*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
Though I speak, my grief is not assuaged - "But for me, it makes now no difference whether I speak or am silent. My sufferings continue. If I attempt to vindicate myself before people, I am reproached; and equally so if I am silent. If I maintain my cause before God, it avails me nothing, for my sufferings continue. If I am silent, and submit without a complaint, they are the same. Neither silence, nor argument, nor entreaty, avail me before God or man. I am doomed to suffering."
What am I eased? - Margin. "Goeth from me." Literally, "what goeth from me?" The sense is, that it all availed nothing.
Though I speak - But it will be of no avail thus to speak; for reprehensions of your conduct will not serve to mitigate my sufferings.
Though I speak, my grief is (f) not asswaged: and [though] I forbear, what am I eased?
(f) If you would say, "Why do you not then comfort yourself?" he answers that the judgments of God are more heavy than he is able to assuage either by words or silence.
Though I speak, my grief is not assuaged,.... Though he spoke to God in prayer, and entreated for some abatement of his sorrows, he got no relief; and though he spoke to himself in soliloquies, his sorrow was not repressed nor lessened; he could not administer comfort to himself in the present case, though he might to others in like circumstances, if his own were changed;
and though I forbear speaking, hold my peace, and say nothing,
what am I eased? or "what goes from me" (t)? not anything of my trouble or grief; sometimes a man speaking of his troubles to his friends gives vent to his grief, and he is somewhat eased; and on the other hand being silent about it, he forgets it, and it goes off; but in neither of those ways could Job be released: or it may be his sense is, that when he spake of his affliction, and attempted to vindicate his character, he was represented as an impatient and passionate man, if not as blasphemous, so that his grief was rather increased than assuaged; and if he was silent, that was interpreted a consciousness of his guilt; so that, let him take what course he would, it was much the same, he could get no ease nor comfort.
(t) "quid a me abit", Junius & Tremellius, Schultens.
Here is a doleful representation of Job's grievances. What reason we have to bless God, that we are not making such complaints! Even good men, when in great troubles, have much ado not to entertain hard thoughts of God. Eliphaz had represented Job as unhumbled under his affliction: No, says Job, I know better things; the dust is now the fittest place for me. In this he reminds us of Christ, who was a man of sorrows, and pronounced those blessed that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
eased--literally, "What (portion of my sufferings) goes from me?"
6 If I speak, my pain is not soothed;
And if I forbear, what alleviation do I experience?
7 Nevertheless now hath He exhausted me;
Thou hast desolated all my household,
8 And Thou filledst me with wrinkles - for a witness was it,
And my leanness rose up against me
Complaining to my face.
9 His wrath tore me, and made war upon me;
He hath gnashed upon me with His teeth,
As mine enemy He sharpeneth His eyes against me.
אם stands with the cohortative in the hypothetical antecedent clause Job 16:6, and in 6b the cohortative stands alone as Job 11:17; Psalm 73:16; Psalm 139:8, which is more usual, and more in accordance with the meaning which the cohortative has in itself, Ngelsbach, 89, 3. The interrogative, What goes from me? is equivalent to, what (= nothing) of pain forsakes me. The subject of the assertion which follows (Job 16:7) is not the pain - Aben-Ezra thinks even that this is addressed in v. 7b - still less Eliphaz, whom some think, particularly on account of the sharp expressions which follow, must be understood, but God, whose wrath Job regards as the cause of his suffering, and feels as the most intolerable part of it. A strained connection is obtained by taking אך either in an affirmative sense (Ew.: surely), as Job 18:21, or in a restrictive sense: only (= entirely) He has now exhausted me (Hirz., Hahn, also Schlottm.: only I feel myself oppressed, at least to express this), by which interpretation the עתּה, which stands between אך and the verb, is in the way. We render it therefore in the adversative signification: nevertheless (verum tamen) now he seeks neither by speaking to alleviate his pain, nor by silence to control himself; God has placed him in a condition in which all his strength is exhausted. He is absolutely incapable of offering any resistance to his pain, and care has also been taken that no solacing word shall come to him from any quarter: Thou hast made all my society desolate (Carey: all my clan); עדה of the household, as in Job 15:34. Jerome: in nihilum redacti sunt omnes artus mei (כל אברי, as explained by the Jewish expositors, e.g., Ralbag), as though the human organism could be called עדה. Hahn: Thou hast destroyed all my testimony, which must have been אדתי (from עוּד, whereas עדה, from ועד, has a changeable Ssere). He means to say that he stands entirely alone, and neither sees nor hears anything consolatory, for he does not count his wife. He is therefore completely shut up to himself; God has shrivelled him up; and this suffering form to which God has reduced him, is become an evidence, i.e., for himself and for others, as the three friends, an accusation de facto, which puts him down as a sinner, although his self-consciousness testifies the opposite to him.
*More commentary available at chapter level.