Job 16:6

Job 16 opens Job’s answer to the second speech of Eliphaz (Job 15), in the second round of speeches between Job and his three friends, and the answer runs on through Job 16–17. He has just called the friends “miserable comforters” (Job 16:2) and told them how differently he would comfort them if their places were exchanged (Job 16:4–5).

The friends began well. They sat with him in silence for seven days (Job 2:11–13), as friends were expected to do in a time of mourning. Once they began to speak, though, they held to one rule: great suffering must come from great sin, and prosperity is the reward of the righteous. Eliphaz said as much in his first speech (Job 4:7), and in his second he accused Job outright (Job 15:4–5). Job has protested again and again, asking them to show him where he has gone wrong (Job 6:24–26), and their counsel has only added accusation to his pain.

We know more than Job does. The book opens by telling us he was blameless and upright and very rich (Job 1:1–3), that the LORD himself praised him and then allowed Satan to test him (Job 1:6–12), and that a second test was allowed to reach his body (Job 2:1–6), when Satan struck him with sore boils (Job 2:7). Job knows none of this. He sees only his ruin, and since he believes that everything comes from God’s hand, he names God as the one striking him. These verses are the darkest part of the chapter, and right after them Job reaches for hope, a witness in heaven who will plead his cause (Job 16:19–21).

“Though I speak, my grief is not asswaged: and though I forbear, what am I eased?” Job has tried both of the ways open to a sufferer. He has poured out his complaint, and he has held his tongue, and he is as wretched after one as after the other. His grief, kᵉʼêb, is suffering of body or mind, and here it gathers up all of his: the pain of his illness, the loss of his children and goods, the sense that God has left him, and his friends’ accusations on top of it. The verb behind “asswaged,” châsak, means to hold back, restrain or spare, so Job is saying that his speaking holds back none of his pain. “Eased” translates hâlak, the everyday verb for walking or going, which the KJV renders “eased” here, and the question it asks expects the answer that he has found no ease at all.

Both ways fail because his suffering lies deeper than either can reach. When he speaks, his friends answer with more condemnation, and when he is silent, the torment of body and spirit goes on inside him. The man who once received evil from God’s hand without sinning with his lips (Job 2:10) now finds that words and silence leave him exactly where he was. David knew this long, unrelieved sorrow (Psalm 13:1–2), and Paul calls God the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation (2 Corinthians 1:3–4). That is the comfort Job’s cry is reaching for, though he cannot yet find it.

“But now he hath made me weary: thou hast made desolate all my company.” The verb lâʼâh means to tire, to faint or be weary, and it can also mean to be disgusted with something. Job’s strength has given out in body, mind and spirit, and he names God as the one who has worn him down. Partway through the verse he turns from speaking about God (“he”) to speaking to him (“thou”), and the change makes the complaint personal.

“Made desolate” is shâmêm, a word for a place left desolate and, of people, for being left alone or stunned with shock. “Company” is ʻêdâh, a gathered company, used of a family or a crowd as well as of a congregation, and here it means the whole circle of people around Job. He has lost his children, and the friends who came to comfort him have become his accusers. Job lays this at God’s door too, as he did from the start when he said, “the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21). He traces both his losses and the failure of his friends to the same hand, and he says so honestly, as a man wrestling with a God who has become, to his eyes, his adversary.

The same weariness and loneliness run through the laments of Scripture: the psalmist worn out with groaning and tears (Psalm 6:6–7), Jerusalem weeping with her comforter far from her (Lamentations 1:16), Job’s own earlier question why God hides his face and holds him for an enemy (Job 13:24), and the psalmist asking his soul, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” (Psalm 42:5).

“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.” Job pictures his body as a witness in court. The verb behind “filled me with wrinkles,” qâmaṭ, means to pluck or cut down, and here it describes a body shrivelled and drawn together, wasted and aged beyond its years. “Witness” is ʻêd, a witness, evidence or testimony. His “leanness,” kachash, is literally a failure of the flesh, a body worn thin by sickness. The same word can mean lying or deceit elsewhere, and here it is the wasting of his frame.

