Job 6:27

If they had something true and useful to teach him, Job would gladly keep quiet 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 words that came out of his desperation. They gave no thought to the depth of his suffering (v.26). They sought to overwhelm the fatherless. This seems to suggest that Job's father had died, so he had no father to help him. And they were undermining their own friend — a heartless attitude, in contrast to their former friendship (v.27).

So Job pleads for a fairer view of his terrible trial and of his random words. It was easy for others to moralize when they were at ease. But his crying out was as inevitable as the cry of an animal with no food.

You would even let fall on the orphan, and would traffic for your friend.

They were treating him in the same unfeeling way that marks those who rob the fatherless. Were they not trying to swallow up their own friend, and make him out to be like the wicked? These are strong words, but there is good reason for them. There was a studied heartlessness in the cold words of Eliphaz, and it seems to give ground for the bitterness of Job's charge. A little later they speak just as Job here accuses. He only says in advance what they fully mean.

It is a basic principle that a sufferer's friends should show him pity. Otherwise, under the stress of trial — as some have rendered it — "he should forsake the fear of the Almighty." ... But the hard principle they were applying knew no mercy, felt no sympathy. At the time of his dire need they showed themselves completely unfit to be friends. The "brother born for adversity" they are not. These "brothers" are like a summer stream, swollen by melting snow and ice in winter. It promises a steady supply for the thirsty. But when the groups of travellers come, they find only the dry stones to mock them. Yet he had asked nothing unreasonable from them — no money, no rescue from the enemy, only a little sympathy.

In contrast with their injustice, let them look deliberately at him: is he lying when he protests his uprightness? Let them return from their wholesale charges of evil against him, to the simple and self-evident fact that he is upright, with no iniquity that can explain the tortures to which he is now subjected. He can discern evil, and would not hide it, though it were in himself.

"Look at me — you can see for yourselves if I lie." He begs them to look at him. Then, "Return, I pray you, let it not be iniquity." He begs them to return to that, and to a sound judgment of the case: here was their poor friend, put to so tremendous a trial, and he could not see why it had come upon him. "Let it not be iniquity." It has nothing to do with that. He had to learn that his own righteousness, however real, could be no ground. He must have the righteousness of God to stand on, though he barely knew how that could be. That is what comes out later in the book.