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I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all.
Shall vain words have an end? or what emboldeneth thee that thou answerest?
I also could speak as ye do: if your soul were in my soul's stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you.
But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should asswage your grief.
Though I speak, my grief is not asswaged: and though I forbear, what am I eased?
But now he hath made me weary: thou hast made desolate all my company.
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.
He teareth me in his wrath, who hateth me: he gnasheth upon me with his teeth; mine enemy sharpeneth his eyes upon me.
They have gaped upon me with their mouth; they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully; they have gathered themselves together against me.
God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked.
I was at ease, but he hath broken me asunder: he hath also taken me by my neck, and shaken me to pieces, and set me up for his mark.
His archers compass me round about, he cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth not spare; he poureth out my gall upon the ground.
He breaketh me with breach upon breach, he runneth upon me like a giant.
I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and defiled my horn in the dust.
My face is foul with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death;
Not for any injustice in mine hands: also my prayer is pure.
O earth, cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have no place.
Also now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high.
My friends scorn me: but mine eye poureth out tears unto God.
O that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbour! °
When a few years are come, then I shall go the way whence I shall not return.

New Defender's Study Bible Notes

16:2 miserable comforters. These three former friends had come to Job to “mourn with him and to comfort him” (Job 2:11). Instead all they had done was to condemn him for his supposed sins and now to accuse him of hypocrisy (Job 15:34). To a sincere and righteous man like Job, their attitude and accusations were probably a greater trial of his faith than all the earlier attacks of Satan upon his possessions and his body.


16:10 gaped upon me. Compare Psalm 22:13. In his testimony here, Job unconsciously becomes a type of the Mediator and Redeemer he longs for.


16:10 upon the cheek. Note the prophecy of Christ in Isaiah 50:6.


16:10 together against me. In these verses and many others, Job’s experiences become a striking type of the sufferings of Christ.


16:13 reins. The reins are the “kidneys.”


16:15 my horn. The “horn” was symbolic of strength and honor.


16:19 my witness is in heaven. Job expresses here his faith that somehow he must “have an advocate with the Father” (I John 2:1) who can “plead for” him (Job 16:21), even though Satan, through his “miserable comforters” is bitterly accusing him (note Revelation 12:10). We indeed do have such a heavenly “mediator...the man Christ Jesus” (I Timothy 2:5), but this great truth had not yet been specifically revealed, and Job could only trust in faith that the righteous God he had served faithfully would provide such a “daysman” (Job 9:33; see note).


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