Two more words complete the courtroom picture. His leanness is “rising up,” qûwm, the verb for standing up, like a witness rising to speak, and it “beareth witness,” ʻânâh, a verb that means to answer or respond, and also to testify. The witness and its testimony are two different words in Hebrew, ʻêd and ʻânâh, and together they make Job’s wasted body a witness for the prosecution. It testifies “to my face,” pânîym, so the accusation stands openly before him and before everyone who looks at him.

Among Job’s people, sickness and wasting were commonly read as signs of God’s displeasure, and his friends read his body that way. Job knows he is innocent, yet every glance at himself tells the story his friends are telling, and he believes God is building a case against him. The irony runs deep, because God himself had called Job blameless in the opening chapter, and the reader knows that Satan struck him by God’s permission. Scripture has other pictures of bodies worn down by grief and affliction, in Psalm 38:1–8, Psalm 102:3–5 and Psalm 109:24, where the psalmist’s flesh is wasted.

“He teareth me in his wrath, who hateth me: he gnasheth upon me with his teeth; mine enemy sharpeneth his eyes upon me.” This is the boldest thing Job says in the passage. He pictures God as a wild animal on its prey. ṭâraph means to pluck off or pull to pieces, the word for a beast tearing its kill, as when Jacob believes Joseph has been torn by a wild beast (Genesis 37:33). “Wrath” is ʼaph, which properly means the nose or nostril and is used for anger, and “who hateth me” is sâṭam, to lurk for, persecute, hate or set oneself against someone.

The beast “gnasheth upon me with his teeth.” châraq is to grind or grate the teeth, shên is the tooth, and the same gnashing marks the mockers of Psalm 35:16. Then Job calls God “mine enemy,” tsar, a word that most often means an adversary and can also mean narrowness or distress. This enemy “sharpeneth his eyes upon me.” The verb lâṭash means to hammer, forge, sharpen or whet, the work of a smith on metal, and Scripture speaks of the LORD whetting his sword for judgment (Deuteronomy 32:41). Job feels God’s eyes, ʻayin, honed to a piercing, hostile stare and fixed on him.

Job’s cry here belongs with the darkest laments of Scripture: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1), and the long complaint of the afflicted man in Lamentations 3:1–18.

“They have gaped upon me with their mouth; they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully; they have gathered themselves together against me.” Job turns from God to men. pâʻar means to yawn or open wide, and a mouth gaping at someone is a sign of scorn, or of a beast opening its jaws to devour. nâkâh is the ordinary verb for striking or smiting, lightly or severely. “Reproachfully” is cherpâh, reproach, disgrace or shame, so the blow is meant to dishonour him. In a world built on honour and shame, a blow on the cheek was a grave insult, a public statement that the man struck was worth nothing. The last clause pictures a crowd closing ranks against one man.

Others in Scripture tell of the same treatment: the man who gives his cheek to the one who strikes him and is filled with reproach (Lamentations 3:30), the psalmist whose enemies gathered together against him in his adversity (Psalm 35:15), and Jeremiah, held in derision every day (Jeremiah 20:7).

“God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked.” Job uses ʼêl for God, a name that also carries the sense of strength and might, so the one he says has given him up is the Mighty One. çâgar means to shut up, to shut in and to deliver up, the word for surrendering someone into another’s power. yâraṭ means to throw headlong or to turn over, as if God had flung him into the grip of his enemies. The “hands,” yâd, stand for power and control, so Job is in the power of the ungodly and the wicked, with no defence of his own.

The ungodly and the wicked are the men who have wronged him: the Sabeans and Chaldeans who fell on his possessions in the first chapter, and the friends whose accusations torment him now.

