Job 16
Job 16 is Job's reply to Eliphaz's second speech (ch. 15). The opening verse contains the Bible's most famous indictment of bad pastoral counsel: miserable comforters are ye all (16:2). The Hebrew is sharper than the English. Menachamei amal kullekhem - literally “comforters of trouble, all of you.” The friends' effect is not zero. It is negative. They are adding amal (trouble) to trouble that was already there. The same Hebrew root amal appears throughout Job and Ecclesiastes for the heavy, fruitless burden of life under the sun. The friends came to lighten it; they have made it heavier.
The chapter's middle section (vv. 7-14) is one of the Old Testament's starkest first-person portraits of feeling assaulted by God. He hath made me weary… he teareth me in his wrath… he gnasheth upon me with his teeth… God hath delivered me to the ungodly… he hath 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 runneth upon me like a giant. The chapter does not soften the vocabulary. Job is naming what it feels like, from inside the experience, to be the target of what looks like divine wrath. The Bible records the vocabulary because the same vocabulary will eventually land on the only One who could ever bear it justly - Christ on the cross, the actual target of the wrath the chapter is feeling without deserving.
And then, against every visible evidence, comes the sentence that lifts the whole chapter into hope. Also now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high (16:19). The Hebrew is even more remarkable: Job stacks two words for witness - edi (Hebrew) and sahedi (Aramaic) - doubling the testimony in two languages, as if one tongue is not strong enough to carry what he is claiming. He longs aloud for someone to plead for him with God the way a man pleads for his neighbor (16:21). The New Testament finally answers his longing by name: “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). Job's glimpse becomes the apostles' certainty. The Witness has a name.
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Job 16:1-6Miserable Comforters
1Then Job answered and said, 2I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all. 3Shall vain words have an end? or what emboldeneth thee that thou answerest? 4I 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. 5But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should asswage your grief. 6Though I speak, my grief is not asswaged: and though I forbear, what am I eased?
Verses 4-5 are one of the most pastorally honest passages in the wisdom literature1. 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. Job is naming the asymmetry. It is easy to give counsel from the standing position. It is much harder to give counsel from the ash heap. He is not just saying the friends are wrong; he is saying he himself, in their seats, would do better - and the “better” he describes is the simple Christian act of using words to strengthen rather than to wound. The chapter is asking every Christian who has ever sat in the seat of a counselor to ask whether his or her mouth is currently doing what Job 16:5 describes or what Job 16:2 describes.
Verse 6 is one of the chapter's most pastorally honest sentences. Though I speak, my grief is not asswaged: and though I forbear, what am I eased? Job is naming a feature of deep suffering that the friends' theology has no category for: there are seasons in which neither speech nor silence brings relief. Talking about the grief does not lift it. Holding it inside does not lift it. The chapter is recording, with documentary precision, the kind of pain that is not solved by the standard pastoral binary of “just talk it out” or “just give it time.” The Bible is honest enough to record that some seasons of grief do not respond to either move. The Christian whose own grief is currently in that place is not failing. He is in a chapter Job 16:6 already wrote for him.
Job 16:7-14Set Me Up for His Mark
7But now he hath made me weary: thou hast made desolate all my company. 9He teareth me in his wrath, who hateth me: he gnasheth upon me with his teeth; mine enemy sharpeneth his eyes upon me. 10They have gaped upon me with their mouth; they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully; they have gathered themselves together against me. 11God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked. 12I was at ease, but he hath broken me asunder: he hath also taken me by the neck, and shaken me to pieces, and set me up for his mark. 13His archers compass me round about, he cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth not spare; he poureth out my gall upon the ground. 14He breaketh me with breach upon breach, he runneth upon me like a giant.
Verse 12's image is shocking. He hath… set me up for his mark. The Hebrew is vayyaqimeni lo le-matarah - “he has raised me up for himself as a target.” Matarah is the archery word, the literal target board. Job is describing himself as God's archery target, the bullseye His arrows are flying toward. Verse 13 continues the image: his archers compass me round about. The chapter is using the most violent vocabulary it can find. The Bible does not pretend Job is calmly accepting his suffering. He is naming what it feels like: a man set up as a target by an Archer whose aim does not miss.
Verse 13 contains a phrase that lands again at the cross: he poureth out my gall upon the ground. Gall (mererah) is bitter. The same word-family appears in Matthew 27:34, where the soldiers offer Jesus “vinegar to drink mingled with gall” (the Greek cholē renders the Hebrew mererah). The chapter is being read forward by the Gospels at the level of vocabulary. The bitterness Job names being poured out is the bitterness Christ would later be offered to drink. The same word lands in two opposite ways: Job has it poured out of him without his consent; Christ chooses to drink it down. The cross is the chapter's answer at the level of single Hebrew words.
Job 16:15-22My Witness Is in Heaven
15I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and defiled my horn in the dust. 16My face is foul with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death; 17Not for any injustice in mine hands: also my prayer is pure. 18O earth, cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have no place. 19Also now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high. 20My friends scorn me: but mine eye poureth out tears unto God. 21O that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbour! 22When a few years are come, then I shall go the way whence I shall not return.
Further study
- Hebrew text with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Ramban on Job's reply to Eliphaz - including the rabbinic discussion of the remarkable Hebrew-Aramaic doubling at v. 19 (edi, sahedi) and the “target” imagery of v. 12.
- The Mediator Figure in JobBible Odyssey (SBL)SBL overview of the recurring mediator-longings in Job (9:33; 16:19-21; 19:25), tracing the development of the figure across the dialogue cycles and the way the New Testament identifies the mediator by name in 1 Timothy 2:5 and 1 John 2:1.
- Job 16:19, 21 ↔ 1 John 2:1 · 1 Timothy 2:5 · Hebrews 7:25Intertextual BibleJob's longing for a witness in heaven and an advocate to plead for him is answered in three New Testament keys: John names the advocate (1 John 2:1), Paul names the mediator (1 Tim 2:5), and Hebrews describes His present work (Heb 7:25).
Where this echoes in Scripture
Miserable Comforters
Set Me Up for His Mark
- Isaiah 53:5, 10He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities… it pleased the LORD to bruise him.The One who became the actual target Job felt himself to be.
- Matthew 27:34They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall.The Greek <em>cholē</em> answers the Hebrew <em>mererah</em> of Job 16:13. The gall Job had poured out, Christ chose to drink.
- Romans 5:8-9Christ died for us… we shall be saved from wrath through him.The cross at its theological scale - every arrow Job felt, landing on the only One who could take them on behalf of the rest.
My Witness Is in Heaven
- 1 John 2:1If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.Job’s 16:21 longing, finally named.
- Hebrews 7:25He ever liveth to make intercession for them.The continuous tense of the answer to Job 16:21.
- Hebrews 12:24And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.The deepest reading of Job 16:18 - Christ’s blood speaking for, not against.
- Romans 8:33-34Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth?The verdict Job 16:19 anticipates, written into the climax of Romans 8.