16 My face is red with weeping. Deep darkness is on my eyelids.
My eye also is dim by reason of sorrow. All my members are as a shadow.
I am weary with my groaning; Every night I flood my bed; I drench my couch with my tears. My eye wastes away because of grief; It grows old because of all my adversaries.
When I kept silence, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.
I am weary with my crying. My throat is dry. My eyes fail, looking for my God.
For I have eaten ashes like bread, And mixed my drink with tears,
The cords of death surrounded me, The pains of Sheol got a hold of me. I found trouble and sorrow.
For these things I weep; my eye, my eye runs down with water; Because the comforter who should refresh my soul is far from me: My children are desolate, because the enemy has prevailed.
Then Jonah prayed to Yahweh, his God, out of the fish's belly. He said, "I called because of my affliction to Yahweh. He answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried. You heard my voice. For you threw me into the depths, In the heart of the seas. The flood was all around me. All your waves and your billows passed over me. I said, 'I have been banished from your sight; Yet I will look again toward your holy temple.' The waters surrounded me, Even to the soul. The deep was around me. The weeds were wrapped around my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains. The earth barred me in forever: Yet have you brought up my life from the pit, Yahweh my God. "When my soul fainted within me, I remembered Yahweh. My prayer came in to you, into your holy temple. Those who regard lying vanities forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay that which I have vowed. Salvation belongs to Yahweh." Yahweh spoke to the fish, and it vomited out Jonah on the dry land.
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Commentary on Job 16 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 16
This chapter begins Job's reply to that discourse of Eliphaz which we had in the foregoing chapter; it is but the second part of the same song of lamentation with which he had before bemoaned himself, and is set to the same melancholy tune.
Job 16:1-5
Both Job and his friends took the same way that disputants commonly take, which is to undervalue one another's sense, and wisdom, and management. The longer the saw of contention is drawn the hotter it grows; and the beginning of this sort of strife is as the letting forth of water; therefore leave it off before it be meddled with. Eliphaz had represented Job's discourses as idle, and unprofitable, and nothing to the purpose; and Job here gives his the same character. Those who are free in passing such censures must expect to have them retorted; it is easy, it is endless: but cui bono?-what good does it do? It will stir up men's passions, but will never convince their judgments, nor set truth in a clear light. Job here reproves Eliphaz,
Job 16:6-16
Job's complaint is here as bitter as any where in all his discourses, and he is at a stand whether to smother it or to give it vent. Sometimes the one and sometimes the other is a relief to the afflicted, according as the temper or the circumstances are; but Job found help by neither, v. 6.
Here is a doleful representation of Job's grievances. O what reason have we to bless God that we are not making such complaints! He complains,
Job 16:17-22
Job's condition was very deplorable; but had he nothing to support him, nothing to comfort him? Yes, and he here tells us what it was.