Read & explore together
Job Decries His Comforters
Job answers his friends with sharp honesty. He says their words do not help, uses intense lament imagery to describe severe suffering, and still speaks toward God as he longs for someone to uphold his case.
Understanding the passage
Listening in context
This is wisdom and dialogue. The passage begins, “Then Job answered,” so these verses present Job’s reply within the conversation. In this reply, he speaks about his friends’ empty words, his ongoing grief, his sense of being crushed, and his appeal for a witness in heaven.
Job 16:1–22Main takeaway
This passage shows Job rejecting empty comfort, describing severe suffering in vivid lament language, and still appealing for his case to be upheld before God.
Look closely at the words
Open a card to explore the full explanation and its Bible references.
01Job rejects his friends’ comfortJob says he has heard many speeches like this before, but they have not helped him. He calls his friends “miserable comforters” and asks whether their vain words will ever end.
Explanation
Job says he has heard many speeches like this before, but they have not helped him. He calls his friends “miserable comforters” and asks whether their vain words will ever end. If their places were reversed, he says, he would want his words to strengthen and relieve rather than add to the pain.
02His grief does not liftJob says that speaking does not reduce his grief, and keeping silent does not ease it either.
Explanation
Job says that speaking does not reduce his grief, and keeping silent does not ease it either. He addresses God directly, saying he has been worn out and left desolate. He also says his shrivelled, lean condition stands like a witness against him, making his suffering visible before others.
03Job uses intense lament imageryJob describes his suffering with forceful images of attack, tearing, targeting, and surrounding.
Explanation
Job describes his suffering with forceful images of attack, tearing, targeting, and surrounding. He also says others gape at him, strike him, and gather against him. In this wisdom dialogue, these are Job’s own lamenting words for how severe and relentless his suffering feels, not a gentle passage for children by default.
04Mourning, appeal, and approaching deathJob speaks of sackcloth, dust, weeping, and darkened eyes, yet says there is no violence in his hands and his prayer is pure.
Explanation
Job speaks of sackcloth, dust, weeping, and darkened eyes, yet says there is no violence in his hands and his prayer is pure. He asks that his blood not be covered and that his cry continue. Even so, he says his witness is in heaven and longs for his right to be maintained before he goes the way of no return.
Questions to explore
Pause, look back at the verses and talk together.
01Why does Job call his friends “miserable comforters”?
02How does Job show that his suffering touches both body and emotions?
Read the Bible passage
World English Bible ClassicScripture quotation · Public domain
Job 16:1–22
1Then Job answered,
2“I have heard many such things. You are all miserable comforters!
3Shall vain words have an end? Or what provokes you that you answer?
4I also could speak as you do. If your soul were in my soul’s place, I could join words together against you, and shake my head at you,
5but I would strengthen you with my mouth. The solace of my lips would relieve you.
6“Though I speak, my grief is not subsided. Though I forbear, what am I eased?
7But now, God, you have surely worn me out. You have made all my company desolate.
8You have shriveled me up. This is a witness against me. My leanness rises up against me. It testifies to my face.
9He has torn me in his wrath and persecuted me. He has gnashed on me with his teeth. My adversary sharpens his eyes on me.
10They have gaped on me with their mouth. They have struck me on the cheek reproachfully. They gather themselves together against me.
11God delivers me to the ungodly, and casts me into the hands of the wicked.
12I was at ease, and he broke me apart. Yes, he has taken me by the neck, and dashed me to pieces. He has also set me up for his target.
13His archers surround me. He splits my kidneys apart, and does not spare. He pours out my bile on the ground.
14He breaks me with breach on breach. He runs at me like a giant.
15I have sewed sackcloth on my skin, and have thrust my horn in the dust.
16My face is red with weeping. Deep darkness is on my eyelids,
17although there is no violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure.
18“Earth, don’t cover my blood. Let my cry have no place to rest.
19Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven. He who vouches for me is on high.
20My friends scoff at me. My eyes pour out tears to God,
21that he would maintain the right of a man with God, of a son of man with his neighbor!
22For when a few years have come, I will go the way of no return.