Do ye imagine to reprove words, and the speeches of one that is desperate, which are as wind?
Job 6:26 belongs to the debate between Job and his three friends over the meaning of his afflictions, a debate running through chapters 4 to 31 and arranged in three circles of speeches by each participant. In it Job confronts his friends, and Eliphaz in particular, for setting out to reprove and refute his words. He asks whether they mean to rebuke the utterances of a desperate sufferer as if those utterances carried solid weight, when in fact they are like wind, empty and weightless.
His despair and deep distress account for his speech, which springs from anguish rather than from guilt. For that reason the distressed words of a sufferer are not to be seized upon as substantial evidence or proof that he has sinned. The friends' general principle that evil is punished and good is rewarded was true in itself but was misapplied to Job, for his suffering did not prove that God was displeased with him. Job knew his own integrity, and though he could not comprehend God's dealings with him he did not foolishly accuse God.
Job 6:26 belongs to the debate between Job and his three friends over the meaning of his afflictions, a debate running through chapters 4 to 31 and arranged in three circles of speeches by each participant. In it Job confronts his friends, and Eliphaz in particular, for setting out to reprove and refute his words. He asks whether they mean to rebuke the utterances of a desperate sufferer as if those utterances carried solid weight, when in fact they are like wind, empty and weightless.
His despair and deep distress account for his speech, which springs from anguish rather than from guilt. For that reason the distressed words of a sufferer are not to be seized upon as substantial evidence or proof that he has sinned. The friends' general principle that evil is punished and good is rewarded was true in itself but was misapplied to Job, for his suffering did not prove that God was displeased with him. Job knew his own integrity, and though he could not comprehend God's dealings with him he did not foolishly accuse God.