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Job 6: What the Passage Says

69 claims across 30 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Job 6 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Job answers Eliphaz. He says his grief, if it could be weighed, would outweigh the sand of the sea, because the arrows of the Almighty are in him; he asks God to finish the job and kill him, and says his one comfort is that he has not denied the words of the Holy One. He then turns on his friends, comparing them to desert streams that run full with melted snow but dry up in the heat, leaving thirsty caravans with nothing. He asks them to show him plainly where he has sinned instead of correcting the words of a desperate man.

Claim by Claim

  1. 6:1
    • Job answered.
    • Job spoke.
  2. 6:2
    • Job wishes his vexation could be weighed.
    • Job wishes his calamity could be laid in the scales along with it.
  3. 6:3
    • Job says his grief and calamity would weigh more than the sand of the seas.
    • Job says that for this reason his words have been rash (the term is uncertain and may instead mean his words have been swallowed up).
  4. 6:4
    • Job says the arrows of the Almighty are in him.
    • Job says his spirit drinks the poison of those arrows.
    • Job says the terrors of God are drawn up in array against him.
  5. 6:5
    • Job asks whether a wild donkey brays when it has grass.
    • Job asks whether an ox lows over its fodder.
  6. 6:6
    • Job asks whether tasteless food is eaten without salt.
    • Job asks whether there is any flavor in the slime of the mallow plant (the phrase is ambiguous and may instead mean the white of an egg).
  7. 6:7
    • Job says his soul refuses to touch such things.
    • Job says those things are like loathsome food to him.
  8. 6:8
    • Job wishes his request would be granted.
    • Job wishes God would give him what he hopes for.
  9. 6:9
    • Job wishes God would be willing to crush him.
    • Job wishes God would let loose his hand.
    • Job wishes God would cut him off.
  10. 6:10
    • Job says he would still have comfort.
    • Job says he would exult in unsparing pain.
    • Job says he has not concealed the words of the Holy One.
  11. 6:11
    • Job asks what his strength is, that he should keep hoping.
    • Job asks what his end is, that he should prolong his life.
  12. 6:12
    • Job asks whether his strength is the strength of stones.
    • Job asks whether his flesh is bronze.
  13. 6:13
    • Job asks whether his help is not within him.
    • Job asks whether sound wisdom has been driven away from him.
  14. 6:14
    • Job says kindness is owed from his friend to a man who is despairing.
    • Job says the fear of the Almighty is forsaken (it is unclear whether the one who withholds kindness forsakes it or whether the despairing man forsakes it).
  15. 6:15
    • Job says his brothers have dealt treacherously with him.
    • Job says they are like a wadi.
    • Job says they are like stream channels that pass away.
  16. 6:16
    • Job says those streams are dark with ice.
    • Job says snow hides itself in them.
  17. 6:17
    • Job says that when those streams grow warm they cease.
    • Job says that in the heat they vanish from their place.
  18. 6:18
    • Job says the paths of their course turn aside (it is unclear whether the streams' channels wind away or travelers turn aside from their route).
    • Job says they go up into the wasteland.
    • Job says they perish.
  19. 6:19
    • Job says the caravans of Tema looked for water.
    • Job says the travelers of Sheba hoped for it.
  20. 6:20
    • Job says they were put to shame because they had trusted.
    • Job says they came there and were disappointed.
  21. 6:21
    • Job tells his friends that they have now become nothing (the text is uncertain and may instead read that they have become such to him).
    • Job says they see a terrifying thing.
    • Job says they are afraid.
  22. 6:22
    • Job asks whether he ever said, Give to me.
    • Job asks whether he ever said, Offer a bribe for me out of your wealth.
  23. 6:23
    • Job asks whether he ever said, Deliver me from the hand of the adversary.
    • Job asks whether he ever said, Ransom me from the hand of the ruthless.
  24. 6:24
    • Job asks to be taught.
    • Job says he will be silent if taught.
    • Job asks them to make him understand where he has erred.
  25. 6:25
    • Job says upright words are forceful (the term is ambiguous and may instead mean painful).
    • Job asks what their arguing proves.
  26. 6:26
    • Job asks whether they intend to reprove mere words.
    • Job says the speeches of a despairing man are wind.
  27. 6:27
    • Job says they would cast lots over an orphan.
    • Job says they would bargain over their friend (the term is ambiguous and may instead mean they dig a pit for their friend).
  28. 6:28
    • Job asks them to be willing to look at him.
    • Job says he would not lie to their face.
  29. 6:29
    • Job asks them to turn back.
    • Job asks that there be no injustice.
    • Job asks them to turn back again.
    • Job says his righteousness still stands in the matter.
  30. 6:30
    • Job asks whether there is injustice on his tongue.
    • Job asks whether his palate cannot discern ruinous things.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

6:1
Job is answering Eliphaz, the first of his three friends to speak, who in chapters 4 and 5 argued that God does not destroy innocent people and that Job should accept his suffering as correction. From verse 21 on, every "you" in this chapter is aimed at those friends.
6:2
"Balances" are hand scales: two pans hanging from a beam, with the goods in one pan and standard stone weights in the other. Job wants his grief put in one pan so the others can see what it actually comes to. The King James "throughly" is just the older spelling of "thoroughly."
6:3
"My words are swallowed up" translates a Hebrew phrase whose sense is uncertain. It is usually taken to mean that his words have been wild, rash, or choked off, spoken the way a man speaks when pain overwhelms him.
6:4
"The Almighty" renders the Hebrew name Shaddai, an old title for God used far more often in Job than anywhere else in the Bible; its original meaning is no longer certain. Arrows tipped with poison were a real weapon, and in the ancient world sudden illness or disaster was commonly pictured as arrows shot by a god. "Set themselves in array" is a military term: troops drawn up in battle formation.
6:5
A proverb rather than a question about animals. A grazing animal only cries out when something is wrong; Job is arguing that his outcry is evidence that something really is wrong, not proof that he is a complainer.
6:6
The Hebrew behind "the white of an egg" is obscure. It may mean egg white, or the slimy juice of a plant such as purslane or mallow; either way the point is food with no taste.
6:7
In the ancient world some foods were refused as disgusting or as ritually forbidden. Job says that what he once would not even touch is now what he has to live on, his suffering has become his daily diet.
6:9
"Cut me off" uses the picture of a weaver cutting the finished cloth free from the loom, a life snipped off at the end. "Let loose his hand" means to stop holding back the blow.
6:10
"Harden myself in sorrow" is an obscure phrase; it is read either as bracing oneself against unrelenting pain or as leaping up in a kind of grim exultation. "The Holy One" is a title for God.
6:12
Bronze was the hardest worked metal familiar to the writer's world, used for weapons and armor. Job is saying he is only flesh, not built to absorb blows indefinitely.
6:13
The word behind "wisdom" here (tushiyah) means practical resourcefulness, the inner competence that gets a person through a crisis, rather than learning or insight.
6:14
One of the hardest verses in the book. The second half can be read at least two ways: that a suffering friend deserves loyalty even if he has let go of his own reverence for God, or that the friend who withholds that loyalty is the one abandoning reverence for God. The Hebrew allows both.
6:15
A wadi: a desert watercourse that runs as a torrent when the rains and snowmelt come and is bone dry the rest of the year. To a traveler it is the type of a thing that fails you exactly when you need it.
6:16
The water comes from ice and melting snow on higher ground in the cold season, which is why the channel runs dark and full then.
6:17
In that part of the world the rain falls in winter, and from late spring to autumn there is essentially none. A wadi that was a river in March is dry gravel in July.
6:18
The Hebrew is ambiguous. It may describe caravans turning off their route to find the water, or the streambeds themselves twisting away and petering out into the desert.
6:19
Tema was an oasis town in north-western Arabia; Sheba lay far to the south, in the region of modern Yemen. Both were staging points on the caravan routes, so "the caravans of Tema" means long-distance traders whose survival depended on knowing where water would be.
6:20
"Confounded" and "ashamed" here are not about guilt. In Hebrew, shame is often public disappointment: you staked everything on something in front of everyone, and it was not there.
6:21
The Hebrew of the first line was read differently by different ancient copyists, either "you have become nothing" or "you have become like it," that is, like the dried-up stream.
6:22
A "reward" or bribe out of a friend's wealth would be a payment made on someone else's behalf, to buy off a creditor, an official, or a captor. Job points out he has never asked his friends for money, only for sympathy.
6:23
To "redeem" is to buy a person out of the hands of an enemy, a captor, or a creditor by paying a price. Under Israelite custom this was a duty that fell on a close relative.
6:25
The Hebrew verb is disputed: honest words may be "forceful" (they land and convince) or "painful" (they hurt to hear). Both readings are current among translators.
6:26
Wind blows past and then is gone. Job says his friends treat his sad words as if they mean nothing.
6:27
Casting lots was how property, and sometimes people, were divided among claimants, the practice used when soldiers or creditors split up what was left. "The fatherless" was a standard legal category for those with no family protector, whom the law and custom singled out for protection; seizing one as a debt-slave was a byword for cruelty. The King James "dig a pit for your friend" reflects a different reading of the same line, picturing a trap set for a companion.
6:28
"Be content" in the King James Version means be willing, or agree to it. Job is asking them to stop arguing and look him in the face, on the assumption that a liar cannot hold your eye.
6:29
Legal language. "Iniquity" here means a miscarriage of justice, a wrong verdict, and Job's "righteousness" means that he is in the right in this particular dispute, not that he claims to be faultless. He is asking them to retry the case.
6:30
Picking up the food images of verses 6 and 7: the palate that tells good food from spoiled stands for the judgment that tells truth from falsehood. Job asks whether they think even his sense of right and wrong has failed.

Read Job 6