The Pulpit Commentary on Job 16:20

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

My friends scorn me; literally, my scorners are my companions; i.e. I have to live with those who scorn me (comp. Job 30:1-13). But mine eye poureth out tears unto God. It is not to his "friends" or "companions," or "comforters," or any human aid, that Job turns in his distress.

God alone is his Refuge. Forced by his woes to pass his time in weeping and mourning (see verse 16), it is to God that his heart turns, to God that he "pours out his tears." Hardly as he thinks God to have used him, bitterly as he sometimes ventures to complain, yet the idea never crosses him of looking for help or sympathy to any other quarter, of having recourse to any other support or stay.

"Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him" (Job 13:15), expresses the deepest feeling of his heart, the firmost principle of his nature. Nothing overrides it. Even "out of the depths" his soul cries to the Lord (see Psalms 130:1).

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