Job begins to show empathy for the friends’ position. As he goes on to explain, someone like Job, who is afflicted by the deity, is stigmatized and thought to deserve derision. Job realizes that his physical deterioration appears to people as evidence that he deserves his suffering. God has made Job the object of his depredations and of other people’s scorn. Ironically to Job, God is the witness to his innocence—but he remains aloof, high in the heavens (compare 3:23 and further 21:22; 22:12–14). Job weaves back and forth among his points, alternating between appeals to his companions for understanding and to the deity for vindication. Returning to the motif of 7:6 and elsewhere, he ends on a note of hopelessness.
[16:1] Up spoke Job and he said:
[2–3] I have heard many such (sayings)—
Futile1 comforters are you all:
“Is there no end to windy speech?”2
Or “What provokes you to speak this way?”3
[4–5] Even I would speak like you,
If you were in my place;
I would harangue4 you with words,
And shake my head at you.5
I would embolden you with my mouth,
And spare6 you my consolations!7
[6] If I speak out, my pain will not be spared.
But if I desist, how will it leave me?
[7] By now he has worn me down;
You8 have devastated my entire company.9
[8] You have shriveled me, and this has become a stigma;10
My gauntness stands up and testifies against me.11
[9] As his anger rages,12 he strikes a hostile pose;13
He gnashes his teeth at me;
My enemy sharpens his eyes at me.14
[10] People’s15 mouths gape at me,16
They strike my cheeks to shame me;17
They all form gangs against me.18
[11] It is El who delivers me to the depraved,
Who thrusts19 me into the hands of the wicked.
[12] I was tranquil, then he tore me apart,
Seized me by the neck and ripped me apart.20
He set me up as his target.21
[13–14] His archers surround me;
He pierces my innards, showing no mercy;22
He spills my gall to the ground.
He opens against me breach upon breach;23
He runs at me like a warrior.24
[15] I sewed sackcloth onto my hide;
And sank my horn25 into the dust.
[16] My face has turned sullen26 from weeping;
Over my bright-eyes is deathly-dark—
[17] Over no wrongdoing by my hand;
And my prayer is pure:
[18] “O earth, do not cover my (innocent) blood!27
Let my outrage have no place (to hide)!”
[19] For even now my witness is in the heavens,
The one who knows the truth28 is on high.
[20] My companions are my taunters;29
My eye pines for Eloah!
[21] For this man30 has a case with Eloah,
(Like) a human with his companion.
[22] When a few more years come,
I will go whence I’ll not return.
[17:1] My spirit has been bruised,
My days are on the wane,
My grave is ready.31
[2] I attest that mockery is my lot,
And the bitterer it gets, the more my eyes cannot (bear it).32
[3] Pray, you33 be my guarantor!
Who else will strike a hand (in pledge) for me?34
[4] You have hidden reason from their hearts.35
For this you will not be exalted!36
[5] One invites over friends to share (a meal),37
While the eyes of one’s children languish.38
[6] He has set me up as a popular taunt;
I have become like spit in the face.39
[7] My eye has gone dim from anguish,
And my limbs wear away40 like a shadow.41
[8–9] Even the upright rejoice42 over this—
And the innocent exults along with the impudent,
As the righteous holds fast to his ways,
And the pure of hands becomes even bolder.
[10] And yet, may you43 all return, pray come,
Though I won’t find among you even one who is wise!
[11] My days have passed,
My plans have been rent asunder,
As have the wishes44 of my heart.
[12] They45 replace night with day;
(To them) light is closer than darkness.46
[13–14] If I measure for47 my home in Sheol,
Arrange my bedding in the Dark,
Call out to the Pit—“You are my father!”
To the worm—“You are my mother and sister!”
[15] Where then would be my hope?
My hope—who will have seen it?
[16] Down to Sheol it will go—
Resting way down in the ground.48
1. The term ‘amal more often denotes “travail, suffering” and thus connotes it here: the companions’ efforts in consolation ironically produce even greater suffering for Job. For ‘amal as a poetic synonym of shaw’ “naught” see Job 7:3.
2. A paraphrase of Eliphaz in 15:2. Job is (inexactly) quoting the kinds of things his companions have said.
3. Compare Job in 6:25–26.
4. An apparent influence from Babylonian habāru in the sense of “to harangue” (Finkelstein).
5. An apotropaic gesture, to ward off evil; see Jeremiah 18:16; Lamentations 2:15.
6. Reading ’aḥsop for yaḥsop “he would spare.”
7. Literally, “the movement of my lips,” a gesture of condolence; see Job 2:11 and 42:11; elsewhere used of the head (Psalm 44:15).
