Albert Barnes Commentary Job 6:16

"Which are black by reason of the ice, [And] wherein the snow hideth itself:" — Job 6:16 (ASV)

Which are blackish – Or, rather, which are turbid. The word used here (קדרים qoderı̂ym) means to be turbid, foul, or muddy, spoken of a torrent, and then to be of a dusky color, to be dark-colored, as, for example, the skin scorched by the sun (Job 30:28); or to be dark – as when the sun is obscured (Joel 2:10; Joel 3:15). Jerome renders it, "Qui timent pruinam" – “which fear the frost, when the snow comes upon them.” The Septuagint renders it, “they who had venerated me now rushed upon me like snow or hoar frost, which melting at the approach of heat, it was not known from where it was.” The expression in the Hebrew means that they were rendered dark and turbid by the accumulated torrents caused by the dissolving snow and ice.

By reason of the ice – When it melts and swells the streams.

And in which the snow is hidden – That is, says Noyes, melts and flows into them. It refers to the melting of the snow in the spring, when the streams are swelled as a consequence of it. Snow, by melting in the spring and summer, would swell the streams, which at other times were dry. Lucretius mentions the melting of the snows on the mountains of Ethiopia, as one of the causes of the overflowing of the Nile:

Forsitan Aethiopum pentrue de montibus altis
Crescat, ubi in campos albas descendere ningues
Tahificiss subigit radiis sol, omnia lustrans.

vi. 734.

Or, from the Ethiop-mountains, the bright sun,
Now full matured, with deep-dissolving ray,
May melt the agglomerate snows, and down the plains
Drive them, augmenting from this the incipient stream.

Good

A similar description occurs in Homer, Iliad xi. 492:

Ὡς δ’ ὁπόε πλήφων ποταμός πεδίνδε κάτεισι
Χειμάῤῥους κατ’ ὄρεσφιν, κ. τ. λ.

Hōs d' hopote plēthōn potamos pedionde kateisi
Cheimarrous kat' oresphin, etc.

And in Ovid also, Fast. ii. 219:

Ecce, velut torrens undis pluvialibus auctus,
Aut nive, quae, Zephyro victa, repente fluit,
Per sata, perque vias, fertur; nec, ut ante solebat,
Riparum clausas margine finit aquas.