Job 16:6-17

Job realizes to himself his new condition: God and men combine to pursue him with their enmity, though he is innocent of all wrong

In Job 16:5 Job flung back with scorn the "comforts of God" which the friends proffered him. And now there seems to occur a pause, and the excited sufferer looks about him and realizes both the extremity of the evil in which he is held, and the new and unexpected trial, added to all others, of the judgment of men being against him. And he hardly knows whether he shall speak or be silent, so overcome is he and so unavailing to help him or make men judge truly of him are both speech and silence if I speak my grief is not assuaged, and if I forbear what am I eased? Job 16:6.

Yet this new condition in which he realizes that he is, which makes speech useless, forces him to speak, and he sets before himself in an excited soliloquy the combined enmity to him of men and God.

First, Job 16:7, he realizes to himself the complete estrangement from him of all familiar friends; God's enmity to him has turned men also into foes (Job 16:7). This combined enmity of God and men is represented under what seems the figure of a creature hunted by one great lion-like assailant, leading on a host of minor, ignobler foes. The chief adversary is first described, his rending anger, and gnashing teeth, and flashing eyes (Job 16:9); and then the pell-mell rout of baser foes that howled behind him, their open mouth and shameless gestures, and full cry after the prey, which is flung over into their hands (Job 16:10).

Second, Job 16:12, then the hostility of God Himself is particularly dwelt upon in graphic figures, which express its unexpected suddenness, its violence and destructiveness. One figure is that of a man suddenly grasped by another of overwhelming strength and tossed about and dashed to pieces (Job 16:12). Then the figure changes, and this shattered frame is set up as a mark, and God's arrows hiss around him and split his reins and pour out his life to the ground (Job 16:13). Again the figure changes, and this body seems some fair edifice or fort which God dismantles by breach upon breach till it lies a sorrowful ruin (Job 16:14). And finally the condition of humiliation to which the sufferer is brought is described; and all this befell him though he had done no wrong (Job 16:15).