Job 16:16

16 My face is red from crying. I have deep circles under my eyes.

Job 16:16 Meaning and Commentary

Job 16:16

My face is foul with weeping
On account of the loss of his substance, and especially of his children; at the unkindness of his friends, and over his own corruptions, which he felt working in him, and breaking forth in unbecoming language; and because of the hidings of the face of God from him: the word used in the Arabic language ^F9 has the, signification of redness in it, as Aben Ezra and others observe; of red wine, and, as Schultens adds, of the fermentation of it; and is fitly used to express a man's face in excessive weeping, which looks red, and swelled, and blubbered:

and on my eyelids [is] the shadow of death;
which were become dim through weeping, so that he could scarcely see out of them, and, like a dying man, could hardly lift them up; and such was his sorrowful condition, that he never expected deliverance from it, but that it would issue in death; and which he supposed was very near, and that he had many symptoms of it, of which the decay of his eyesight was one; and he was so far from winking with his eyes in a wanton and ludicrous way, as Eliphaz had hinted, ( Job 15:12 ) ; that there was such a dead weight upon them, even the shadow of death itself, that he was not able to lift them up.

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FOOTNOTES:

F9 (hrmrmx) "intumuit", V. L. Tigurine version; "fermentescit", Schultens.

Job 16:16 In-Context

14 He smashes through me as if I were a wall. He rushes at me like a fighting man.

15 "I've sewed black cloth over my skin. All I can do is sit here in the dust.

16 My face is red from crying. I have deep circles under my eyes.

17 But I haven't harmed anyone. My prayers to God are pure.

18 "Earth, please don't cover up my blood! May God always hear my cry for help!