Job 16:7

Whether Job spoke or remained silent, he found no relief. He feels that God has worn him out by leaving all his company — his friends — empty of any help. So Job shrivelled up.

Unless we look into our own hearts, we can barely imagine how these accusations tore at Job. They turned him in the wrong direction. They made him look at himself. He could not deny that he was suffering. Yet, measuring himself against other men, he could not see that he had done anything to bring such great affliction on himself. His friends kept pressing him on one point only: that God's dealings always match what a man has done. So, they said, since Job suffered this much, he must have been wicked beyond measure.

He does not blame his ruin on the Chaldeans or any other secondary cause. He does not explain it away as the work of circumstances. He saw God's hand in it. But he never entered into God's mind about the trial, still less into His love. That is exactly why the whole thing was such a riddle to his soul. He holds fast to his integrity. He is fully sure that there was nothing of what they imagined against him — no dreadful secret, no crushing sin that God was punishing in this way.

Job turns to God, where he should have found deep comfort. Instead he charges Him with being the cause of his misery and suffering. His complaint and his hot words give him no relief. "You have made desolate all my company," or household. He counts his wasted body as proof of the anger of God, tearing him like a wild animal! Job really does not weigh his words. He sees only bitter suffering with no cause behind it, and he will not or cannot trust God in the dark. This is Job's great error. Tied to it is his insistence on his own righteousness, as if he deserved credit for it.

He does not say it was God. I think it goes too far to suppose he means that. But he does mean that God allowed it. So he softens it and simply says "He." It was God allowing the devil — his enemy — to do it. Otherwise his words here would clash terribly with everything else he says.

And now he charges God with being responsible for it all… Verse 10 stands out. "They have opened their mouths wide at me; they have struck me on the cheek in contempt; they gather together against me." The same was done to another Sufferer, the Lord Jesus Christ. But He did not complain. He did not dishonour God as Job did; He glorified Him. It is worth setting these two sufferers side by side. The contrast brings out the perfection and loveliness of our Saviour.

Because of the fiery trial Job was going through, he speaks as if God were dealing harshly with him. He speaks as if God had somehow become his enemy. So he breaks out in bitterness, which is what such a thought always produces. The state of the soul must always depend on how a person looks at God, or fails to look at Him.