Job 16 Summary - 5 Minute Bible Study

Job 16 Short Summary:

Job 16 is Job’s rebuttal to his friend Eliphaz’s accusations in chapter 15. Job was frustrated with his friends for shaming him instead of offering comfort. He was also very frustrated with his situation and even put some of the blame on God for his suffering. But at the end of the chapter, his faith shines through and he expresses his confidence in God as his vindicator.

Job 16 Bible Study

SHORT OUTLINE OF THE BOOK OF JOB

• Job 1-2 – Job is Persecuted by Satan

• Job 3-37 – Job and His Friends Discuss the Reason He is Experiencing Persecution

• Job 38-41 – God Speaks with Job and Reveals His Greatness to Him.

• Job 42 – God Restores What Job Lost

WHEN:

• The date of the writing of Job is unknown and still debated. Some believe it was written during the time of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) or even earlier, while others suspect it was written during the time of Judah’s Babylonian captivity (607-537 B.C.).

• I take the earlier date. The description of Job as the “greatest of all the people of the east” (1:3) and an absence of references to Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple suggests to me that this book was written early.

KEY CHARACTERS:

• Job – A blameless and upright man who Satan persecuted in an attempt to turn his heart away from God.

• Eliphaz – In chapter 16, Job is responding to Eliphaz’s accusations in chapter 15.   

WHERE:

• Job lived in the land of Uz. Most scholars surmise the land of Uz was in northern Saudi Arabia, either immediately south of the Dead Sea, I the land that would become known as Edom, or immediately east of the Dead Sea, which is today the country of Jordan.

OUTLINE:

• MISERABLE COMFORTERS (16:1-6):

  • Job called his friends miserable comforters and threw Eliphaz’s statement about windy words (15:2) back at him.

  • Job said that he could just as easily sit in their place regurgitating useless proverbs to shame them. But there was another option, an option that Job’s friends had foregone, and that was to use their words to comfort.

  • Job was angry that they had skipped straight past the comforting option to the shaming option.

• JOB ATTRIBUTES HIS SUFFERING TO GOD OPPOSING HIM (16:7-18):

  • Job was right to reject his friend’s counsel, but he wasn’t right about everything. In this section, Job describes God as his enemy, as the One who opposed him. We know from Job 1 and 2 that God wasn’t Job’s opponent, Satan was.

  • He describes God as having shriveled him up and torn him.

  • “I was at ease, and He broke me apart; He seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces; He set me up as His target; His archers surround me. He slashes open my kidneys and does not spare; He pours out my gall on the ground” (16:12-13).

  • Job had been in mourning and misery so long he said he sewed sackcloth to his skin.

• “MY WITNESS IS IN HEAVEN” (16:19-22):

  • Though Job was frustrated with his situation and even put some of the blame on God, he still believed that God was his best chance to find relief.

  • He still wanted to go before God and appeal his case and testify to his innocence.

  • He said, “Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and He who testifies for me is on high” (16:19).

  • Job’s expression of the concept of God as his enemy followed immediately by his insistence that God was still his savior can give modern readers a bit of whiplash. I think Albert Barnes does a good job of explaining Job’s mindset in his commentary.

  • Barnes writes, “This is an evidence of returning confidence in God - to which Job always returns even after the most passionate and irreverent expressions. Such is his real trust in God, that though he is betrayed at times into expressions of impatience and irreverence, yet he is sure to return to calmer views, and to show that he has true confidence in the Most High.”

APPLICATION

• Having ended this study with a quote from a commentary, I thought I would mention one of the ways commentaries offer value to Bible students.

• Of course, you can use a commentary to help you understand a difficult passage, but one of the ways I get value out of commentaries is in getting help articulating ideas that I understand but can’t formulate the words to articulate it.

• Many brilliant men have studied these texts and its almost always the case that one of them has found a brilliant way to share the intent of the author through their own words.

• Hearing the author’s intent articulated clearly helps our comprehension and helps us share the meaning with other people.