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Job 16 Bible study: My witness is in heaven
When Job says, "my witness is in heaven" (16:19), his word for witness is the same word he used a few verses earlier of his own shriveled body: "This is a witness against me" (16:8). And He who vouches for me (16:19) is a Hebrew word found nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible.
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“Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven. He who vouches for me is on high.”
Try it · Did you catch it?
“In Job 16, Job speaks of a witness against him and of a witness for him in heaven.”
Is that in Job 16, or not? Make your call.
What's really going on
"You are all miserable comforters!"
"Then Job answered" (16:1). Eliphaz has finished his second speech (chapter 15), and every word from 16:2 to the end of chapter 17 is Job's; the next heading is "Then Bildad the Shuhite answered" (18:1). Job begins, "I have heard many such things. You are all miserable comforters!" (16:2) (tap comforters, miserable). Comforters is, in Hebrew, a form of the verb of 2:11, where the three friends came "to sympathize with him and to comfort him" (2:11). Then: "Shall vain words have an end?" (16:3) (tap vain). And, "I also could speak as you do. If your soul were in my soul’s place, I could join words together against you, and shake my head at you, but I would strengthen you with my mouth. The solace of my lips would relieve you" (16:4-5) (tap strengthen). Job doesn't say he is different from them in what he could say. He says what he would do with his mouth if they were where he is.
Where it leads to Jesus
"God of all comfort"
Job 16:5leads to2 Corinthians 1:3-5
Job tells his friends, "If your soul were in my soul’s place, I could join words together against you, and shake my head at you, but I would strengthen you with my mouth. The solace of my lips would relieve you" (16:4-5). Paul writes of "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, through the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God" (2 Corinthians 1:3-4), and "even so our comfort also abounds through Christ" (2 Corinthians 1:5). Paul doesn't name Job, and no link between the Hebrew and Greek words is claimed, so setting the two side by side is a reading. It rests on a shared subject: comfort given to someone who is suffering. Some read the two together for that subject: Job says what comfort he would give if his friends were where he is, and Paul speaks of comfort that comes from God through Christ and is passed on to others in their affliction. Others read each in its own setting: Paul writes of his own afflictions and of those he writes to (2 Corinthians 1:6-7), while Job's words come in his answer to Eliphaz (16:1-3), and the LORD's word on the friends is 42:7. Neither reading makes Paul's words a verdict on Job's friends or on Job.
Honest questions
Questions people ask about Job 16
That was a taste
The rest of Job 16 is waiting in Favor
- "He has torn me in his wrath"
- "My prayer is pure"
- "Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven"
- "He has also set me up for his target"
- "Earth, don’t cover my blood"
- 9 questions as you read
- 11 more Hebrew words
- A short check at the end
- Your notes, saved as you go
Favor reads the Bible in order, so you'll reach Job 16 with everything before it in view. First week free, then $10 a month per person.
The Hebrew word behind it
עֵדedsay EID
Brown-Driver-Briggs: "witness, testimony, evidence". Strong's: "a witness; abstractly, testimony". Job uses it twice in this chapter, pointing opposite ways. Of his shriveled body: "This is a witness against me" (16:8). And of heaven: "Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven" (16:19). The only other time in the Hebrew of Job is his "You renew your witnesses against me" (10:17). It is the word of the Law's "At the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall a matter be established" (Deuteronomy 19:15).
For your group
Job 16 Bible study questions
- 1Job says, "I would strengthen you with my mouth. The solace of my lips would relieve you" (16:5). When you were suffering, what did someone say that strengthened you, and what made it harder?
- 2"My friends scoff at me. My eyes pour out tears to God" (16:20). When the people around you haven't understood, how have you brought it to God, or what made that hard?
- 3Job's friends first sat with him seven days without a word (2:13); now Job calls them "miserable comforters" (16:2). With someone who is grieving, how do you decide when to speak and when to sit quietly?
Leading a group? In Favor, everyone reads Job 16 during the week and answers these questions privately. Answers stay sealed until you meet, then appear together, and you can print the week's sheet.
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Questions
What is Favor?
Favor is a Bible study app that explains every chapter as you read: the Hebrew and Greek behind the words, the details most readers miss, and how each part of the Bible leads to Jesus. Read on your own, or start a Bible study with friends, family or your church.
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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Hebrew and Greek words are checked against the original-language texts and public-domain lexicons. What we believe · Favor home