Job Asks for Weight, Evidence, and Friendship

Job does not address Eliphaz at first. For twenty verses he speaks about God and about himself, and only in verse 21 does he turn to the friends and say “ye”.

“Throughly” is the 1611 spelling of thoroughly. “Grief” is kaas, the very word Eliphaz used in 5:2 for the wrath that kills the fool, and Job takes it up as his own. “Calamity” is havvah, ruin.

Sand was the proverbial heavy load (Proverbs 27:3, “a stone is heavy, and the sand weighty”). “Swallowed up” is the King James reading of a rare verb that most now take as “rash”: my words have been wild, and here is why.

“Set themselves in array” is a military term for troops drawn up for battle. Arrows and poison together recall the Song of Moses, where God threatens to spend his arrows along with “the poison of serpents” (Deuteronomy 32:23–24).

The wild ass is the onager, which returns in the LORD’s speech (39:5–8) ranging the mountains for anything green. “Fodder” is belil, a mixed feed or mash. A fed animal is a quiet one.

“The white of an egg” follows an old rabbinic explanation of an obscure phrase, rir challamuth. Many now read it as the slime of a plant such as purslane or mallow, a proverbially flavourless juice.

One of the hardest lines in the chapter. Literally, “my soul refuses to touch; they are like the sickness of my bread”. Whether “they” are his sufferings or the friends’ words, what he once would not touch is now his daily food.

“Oh that” renders mi yitten, “who will give?”, the Hebrew way of voicing a wish. Job reaches for it again and again: for a meeting with God (23:3), for his words to be written in a book (19:23), for his old days back (29:2).

“Let loose his hand” reverses the restraint of 1:12 and 2:6, where God’s hand was held back from Job’s life. “Cut me off” is the weaver’s picture of cutting finished cloth from the loom, the same image Hezekiah uses of his own life (Isaiah 38:12).

“Harden myself” translates sillad, found only here, which probably means to leap or exult: I would jump for joy even in unsparing pain. “The Holy One” is a title rare on Job’s lips, and here it grounds his claim to have kept faith.

“Prolong my life” is literally “lengthen my soul”, the Hebrew idiom for being patient. Job asks what future he has that could make patience worth it; a long soul needs a long road ahead.

“Brass” in 1611 meant bronze, the copper alloy. The LORD later describes Behemoth’s bones as “strong pieces of brass” (40:18); what Job lacks, a beast has.

“Wisdom” here is tushiyyah, the same word as “enterprise” in 5:12, where Eliphaz said God frustrates the crafty. Job says it has been driven from him, but not by any craftiness of his own.

“Pity” is chesed, the loyal kindness owed within a covenant or a friendship, the word at the heart of the Book of Ruth. Job treats it as a debt his friends owe him, not a favour.

A brook here is a wadi, a streambed that flows only in the rainy season. Jeremiah 15:18 accuses God of being like “waters that fail”. “Brethren” widens the charge: Job calls his friends brothers.

In spring the wadis run swollen and dark with meltwater from the hills. “Blackish” is qadar, the same root as the “mourning” of 5:11, so the stream looks as dark as a mourner and holds just as little comfort.

The verb for “wax warm” appears only here, and seems to mean scorched or shrunk. What remains when the water has gone is the empty channel, a visible trace of what used to run there.

The word for “paths” also means caravans. Many modern versions read the verse of the travellers rather than the streams: caravans turn aside from their route after the water, go up into the waste, and perish.

Tema was a great oasis on the trade roads of north-west Arabia (Isaiah 21:14). Sheba, whose raiders took Job’s oxen in 1:15, appears here as a trading people. Both depended on known water.

“Confounded” and “ashamed” are the words the Psalms use for trust that fails, as in Psalm 22:5, “they trusted in thee, and were not confounded”. Here the travellers trusted, and were.

The Hebrew has a sound play: tiru, ye see, and tirau, ye are afraid. They looked at his ruin and flinched. “Ye are nothing” follows one reading of the text; another reads “ye are become like it”, like the dry brook.

“A reward” is shochad, a gift paid to an official, usually a bribe. Job has not asked them to buy him out of trouble or to spend a coin on him.

“Redeem” is padah, the ransom word Eliphaz used in 5:20. “The mighty” are the ruthless, the tyrants. Job has asked for none of the rescues a rich man might need from friends.

“Erred” is shagah, to stray unintentionally, the word behind the sins of ignorance in Leviticus 4. Job invites them to show him even an inadvertent fault, not only a hidden crime.

“Forcible” meant powerful in 1611. “Reprove” is yakach, to argue a case or set someone right, one of the book’s key legal words; the daysman of 9:33 is named from the same root.

“Desperate” is noash, one who has given up hope. Job asks whether they mean to put a despairing man’s words on trial, words blown out like breath.

“Overwhelm” is literally “cast lots over”, gambling for a fatherless child sold for a debt. “Dig a pit” can also mean “bargain over”, the verb used of traders haggling in 41:6.

“If I lie” is a clipped oath: surely I will not lie to your face. The phrase “to your face” matches Satan’s wager that Job would curse God “to thy face” (1:11); Job’s face is the one set against a lie.

“Return” is shuv, turn back, reconsider. “My righteousness is in it” uses tsedeq in its courtroom sense: my case is still open and I am still in the right.

The palate that tests food tests words, a saying Job repeats in 12:11 and Elihu in 34:3. “Perverse things” is havvoth, the same word as “calamity” in verse 2, so the chapter ends on the word it began with.