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Job 16

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Job Rejects the Miserable Comforters 1–5

1
Then Job answered and said,
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I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all. ​
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Shall vain words have an end? or what emboldeneth thee that thou answerest?
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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. ​
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But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should asswage your grief.

God Has Made Me Weary 6–16

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Though I speak, my grief is not asswaged: and though I forbear, what am I eased? ​
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But now he hath made me weary: thou hast made desolate all my company. ​
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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.
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He teareth me in his wrath, who hateth me: he gnasheth upon me with his teeth; mine enemy sharpeneth his eyes upon me. ​
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They have gaped upon me with their mouth; they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully; they have gathered themselves together against me.
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God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked. ​
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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.
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His archers compass me round about, he cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth not spare; he poureth out my gall upon the ground. ​
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He breaketh me with breach upon breach, he runneth upon me like a giant.
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I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and defiled my horn in the dust.
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My face is foul with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death;

Asserting Innocence and Seeking an Advocate 17–22

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Not for any injustice in mine hands: also my prayer is pure. ​
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O earth, cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have no place. ​
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Also now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high. ​
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My friends scorn me: but mine eye poureth out tears unto God.
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O that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbour! ​
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When a few years are come, then I shall go the way whence I shall not return. ​

Bible text: King James Version (1769 Blayney text) · Public domain

Study Notes for Job 16

Verse 2

miserable comforters — Amal, toil or trouble, and nacham, to comfort, the verb of Job 2:11, where the three friends came ‘to mourn with him and to comfort him’. Job answers Eliphaz, whose speech fills ch.15, with a name that turns their errand upside down: comforters who bring trouble.

Verse 4

shake mine head at you — Nua’, to waver or shake, here of the head, the gesture of scorn: ‘they shake the head, saying’ (Ps 22:7); ‘when they looked upon me they shaked their heads’ (Ps 109:25). ‘If your soul were in my soul’s stead’ (nephesh) states the exchange of places; v.5 says what he would do instead, ‘strengthen you with my mouth’.

Verse 6

my grief is not asswaged — Keeb, pain of body or mind. Job has already said, ‘I will not refrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit’ (Job 7:11). Speaking and being silent are set side by side here (dabar and chadal, to cease), and neither brings relief.

Verse 7

he hath made me weary — Laah, to be tired out, said of God, who is addressed as ‘thou’ in the second half of the verse. ‘Company’ is edah, an assembly or congregation (as ‘the congregation of hypocrites’ in Job 15:34); ‘desolate’ is shamem, to be stunned, laid waste.

Verse 9

he gnasheth upon me with his teeth — Charaq, to grate the teeth, as in Ps 35:16 (the same gesture in Greek, Acts 7:54). ‘Teareth’ (taraph) is the wild beast’s verb of Gen 49:27, ‘shall ravin as a wolf’. ‘Enemy’ is tsar, the word of Job 19:11, where God ‘counteth me unto him as one of his enemies’; Job 13:24, ‘holdest me for thine enemy?’, uses another word.

Verse 11

delivered me to the ungodly — Sagar, to shut up, as the LORD ‘shut him in’ at the ark (Gen 7:16). The ‘ungodly’ (avil, perverse) and ‘wicked’ (rasha) are the hands into which he is turned over (yarat). Job puts the act on God himself, as in v.12, ‘I was at ease, but he hath broken me asunder’.

Verse 13

his archers compass me round about — The figure is of the ‘arrows of the Almighty’ that Job says are ‘within me’ (Job 6:4). ‘Reins’ (kilyah) are the kidneys, the inward seat of feeling; Lam 3:13 has ‘the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins’. Lam 2:11, ‘my liver is poured upon the earth’, is the same picture of the inward parts laid open.

Verse 17

my prayer is pure — Zak, clean or clear, the word of Bildad’s condition in Job 8:6, ‘If thou wert pure and upright’. Elihu later quotes the claim, ‘I am clean without transgression’ (Job 33:9). ‘Injustice’ is chamas, violence; Job says none is in his hands, and that his tephillah, prayer, is clean.

Verse 18

O earth, cover not thou my blood — Abel’s blood ‘crieth unto me from the ground’ (Gen 4:10). Isa 26:21 promises that ‘the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain’. Job’s request is that his ‘cry’ (zaaq) find no ‘place’ (maqom) to rest until it is answered.

Verse 19

my witness is in heaven — Ed, witness, with sahed, ‘record’, found only here. Ed is Laban’s word in Gen 31:50, ‘God is witness betwixt me and thee’; Paul makes the same appeal, ‘God is my witness’ (Rom 1:9). Job turns from the God who tears him to a witness on high.

Verse 21

plead for a man with God — Yakach, to argue a case or reprove: the root of the ‘daysman’ Job wanted in Job 9:33, ‘that might lay his hand upon us both’. The pleading is likened to that of ‘a man… for his neighbour’ (rea). The New Testament names ‘one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus’ (1 Tim 2:5).

Verse 22

the way whence I shall not return — ‘A few’ is mispar, a number: years that can be counted. Job has said the same of death, ‘Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death’ (Job 10:21), and ‘he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more’ (Job 7:9). In 19:25 he declares, ‘I know that my redeemer liveth’.