou hast taken hold of me,

And it is a witness against me;

And my leanness riseth up against me

Bearing witness to my face.”

He is exhausted; he has come to the last stage. The circle of his family and friends in which he once stood enjoying the love and esteem of all-where is it now? That hold of life is gone. Then, as if in sheer malice, God has plucked health from him, and doing so, left a charge of unworthiness. By the sore disease the Divine hand grasps him, keeps him down. The emaciation of his body bears witness against him as an object of wrath. Yes; God is his enemy, and how terrible an enemy! He is like a savage lion that tears with his teeth and glares as if in act to devour. With God, men also, in their degree, persecute and assail him. People from the city have come out to gaze upon him. Word has gone round that he is being crushed by the Almighty for proud defiance and blasphemy. Men who once trembled before him have smitten him upon the cheek reproachfully. They gather in groups to jeer at him. He is delivered into their hands.

But it is God, not men, of whose strange work he has most bitterly to speak. Words almost fail him to express what his Almighty Foe has done.

I was at ease, and He brake me asunder;

Yea he hath taken me by the neck

And dashed me to pieces:

He hath also set me as His butt,

His arrows compass me round about,

He cleaveth my reins asunder and spareth not,

He poureth my gall on the ground;

He breaketh me with breach upon breach,

He runneth upon me like a giant.

Figure after figure expresses the sense of persecution by one full of resource who cannot be resisted. Job declares himself to be physically bruised and broken. The stings and sores of his disease are like arrows shot from every side that rankle in his flesh. He is like a fortress beleaguered and stormed by some irresistible enemy. His strength humbled to the dust, his eyes foul with weeping, the eyelids swollen so that he cannot see, he lies abased and helpless, stricken to the very heart. But not in the chastened mood of one who has done evil and is now brought to contrite submission. That is as far from him as ever. The whole account is of persecution, undeserved. He suffers, but protests still that there is no violence in his hands, also his prayer is pure. Let neither God nor man think he is concealing sin and making appeal craftily. Sincere he is in every word.

At this point, where Jobs impassioned language might be expected to lead to a fresh outburst against heaven and earth, one of the most dramatic turns in the thought of the sufferer brings it suddenly to a minor harmony with the creation and the Creator. His excitement is intense. Spiritual eagerness approaches the highest point. He invokes the earth to help him and the mountain echoes. He protests that his claim of integrity has its witness and must be acknowledged.

For this new and most pathetic effort to reach a benignant fidelity in God which all his cries have not yet stirred, the former speeches have made preparation. Rising from the thought that it was all one to God whether he lived or died since the perfect and the wicked are alike destroyed, bewailing the want of a daysman between him and the Most High, Job in the tenth chapter touched the thought that his Maker could not despise the work of His own hands. Again, in chapter 14, the possibility of redemption from Sheol gladdened him for a little. Now, under the shadow of imminent death, he abandons the hope of deliverance from the underworld. Immediately, if at all, his vindication must come. And it exists, written on the breast of earth, open to the heavens, somewhere in clear words before the Highest. Not vainly did the speaker in his days of past felicity serve God with all his heart. The God he then worshipped heard his prayers, accepted his offerings, made him glad with a friendship that was. no empty dream. Somewhere his Divine Friend lives still, observes still his tears and agonies and cries. Those enemies about him taunting him with sins he never committed, this horrible malady bearing him down into death; -God knows of these, knows them to be cruel and undeserved. He cries to that God, Eloah of the Elohim, Higher than the highest.

O Earth, cover not my blood,

And let my cry have no resting place!

Even now, lo! my witness is in heaven,

And He that voucheth for me is on high.

My friends scorn me:

Mine eye sheds tears unto God-

That he would right a man against God,

And a son of man against his friend.

Now, in the present stage of being, before those years expire that lead him to the grave, Job entreats the vindication which exists in the records of heaven. As a son of man he pleads, not as one who has any peculiar claim, but simply as a creature of the Almighty; and he pleads for the first time with tears. The fact that earth, too, is besought to help him must not be overlooked. There is a touch of wide and wistful emotion, a sense that Eloah must regard the witness of His world. The thought has its colour from a very old feeling; it takes us back to primeval faith, and the dumb longing before faith.

Is there in any sense a deeper depth in the faithfulness of God, a higher heaven, more difficult to penetrate, of Divine benignity? Job is making a bold effort to break that barrier we have already found to exist in Hebrew thought between God as revealed by nature and providence and God as vindicator of the individual life. The man has that in his own heart which vouches for his life, though calamity and disease impeach him. And in the heart of God also there must be a witness to His faithful servant, although, meanwhile, something interferes with the testimony God could bear. Jobs appeal is to the sun beyond the rolling clouds to shine. It is there; God is faithful and true. It will shine. But let it shine now! Human life is brief and delay will be disastrous. Pathetic cry-a struggle against what in ordinary life is the inexorable. How many have gone the way whence they shall not return, unheard apparently, unvindicated, hidden in calumny and shame! And yet Job was right. The Maker has regard to the work of His hands.

