Job 16:1-6

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.