"1 Then Job answered: 2 'I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are you all. 3 Have windy words no limit? Or what provokes you that you keep on talking? 4 I also could talk as you do, if you were in my place; I could join words together against you, and shake my head at you. 5 I could encourage you with my mouth, and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.'"
A. Job begins by excoriating the friends for their "windy words" (v. 3). Look at Eliphaz's criticism of Job in 15:2. What is going on?
B. What is Job suggesting in vv. 3-4?
C. Instead of following their method of attack, what would Job have done? Why do you think that there is a comparatively long section in this chapter on Job's address to the friends? At the beginning of Job's previous two speeches (9; 12) he dismisses the friends rather quickly. Any significance to a longer address to them now?
16:6-11
"6 If I speak, my pain is not assuaged, and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me? 7 Surely now God has worn me out; he has made desolate all my company. 8 And he has shriveled me up, which is a witness against me; my leanness has risen up against me, and it testifies to my face. 9 He has torn me in his wrath, and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me. 10 They have gaped at me with their mouths; they have struck me insolently on the cheek; they mass themselves together against me. 11 God gives me up to the ungodly, and casts me into the hands of the wicked."
This is one of the most vigorous, vicious descriptions of God in the Scriptures. Get ready.
A. The link between these verses and the preceding is the verb "assuage." Job says that he would assuage the friends' pain if the tables were turned. The mere mention of the phrase "assuage pain" brings back to his consciousness the fact that his is an unassuaged and perhaps unassuagable pain. Describe Job's dilemma in v. 6.
B. I don't know what to make of this point. The Hebrew word for "assuage" is hosek. The Hebrew word for darkness, a concept with which Job is now very familiar, is hoshek. The words are spelled identically in Hebrew; the "s" sound only has a "dot" over a different part of the letter in the latter. Is there a play on words going on, where Job is speaking of unassuageable pain, but one might faintly hear, in the background, like the almost imperceptibly gentle French Horn, a reference to the darkness that engulfs him. What do you think?
C. The literal reading of v. 7 and the first part of v. 8 is: "Surely now God has worn me out; you have made desolate all my company. 8 And you have shriveled me up, which is a witness against me." Nevertheless, almost all translators switch the second person to the third person, to agree with the first part of v. 7 and the remainder of the section. But, if we kept the original Hebrew, what would our new translation suggest?
D. Let's now look at the verbs that Job uses to describe what God has done in vv. 7-8. In those verses alone, what do the verbs suggest? Think of Job's exhaustion. Have emotional or physical distresses ever truly exhausted you? When? What does it mean that Job's "leanness" ("gauntness" in another translation) rises up to testify against him?
E. Verse 9 is one of my favorites for Job's not mincing words. Are the images of God different here than in the preceding verses? What are the implications of saying, "and hated me"? Do you want another translation even if the first one is the "better" translation? One other translation has it, "his hatred assaults me." Any better? Has Job just lost it? Or, does he have grounds for feeling this way?
F. Then, in v. 10, he turns to the other attackers. What did they do to Job? Do you see the verb "gape" in v. 10 as more reflective of a gaping mouth to devour or a gaping mouth to laugh a person to scorn? Most scholars suggest the latter and see this verse as a development of 12:4.
G. Why does Job consistently interpret his experience in terms of God's primary action (v. 11)? Doesn't he believe in what we might call "mediate" causes--that is, that it really was the Sabeans and not God which devastated his household? That it really was the wind and not God which destroyed his children? Why is Job so utterly convinced that God is responsible for all this? Shouldn't he just calm down a bit and realize that these things happen sometimes in life?
H. The issue I am really getting at is whether his theology makes him a prisoner or a free man. What are the costs and benefits of having a theology of God's intimate interest in individual humans?
Concluding Thought