Biblion Bible Commentary
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Job: Miserable Comforters Are You All
Job 16:1-22
1 Then Job answered, · WEB
Job says what he would have done in their place, describes God as his assailant, and then claims a witness in heaven anyway.
You are all miserable comforters! Job 16:2 — the phrase that has outlived the book.
What follows is the fairest thing any sufferer says about the people failing him. I also could speak as you do. If your soul were in my soul's place, I could join words together against you, and shake my head at you Job 16:4.
He grants that the position they occupy makes their behavior easy. He is not claiming superior character; he is saying that the comfortable find this kind of speech available. And then he says what he would do instead: I would strengthen you with my mouth. The solace of my lips would relieve you Job 16:5.
It is a small statement and it is the whole of what he needed. Not answers. Words that hold a man up.
The description of his condition that follows is the most violent in the book and it is aimed at God. Worn out, shriveled, torn in his wrath, gnashed at, taken by the neck, and dashed me to pieces, set up as a target with archers around him Job 16:7–13. God runs at me like a giant Job 16:14.
This language should not be softened. Job is describing God as an assailant, and the book records it without a word of correction, then has God call this man's speech right at the end Job 42:7. What God rejects is the friends' careful defense of him, not the sufferer's raw accusation.
One clause sits in the middle of the violence and it is what makes the passage bearable: although there is no violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure Job 16:17. He is not describing a punishment. He is describing an attack he did nothing to provoke, and he is right.
Then the cry that will not be quieted. Earth, don't cover my blood. Let my cry have no place to rest Job 16:18. Blood that is covered stops calling for justice Genesis 4:10; Job wants his own case left open on the ground after he dies.
And then, with no transition and against everything he has just said, verse 19: even now, behold, my witness is in heaven. He who vouches for me is on high.
This is the second of three reaches toward the same figure. In chapter 9 he wanted an umpire and said there was none Job 9:33. Here he asserts that a witness exists. In chapter 19 he will name him as a living vindicator Job 19:25.
What he is asking for is stated exactly in the next verse: someone that he would maintain the right of a man with God Job 16:21. An advocate who could argue a man's case before God, as a man argues with his neighbor.
Job does not know how that could work. He has just spent twelve verses describing God as the one attacking him, and he appeals to heaven anyway — against God, to God. That contradiction is not confusion. It is the shape of faith when the evidence has gone the wrong way.
settled What this mark means