“I was at ease, but he hath broken me asunder.” Job remembers what life was like before. shâlêv means tranquil, secure, at ease, and it describes the settled peace he knew in his prosperity. Into that peace came God’s blow. pârar means to break up, frustrate or make void, and Job’s whole life has been broken apart.

“He hath also taken me by my neck, and shaken me to pieces.” ʼâchaz is to grasp, seize and hold fast, and ʻôreph is the back of the neck. Job pictures himself gripped from behind, helpless, and shaken until he falls apart. The verb for “shaken to pieces,” pûwts, means to dash in pieces or to scatter.

“And set me up for his mark.” “Set me up” is qûwm, the same verb as the leanness “rising up” in verse 8, used here for setting something up or erecting it. “Mark” is maṭṭârâʼ, a word for a guard-house or prison and also for a target, something closely watched and aimed at. Job feels singled out and placed where the arrows will strike. Lamentations uses the same picture of God as an archer bending his bow at a mark (Lamentations 3:12), and the psalmists speak of God’s waves and billows going over them (Psalm 42:7) and of suffering his terrors, ready to die (Psalm 88:15). This verse shows how far Job has travelled since his first patient words in Job 1:21 and 2:10. He has moved from enduring his suffering to accusing God of causing it.

“His archers compass me round about, he cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth not spare; he poureth out my gall upon the ground.” The target of verse 12 is now under fire. rab is an archer, and Job sees God’s archers ringed around him, so that the arrows come from every side. “He cleaveth my reins asunder”: pâlach means to slice, pierce or cleave, and the reins, kilyâh, are the kidneys, which in Scripture also stand for the inner self. The wound reaches to the core of who he is.

“And doth not spare”: châmal means to pity, to have compassion, to spare, and Job feels no pity coming from God at all. “He poureth out my gall upon the ground”: shâphak is to pour out or spill, and the gall, mᵉrêrâh, is bile, named for its bitterness. The picture is a wounded fighter whose inner organs spill onto the ground, his life draining away before everyone. Earlier Job said he would speak in the anguish of his spirit (Job 7:11), and here that anguish has its most violent words.

“He breaketh me with breach upon breach, he runneth upon me like a giant.” The verb pârats means to break out or break through, and the noun perets, “breach,” comes from the same root. “Breach” stands twice in this verse, and the doubled perets pictures a city wall under siege, broken through at one point after another. For Job each calamity has come before he could recover from the last, with no respite between the blows.

“He runneth upon me like a giant.” gibbôwr means a mighty man, a warrior or champion, and the KJV’s “giant” carries the sense of overwhelming strength. Job sees God as a warrior charging into battle against one defenceless man. The psalmist, in the same kind of darkness, asks whether God has forgotten to be gracious (Psalm 77:7–9). Job’s picture of God here is the one the book goes on to correct, when God answers him from the whirlwind and Job comes to trust his wisdom.

“I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and defiled my horn in the dust.” Sackcloth, saq, was coarse, loose cloth, the material of sacks, often woven from goat’s hair and worn against the skin in mourning, repentance and deep distress. Job says he has sewn it on, so it stays on him day and night. His grief has become part of him, as close as his own skin.

The horn, qeren, is a common picture in Scripture for strength, power and honour. Hannah sings, “mine horn is exalted in the LORD” (1 Samuel 2:1), and a psalm promises that the horns of the righteous shall be exalted (Psalm 75:10). “Defiled” translates ʻâlal, a verb with a wide range, from doing something thoroughly or gleaning to abusing or defiling. Job’s honour, which once stood high, now lies soiled in the dust. David prays in the same words for his honour to be laid in the dust if he has done wrong (Psalm 7:5), and Lamentations shows the elders of Zion sitting on the ground in silence (Lamentations 2:10).

“My face is foul with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death.” “Foul” is châmar, which properly means to boil up or ferment and also to glow red, so Job’s face is inflamed and swollen with crying. “Face” is pânîym, the same word as in “to my face” in verse 8. “Weeping” is Bᵉkîy, weeping, or by comparison a dripping, and it has gone on so long that it has marked him.

