Job 16:4 Commentary and Bible Study

‘It would not be hard for me to speak as you do,’ says Job, ‘for anyone could say the rudimentary things that you have said, but they are completely inappropriate to my case. You say that God judges the wicked and rewards the righteous; who does not know that? You bring forward ancient proverbs, expressing general principles of justice, and you apply them to me as if you were dealing with someone who has never yet repented and trusted in God, and needed to hear the first principles of the oracles of God, but you need to look with more understanding at what is happening to me. You use these maxims as if I was a hardened sinner who had to be broken down by force of words, and do nothing to bear up and comfort one who is afflicted. If our situations were reversed, it would not be hard also for me to gather up many sayings which have an appearance of authority and wisdom but which would be totally misapplied. I could string together sayings which seem forceful, and shake my head at you in reproach, but what insight into your suffering would I be showing if I did this? It is easy to heap reproach upon people in their troubles and blame them for all the misery that they experience, but it requires real understanding to minister consolation and encouragement to people.’Job would have behaved in a very different way towards them. He would have supported them in their distress and lifted them up with kind and encouraging words, so that his words imparted strength to their hearts. He would have got alongside them and worked hard to find words that did not crush them but were brought relief to their troubled minds. He would have been at pains to find help, to search to see if he had an experience which applied. When we are down we need someone who can really feel with us. He expects no less from them. Did Job know what he really needed when he said this? Almost certainly not, because what he receives from Elihu is not undiluted comfort, but also correction and rebuke for those respects in which he has erred. When the Lord speaks to him there is serious reproof and an exposing of the many foolish things he has said. Job may have been right in saying that the comforters took completely the wrong approach with him, but he would not have delivered what was needed to a man in his position if he had spoken in the terms described here.