The philosophy of Jobs appeal is this, that beneath all seeming discord there is one clear note. The universe is one and belongs to One, from the highest heaven to the deepest pit. Nature, providence, -what are they but the veil behind which the One Supreme is hidden, the veil Gods own hands have wrought? We see the Divine in the folds, of the veil, the marvellous pictures of the arras. Yet behind is He who weaves the changing forms, iridescent with colours of heaven, dark with unutterable mystery. Man is now in the shadow of the veil, now in the light of it, self-pitying, exultant, in despair, in ecstasy. He would pass the barrier. It will not yield at his will. It is no veil now, but a wall of adamant. Yet faith on this side answers to truth beyond; of this the soul is assured. The cry is for God to unravel the enigmas of His own providence, to unfold the principle of His discipline, to make clear what is perplexing to the mind and conscience of His thinking, suffering creature. None but He who weaves the web can withdraw it, and let the light of eternity shine on the tangles of time. From God the Concealer to God the Revealer, from God who hides Himself to God who is Light, in whom is no darkness at all, we appeal. To pray on-that is mans high privilege, mans spiritual life.

So the passage we have read is a splendid utterance of the wayworn travelling soul conscious of sublime possibilities, -shall we not say, certainties? Job is God-inspired in his cry, not profane, not mad, but prophetic. For God is a bold dealer with men, and He likes bold sons. The impeachment we almost shuddered to hear is not abominable to Him because it is the truth of a soul. The claim that God is mans witness is the true courage of faith: it is sincere, and it is justified.

The demand for immediate vindication still urged is inseparable from the circumstances.

For when a few years are come

I shall go the way whence I shall not return.

My spirit is consumed, my days extinct;

The grave is ready for me.

Surely there are mockeries with me

And mine eye lodgeth in their provocation.

Provide a pledge now; be surety for me with Thyself.

Who is there that will strike hands with me?

Moving towards the underworld, the fire of his spirit burning low because of his disease, his body preparing its own grave, the bystanders flouting him with mockeries under a sense of which his eyes remain closed in weary endurance, he has need for one to undertake for him, to give him a pledge of redemption. But who is there excepting God to whom he can appeal? What other friend is left? Who else would be surety for one so forlorn? Against disease and fate, against the seeming wreck of hope and life, will not God Himself stand up for His servant? As for the men his friends, his enemies, the Divine suretyship for Job will recoil upon them and their cruel taunts. Their hearts are “hid from understanding,” unable to grasp the truth of the case; “Therefore Thou shalt not exalt them”-that is, Thou shalt bring them low. Yes, when God redeems His pledge, declares openly that He has undertaken for His servant, the proverb shall be fulfilled-“He that giveth his fellows for a prey, even the eyes of his children shall fail.” It is a proverb of the old way of thinking and carries a kind of imprecation. Job forgets himself in using it. Yet how, otherwise, is the justice of God to be invoked against those who pervert judgment and will not receive the sincere defence of a dying man?

“I am even made a byeword of the populace;

I am become one in whose face they spit:

Mine eye also fails by reason of sorrow.”

This is apparently parenthetical-and then Job returns to the result of the intervention of his Divine Friend. One reason why God should become his surety is the pitiable state he is in. But another reason is the new impetus that will be given to religion, the awakening of good men out of their despondency, the reassurance of those who are pure in heart, the growth of spiritual strength in the faithful and true. A fresh light thrown on providence shall indeed startle and revive the world.

“Upright men shall be amazed at this,

And the innocent shall rouse himself against the godless.

And the righteous shall keep his way,

And he that hath clean hands wax stronger and stronger.”

With this hope, that his life is to be rescued from darkness and the faith of the good re-established by the fulfilment of Gods suretyship, Job comforts himself for a little-but only for a little, a moment of strength, during which he has courage to dismiss his friends:-

“But as for you all, turn ye, and go;

For I shall not find a wise man among you.”

They have forfeited all claim to his attention. Their continued discussion of the ways of God will only aggravate his pain. Let them take their departure then and leave him in peace.

The final passage of the speech referring to a hope present to Jobs mind has been variously interpreted. It is generally supposed that the reference is to the promise held out by the friends that repentance will bring him relief from trouble and new prosperity. But this is long ago dismissed. It seems clear that my hope, an expression twice used, cannot refer to one pressed upon Job but never accepted. It must denote either the hope that God would after Jobs death lay aside His anger and forgive, or the hope that God would strike hands with him and undertake his case against all adverse forces and circumstances. If this be the meaning, the course of thought in the last strophe, from Job 17:11 onward, is the following, -Life is running to a low ebb with me, all I had once in my heart to do is arrested, brought to an end; so gloomy are my thoughts that they set night for day, the light is near unto darkness. If I wait till death come and Sheol be my habitation and my body is given to corruption, where then shall my hope of vindication be? As for the fulfilment of my trust in God, who shall see it?

