Job 6:26

They are taking his poor, rash, desperate speeches, forced out of him by the desperation of his sufferings. They treat them as if they were the well-considered statements of someone putting forward a philosophical principle. Why could they not allow for the anguish that wrings such "windy words" out of him?

He admits his language was not what it ought to be. He was so hard pressed by inward suffering and desperate pain that his words were quite confused. They were not quietly spoken, but simply swallowed up in the violence of his emotion.

If they had something useful and true to teach him, Job would gladly hold his tongue and listen. If he had erred as they supposed, why did they not tell him in what way he had erred (v.24). Right words would have been forceful and effective, but their arguments proved nothing (v.25). They rebuked the words that came out of his desperation, with no thought for the depth of his suffering (v.26).

He had broken out in these violent words, and they pounced on them at once and said, "Ah, yes! There is old Job beginning to show himself. Now that he is in this state, just think what the world would say if it heard or saw Job now!"

He challenged his friends to drop vague insinuations for direct accusation. How often among Christians have vague insinuations, or even accusations, done damage. Yet "right words," based on specific facts, would have proved forcible and done good.

These answers do not always come from coarse brutality, as one might think. They generally come merely from levity, heartlessness, and self-sufficiency. "My dear brothers," as Cromwell used to say, "I beg you to consider that it is possible you may be wrong." And consider too that whether you are wrong or not, such explanations are only likely to fill the sufferer with indignation. They are likely to bring down a rebuke from God on the Zophars, Bildads and Eliphazes who torment His stricken servants with their shallow ideas.

Would we not expect some words of sympathy from a friend? Would not grace always teach us to "weep with those who weep"? The blessed Man of Sorrows did not take sufferers to task in this way, but was moved with compassion, even to tears, at human sorrow.

He had to learn that his own righteousness, however real, could be no foundation. He must have the righteousness of God to stand on, though he hardly knew how that could be. That is what comes out later in the book.