Job

Chapter 16

Job Decries His Comforters

Job answers that he has heard enough of this kind of counsel and calls the friends miserable comforters who only add weight to his pain. He says his suffering remains whether he speaks or stays silent, describes God as having torn and shattered him through hostile forces and public scorn, and yet still appeals beyond his friends to a witness in heaven who might plead his cause before the years that remain run out.

This chapter answers Eliphaz's renewed accusation by separating the friends' speech from any real comfort and returning attention to Job's actual experience of being crushed. At the same time, it carries forward Job's search for mediation, turning the wish for an advocate into one of the chapter's clearest notes of hope.

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Job 16

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vv. 1-22

Job Decries His Comforters

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T¹hen Job answered: ²“I have heard many things like these; ³Is there no end to your long-winded speeches? ⁴I could also speak like you ⁵But I would encourage you with my mouth,

⁶Even if I speak, my pain is not relieved, ⁷Surely He has now exhausted me; ⁸You have bound me, and it has become a witness; ⁹His anger has torn me and opposed me; ¹⁰They open their mouths against me ¹¹God has delivered me to unjust men; ¹²I was at ease, but He shattered me; ¹³His archers surround me. ¹⁴He breaks me with wound upon wound;

¹⁵I have sewn sackcloth over my skin; ¹⁶My face is red with weeping, ¹⁷yet my hands are free of violence

¹⁸O earth, do not cover my blood; ¹⁹Even now my witness is in heaven, ²⁰My friends are my scoffers ²¹Oh, that a man might plead with God ²²For when only a few years are past

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01vv. 1-22Job Decries His ComfortersJob says the friends' speeches are exhausted and empty, insisting that if their places were reversed he would strengthen rather than wound them. He then recounts how God has worn him out, handed him over to mockers, torn him apart, and made him a target despite the innocence of his hands, before lifting his eyes toward a witness in heaven who could argue for him with God as one person pleads for another.