The effort once made to maintain hope even in the face of death is not forgotten. But he questions now whether it has the least ground in fact. The sense of bodily decay masters his brave prevision of a deliverance from Sheol. His mind needs yet another strain put upon it before it shall rise to the magnificent assertion-Without my flesh I shall see God. The tides of trust ebb and flow. There is here a low ebb. The next advance will mark the springtide of resolute belief.

If I wait till Sheol is my house;

Till I have spread my couch in darkness:

If I shall have said to corruption, My father art thou,

To the worm, My mother and my sister-

Where then were my hope?

As for my hope, who shall see it?

It shall go down to the bars of Sheol,

When once there is rest in the dust.

How strenuous is the thought that has to fight with the grave and corruption! The body in its emaciation and decay, doomed to be the prey of worms, appears to drag with it into the nether darkness the eager life of the spirit. Those who have the Christian outlook to another life may measure by the oppression Job has to endure the value of that revelation of immortality which is the gift of Christ.

Not in error, not in unbelief, did a man like Job fight with grim death, strive to keep it at bay till his character was cleared. There was no acknowledged doctrine of the future to found upon. Of sheer necessity each burdened soul had to seek its own Apocalypse. He who had suffered with bleeding heart a lifelong sacrifice, he who had striven to free his fellow slaves and sank at last overborne by tyrannous power, the brave defeated, the good betrayed, those who sought through heathen beliefs and those who found in revealed religion the promises of God-all alike stood in sorrowful ignorance before inexorable death, beheld the shadows of the underworld and singly battled for hope amidst the deepening gloom. The sense of the overwhelming disaster of death to one whose life and religion are scornfully condemned is not ascribed to Job as a peculiar trial, rarely mingling with human experience. The writer of the book has himself felt it and has seen the shadow of it on many a face. “Where,” as one asks, “were the tears of God as He thrust back into eternal stillness the hands stretched out to Him in dying faith?”

There was a religion which gave large and elaborate answer to the questions of mortality. The wide intelligence of the author of Job can hardly have missed the creed and ceremonial of Egypt; he cannot have failed to remember its “Book of the Dead.” His own work, throughout, is at once a parallel and a contrast to that old vision of future life and Divine judgment. It has been affirmed that some of the forms of expression, especially in the nineteenth chapter, have their source in the Egyptian scripture, and that the “Book of the Dead” is full of spiritual aspirations which give it a striking resemblance to the Book of Job. Now, undoubtedly, the correspondence is remarkable and will bear examination. The soul comes before Osiris, who holds the shepherds crook and the penal scourge. Thoth (or Logos) breathes new spirit into the embalmed body, and the dead pleads for himself before the assessors-“Hail to thee, great Lord of Justice. I arrive near thee. I am one of those consecrated to thee on the earth. I reach the land of eternity. I rejoin the eternal country. Living is he who dwelleth in darkness; all his grandeurs live.” The dead is in fact not dead, he is recreated; the mouth of no worm shall devour him. At the close of the “Book of the Dead” it is written, the departed “shall be among the gods; his flesh and bones shall be healthy as one who is not dead. He shall shine as a star forever and ever. He seeth God with his flesh.” The defence of the soul in claiming beatitude is this: “I have committed no revenge in act or in heart, no excesses in love. I have injured no one with lies. I have driven away no beggars, committed no treacheries, caused no tears. I have not taken anothers property, nor ruined another, nor destroyed the laws of righteousness. I have not aroused contests, nor neglected the Creator of my soul. I have not disturbed the joy of others. I have not passed by the oppressed, sinning against my Creator, or the Lord, or the heavenly powers I am pure, pure.”

There are many evident resemblances which have been already studied and would repay further attention; but the questions occur, how far the author of the Book of Job refused Egyptian influences, and why, in the face of a solution of his problem apparently thrust upon him with the authority of ages, he yet exerted himself to find a solution of his own, meanwhile throwing his hero into the hopelessness of one to whom death as a physical fact is final, compelled to forego the expectation of a daysman who should affirm his righteousness before the Lord of all. The “Book of the Dead” was, for one thing, identified with polytheism, with idolatry and a priestly system; and a thinker whose belief was entirely monotheistic, whose mind turned decisively from ritual, whose interests were widely humane, was not likely to accept as a revelation the promises of Egyptian priests to their aristocratic patrons, or to seek light from the mysteries of Isis and Osiris. Throughout his book our author is advancing to a conclusion altogether apart from the ideas of Egyptian faith regarding the trust of the soul. But chiefly his mind seems to have been repelled by the excessive care given to the dead body, with the consequent materialising of religion. Life to him meant so much that he needed a far more spiritual basis for its continuance than could be found in the preservation of the worn out frame; With rare and unsurpassed endeavour he was straining beyond time and sense after a vision of life in the union of mans spirit with its Maker, and that Divine constancy in which alone faith could have acceptance and repose. No thought of maintaining himself in existence by having his body embalmed is ever expressed by Job. The author seems to scorn that childish dream of continuance. Death means decay, corruption. This doom passed on the body the stricken life must endure, and the soul must stay itself upon the righteousness and grace of God.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary