Job 21:34
So how can you comfort me with empty words? For your answers remain full of falsehood.”
BSB
ASV
How then comfort ye me in vain, Seeing in your answers there remaineth only falsehood?
KJV
How then comfort ye me in vain, seeing in your answers there remaineth falsehood?
COMMENTARY ON JOB 21:34 (850)
"There is nothing left of your answers but emptiness," that is, you, he says, have brought me suffering and torments instead of consolation; and what I gain from speaking a great deal is only emptiness. Your answers, he says, are vanity to me.
How - Why then do you seek to comfort me with vain hopes of recovering my prosperity, seeing your grounds are false, and experience shews, that good men are often in great tribulation, while the vilest of men prosper.
How then comfort ye me in vain - Mr. Good translates: “How vainly then would ye make me retract!” See the note on Job 21:2. I cannot retract any thing I have said, as I have proved by fact and testimony that your positions are false and unfounded. Your pretensions to comfort me are as hollow as the arguments you bring in support of your exceptionable doctrines. This chapter may be called Job’s triumph over the insinuated calumnies, and specious but false doctrines, of his opponents.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Job 42:7After the LORD had spoken these words to Job, He said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is kindled against you and your two friends. For you have not spoken about Me accurately, as…
leads to
This kindled the anger of Elihu son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram. He burned with anger against Job for justifying himself rather than God,
But if only God would speak and open His lips against you,
But when he saw that the three men had no further reply, his anger was kindled.
Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:
Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You may be proved right when You speak and blameless when You judge.
Through
Job 13:4You, however, smear with lies; you are all worthless physicians.
leads to
Though the arrogant have smeared me with lies, I keep Your precepts with all my heart.
Is there no balm in Gilead? Is no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.