Job 6:4

Eliphaz the Temanite, the first of Job’s three friends to speak, has just finished a speech of two chapters (Job 4–5). He meant it as comfort, and he spoke at length of God’s justice, but beneath his words lay the belief that suffering is punishment for sin. “Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent?” he asked (Job 4:7–9), and he urged Job to turn to God and confess. Eliphaz spoke for the wisdom of the men of the east in the land of Uz, where it was taken for granted that the righteous prosper and the wicked suffer. Job refuses that verdict, and the word “But” that opens this verse marks his reply as a disagreement.

“Job answered and said” is the usual Hebrew way of opening a speech. The verb ‘ânâh means to answer or respond to words or a situation, and it can also mean to testify or to sing. ʼâmar is the ordinary verb for saying, and the force of what follows lies in the words it introduces. So this short verse tells us that Job is replying directly to Eliphaz, and the reply runs through two chapters (Job 6–7). It belongs to the first round of speeches between Job and his friends. Job has already spoken once, when he opened his mouth and cursed his day (Job 3:1), and here he defends that cry.

We know something hidden from Eliphaz. The opening chapter has shown us that Job was perfect and upright, one that feared God and eschewed evil (Job 1), and that his losses came for reasons kept from him and from his friends. So when Job insists on his integrity, we know he is telling the truth, and every confident explanation his friends offer misses the mark. Later he will tell them plainly, “ye are all physicians of no value” (Job 13:4).

Job’s first words are a wish: “Oh that my grief were throughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together!” The word for grief, kaʻaç, is often rendered vexation, and it carries the sense of being troubled and provoked as well as sad, so Job’s grief includes the anguish of a man who feels himself wronged. The word for calamity, havvâh, means ruin or calamity, and also desire. It comes from a root that speaks of eagerly rushing upon something, and by implication of falling. Job’s ruin is everything he has lost: his children, his wealth, his health and his standing among men.

To weigh, shâqal, is the word for weighing silver and goods on a scale. In buying and selling and in courts of justice, the balances settled what was fair, and Job wants that kind of honest measure for his suffering. If his grief and his ruin could be set on the scale together, their weight would show that his lament is justified, and it would silence the judgment of his friends. That longing for a fair hearing runs through the rest of the book. Job wishes for a “daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both” (Job 9:33), and he comes to declare, “I know that my redeemer liveth” (Job 19:25).

The weight, he says in the next verse, “would be heavier than the sand of the sea”. The verb kâbad means to be heavy, and so burdensome or severe, and in other places it also means numerous, rich or honourable. Here it is plain weight, a load that presses him down. The word for sand, chôwl, is explained by Strong’s as round or whirling particles. Scripture usually speaks of the sand of the sea to describe a number past counting, as in the LORD’s promise to multiply Abraham’s seed “as the sand which is upon the sea shore” (Genesis 22:17), or the largeness of heart God gave Solomon, “even as the sand that is on the sea shore” (1 Kings 4:29). Job takes that picture of countless number and makes it a picture of crushing weight. The word “now” places the weight in the present, as the load he carries today.

Job’s grief is heavy because of what he believes is happening to him: “For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me.” Each picture in the verse comes from war.

The word for arrows, chêts, means a piercer, an arrow, and by implication the wound it makes, and used of God it can mean a thunderbolt. These arrows are “within me”, lodged deep inside him. Job names the archer with the title Shadday, “the Almighty”. Its exact meaning is uncertain, and “All-Sufficient One” has been given as a possible sense. Job is saying that his pain comes from the all-powerful God himself, which is why it feels inescapable to him.

The arrows carry poison. chêmâh means heat, rage or poison, from a verb meaning to be hot, and the poison “drinketh up my spirit”. It drains away his life and strength from within. The same word that names the poison can name burning anger, so the picture holds both the sting of the wound and Job’s sense of God’s wrath. Then the terrors of God, biʻûwthîym, alarms or terrors, “set themselves in array” against him. ʻârak means to set in a row, to arrange or put in order, and it is the word for drawing up soldiers for battle. The dread Job feels comes at him like an army in ranks, and he is under siege.

The Psalms use the same picture. David prays, “For thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore” (Psalm 38:2). Another psalm speaks of God whetting his sword, bending his bow and ordaining his arrows (Psalm 7:12–13), and Jeremiah’s lament speaks of God bending his bow and setting him as a mark for the arrow (Lamentations 3:12).

“Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass? or loweth the ox over his fodder?” Both questions answer themselves, and anyone who kept animals knew the answer. The wild ass, pereʼ, was an untamed animal, and it brays, nâhaq, with a loud, harsh cry when it is hungry. When it has grass, desheʼ, it is quiet. The ox, shôwr, lows, gâʻâh, when it is in need, and when its fodder, bᵉlîyl, is in front of it, it eats in silence. The second question repeats the first with a different animal, and the point is the same: creatures cry out when they lack something.

So it is with Job. His lament is the cry of a man who has lost everything, and it is as natural and as justified as the bray of a hungry animal. His friends hear his cries as a symptom of hidden sin, and he tells them the cries come from real pain.

Scripture shows God hearing exactly such cries. “Then they cried unto the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses” (Psalm 107:6). “Lord, all my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee” (Psalm 38:9).

“Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt? or is there any taste in the white of an egg?” Job turns from his own cry to what his friends have offered him. tâphêl, unsavoury, comes from a root meaning to smear, and it describes what is insipid and unseasoned, and also what is foolish. Salt, melaḥ, was prized in Job’s world for flavouring and preserving food, and Scripture speaks of a covenant of salt. Food that needs salt and lacks it is hard to get down.

“The white of an egg” translates rîyr, which first means saliva or spittle and, by likeness, a slimy liquid such as broth or the white of an egg. Some take it here as the slimy juice of a bland plant such as mallow or purslane. Whichever is meant, it is tasteless. These are pictures of Eliphaz’s counsel. His words were well meant, and to Job they were flat and unseasoned, because they left his pain out of account.

Job will go further: “miserable comforters are ye all” (Job 16:2). In this same chapter he says his brethren have dealt deceitfully with him, like a brook whose streams pass away (Job 6:14–15). Scripture asks for speech of another kind: “Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt” (Colossians 4:6). Proverbs likens one who sings songs to a heavy heart to one who takes away a garment in cold weather (Proverbs 25:20), and Paul tells believers to “weep with them that weep” (Romans 12:15). Jesus calls his disciples “the salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13).

“The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat.” The word for soul, nephesh, comes from a verb meaning to breathe, and it means a breathing creature, life, soul, self, person, and also appetite. In this verse it is close to appetite, the part of Job that hungers, and it has turned away from food. The things he once refused to touch are now what he must eat. dᵉvay, sorrowful, comes from a root meaning sickness or languishing, so his “sorrowful meat” is sick food, food that turns his stomach. “Meat” here is lechem, bread or food, the plainest provision of daily life.

For a man who once had the best of everything, this shows how far he has fallen. In Job’s world a shared meal stood for fellowship and comfort, and now his food has become one more taste of his grief. His body is afflicted as well, for Satan smote him with sore boils from the sole of his foot to his crown (Job 2:7). Other sufferers in Scripture speak the same way: “My tears have been my meat day and night” (Psalm 42:3), and “My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread” (Psalm 102:4–5).

Job was a righteous man who suffered without knowing why, and his cry points us to the righteous Sufferer whose grief was heavier still. Isaiah foretold “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”, who was wounded for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:3–5). In Gethsemane Jesus said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death” (Matthew 26:38), and “his sweat was as it were great drops of blood” (Luke 22:44). On the cross he cried, in the words of the psalm, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Job felt God’s arrows without knowing the reason. Christ knew why he suffered, for God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Job had to speak in his own defence, and Christ stood silent before his accusers: “he was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). His silence was his willing submission to the Father, for our sake.

Because he suffered, he understands our suffering. He is a high priest “touched with the feeling of our infirmities”, who “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). When our words fail or run rash, “the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26). Where Job found only tasteless counsel, the Father sends the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, in Jesus’ name (John 14:26). Where Job’s bread turned to sorrow, Jesus says, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35). He calls all who labour and are heavy laden to come to him for rest (Matthew 11:28), and the day is coming when “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes” (Revelation 21:4).

These verses give words to grief that is too heavy to carry. God has placed Job’s cry in Scripture: his wish for his sorrow to be weighed, the arrows he feels within him, his loathing of his food. His people who suffer in the same way find their own experience named in God’s Word. The animals of verse 5 cry when they lack, and the Psalms show God hearing his people when they cry to him in their trouble. The cry of pain has its place in faith.

The passage also shows what comfort is. Eliphaz said much that was true about God, and to Job it tasted like food without salt, because it left his grief unweighed. The words that help the suffering are seasoned with grace and come from someone willing to weep with them.

And it shows the God who stands behind the whole book. Job could see only arrows. The reader is shown that God was present all along, that he would answer Job from the whirlwind, and that he would one day send his Son to carry a weight heavier than Job’s. Job called his own words rash, and God heard him still.