Albert Barnes Commentary Job 13:22

"Then call thou, and I will answer; Or let me speak, and answer thou me." — Job 13:22 (ASV)

Then call you, and I will answer - Call me to trial; summon me to make my defense. This is language taken from courts of justice, and the idea is that if God would remove his calamity, and not overawe him, and would then call on him to make a defense, he would be ready to respond to His call. The language means, “You be the plaintiff in the case, and I will enter on my defense.” He speaks now to God not as a judge but as a party, and is disposed to go to trial. See the notes at (Job 9:33–35).

Or let me speak, and you answer me - “Let me be the plaintiff and commence the cause. In any way, let the cause come to an issue. Let me open the cause, adduce my arguments, and defend my view of the subject; and then you respond.” The idea is that Job desired a fair trial. He was willing that God should select His position and should either open the cause or respond to it when he had himself opened it.

To our view, there is something quite irreverent in this language, and I do not know that it can be entirely vindicated. But perhaps, when the idea of a trial was once suggested, all the rest may be regarded as mere filling up, or as language fitted to carry out that single idea and to preserve the elegance of the poem. Still, to address God in this manner is a wide license even for poetry.

There is the language of complaint here; there is an evident feeling that God was not right; there is an undue reliance of Job on his own powers; there is a disposition to blame God which we can by no means approve, and which we are not required to approve. But let us not too harshly blame the patriarch. Let him who has suffered much and long, who feels that he is forsaken by God and by man, who has lost property and friends, and who is suffering under a painful bodily malady, if he has never had any of those feelings, cast the first stone.

Let not those blame him who live in affluence and prosperity, and who have yet to endure the first severe trial of life. One of the objects, I suppose, of this poem is to show human nature as it is; to show how good people often feel under severe trial; and it would not be true to nature if the representation had been that Job was always calm, and that he never cherished an improper feeling or gave vent to an improper thought.