8. Job resumes his complaints against the deity. The shift between third and second person (enallage) is unusual but not unique.
9. Job’s family and friends. The term ‘edah in this context echoes Eliphaz in 15:34 but also puns on ‘ed “(hostile) witness” in the following verse. For the alienation of Job’s family from him, see chapters 19 and 29 and compare Psalm 88:9.
10. Literally, “a witness.” Diminishing him with a terrible skin disease, the deity has created a witness to his being on the wrong side of God.
11. Alternatively: “You have subdued me and become (my) prosecutor; my repudiator has stood up and testified against me.”
12. The idiomatic term for “raging” connotes the mauling of a wild animal. For the idiom, see Amos 1:11.
13. The verb satam, “to take a hostile attitude, act with malice,” echoes the name of the Satan.
14. Suggests the evil eye; compare Psalm 35:19.
15. Literally, “their”—enemies roundabout, encouraged by the divine stigma.
16. Compare Psalm 22:14; Lamentations 2:16.
17. Compare Lamentations 3:30.
18. Compare Isaiah 31:4.
19. Literally, “makes me fall” (Numbers 22:32).
20. Recall Job’s image of God as a lion on the prowl in 10:16.
21. Recall Job’s image of God the hostile warrior in 7:21; compare Lamentations 3:12.
22. A refrain in Lamentations (2:2, 7, 21; 3:43).
23. God is said to breach Job’s exterior the way an attacker breaches a city wall.
24. Echoing Eliphaz in 15:24.
25. A metaphor for pride; see Psalm 75:5–6. Job, the victimized stag, must lower his horns in defeat.
26. Literally, “darkened”; compare Lamentations 5:17.
27. Many find here an allusion to Genesis 4:10.
28. “Knows the truth” is literally “testifier,” a synonym (in Aramaic) for “witness.”
29. “Taunters” (see Psalm 119:51) differently derived means “advocates” (for example Job 33:23). Again ironically, Job’s consolers are his disparagers (see 16:2 above).
30. Recall that Job at the outset (3:3) referred to himself as “man.”
31. For the motif of the grave being prepared for the pious sufferer in anticipation of his death, see the Syrian (Ugarit) version of the Babylonian “Let Me Praise the Lord of Wisdom” (in Y. Cohen).
32. Reading til’enah ‘einay for talan ‘eini “my eye spends the night.”
33. God.
34. For the gesture and language, see Proverbs 17:18 (Freedman).
35. More literally, “You have hidden their (the mockers’) hearts from (being able to) reason.”
36. Reading teromam with several scholars. Although the reference is not clear, the context suggests that it is Job who will not be exalting the deity, who has allowed his companions and others to mock him.
37. This would appear to be a gnomic saying: the companions dispense wisdom freely to others, like Job, but they keep none for themselves.
38. From hunger.
39. In the light of 30:9–10, topet derives from Aramaic for “spittle.” Job has become an object of disdain.
40. Reading kalim for kullam “all of them” (similarly Ehrlich); compare the use of kalah “wear away” in 19:27 and 33:21.
41. Compare 7:9, where the verb kalah is used of a cloud.
42. Reading yismeḥu with the addition of only the ḥeth. We have the same pair of poetic synonyms (samaḥ and hit‘orer) in 31:29.
43. Reading kullekem “all of you” for kullam “all of them,” seeing that the verb is second-person plural.
44. The noun is derived from the rare verb ’arash “desire” (see Psalm 21:3). For the form morash, compare mosar “binding” from ’asar (Job 39:5 and see the comment at 12:18).
45. All those who see Job’s afflictions and are glad that the seemingly wicked is being punished.
46. Job feels that people who, unlike him in his present condition, prefer light to darkness have come to see his suffering as a positive—deserved affliction from God.
47. Compare “to measure with a line” in the sense of building in 38:5 (Yellin). The verb for measuring with a line is cognate to the word for “hope” in verse 15 below, producing a brilliant irony.
48. More literally, “All the way down to the dust of resting.” The word yaḥad sometimes means just “altogether” in the sense of “entirely,” as in 10:8.