On his eyelids lies “the shadow of death,” tsalmâveth, the shade of death, a word for the grave and, figuratively, for deep calamity. It is the word of Psalm 23:4, the valley of the shadow of death. Job’s eyes are darkened and sunken, and he feels himself on the edge of the grave. Already in his first lament he longed for the grave as a place where the weary are at rest (Job 3:17–19), and he pleaded with God in his misery (Job 10). His cry is close to that of Jerusalem: “behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow” (Lamentations 1:12).

Job’s friends heard words like these as close to blasphemy, and yet God kept them in Scripture. Job speaks out of agony, wrestling with suffering that the usual explanations could not account for, and he brings it all to God. Scripture is full of such honest cries, and the Psalms often put despair and questions straight to God. A faith that brings its anger, grief and confusion into God’s presence is still faith, and God can bear the hardest questions his children ask.

Job’s picture of God in these verses is mistaken all the same, and the book says so. When God speaks from the whirlwind, Job sees how little he had understood, repents of his rash words and rests in God’s wisdom. His honesty brought him to meet God, and meeting God corrected him. So we may pray as Job prayed, and we also learn from Job that our view of God from inside the furnace is partial, and that the full truth about his heart toward us is the one he gives in his Word.

Job was innocent and felt condemned. Jesus was perfectly innocent and bore the real weight of judgment against sin, for us. Job’s lament points ahead to him again and again.

Isaiah’s Servant has a marred appearance, bears our griefs and carries our sorrows, is wounded for our transgressions, and the LORD lays on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:2–6). His visage is marred more than any man’s (Isaiah 52:14). Jesus was weary on his journey (John 4:6), betrayed by a friend (John 13:21, Matthew 26:47–50), and deserted by his disciples, who all forsook him and fled (Matthew 26:56). His company was made desolate in a way that went beyond even Job’s.

What Job says of mockers came true of Christ. The Servant gives his cheeks to those who pluck off the hair and hides not his face from shame (Isaiah 50:6), and Jesus was struck in the face at his trial (Matthew 26:67, Mark 14:65) and mocked as he hung on the cross (Matthew 27:39–44). Job felt delivered up by God. God truly delivered up his own Son for us all (Romans 8:32), made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin (2 Corinthians 5:21), and in this showed his love toward us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8). Christ’s body was broken for us (1 Corinthians 11:24), and by his stripes we are healed (1 Peter 2:24). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), given because God so loved the world (John 3:16).

Job’s horn lay in the dust. Christ, whom Zacharias calls the horn of salvation raised up for God’s people (Luke 1:69), humbled himself to the death of the cross, and God has highly exalted him (Philippians 2:7–9). Job’s face was foul with weeping, and in Gethsemane Jesus prayed in such agony that his sweat was like great drops of blood falling to the ground (Luke 22:44). Job felt forsaken. Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Through his death he destroyed the power of the devil over death and delivered those who all their lives were held in fear of it (Hebrews 2:14–15), and God gives us the victory over death through him (1 Corinthians 15:54–57). Being justified by faith, we have peace with God (Romans 5:1). And because he suffered, our High Priest is touched with the feeling of our infirmities (Hebrews 4:15).

These verses give sufferers words for the worst hours, when speech and silence alike bring no relief and God himself feels like an enemy. God put them in his Word, which tells us he knows the depths of such grief and is willing to hear it brought to him. They also show the cost of easy answers, because the friends who came to comfort Job ended by adding to his pain.

Above all they show us who God is, as the whole book reveals him. He knew Job’s righteousness all through the darkness, he set limits on the trial, and he never let go of his servant. In Christ he entered this kind of suffering himself, and he has promised that he will never leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5), that the Comforter will abide with his people for ever (John 14:16), and that one day God will wipe away all tears from their eyes (Revelation 21:4).