Charles Ellicott Commentary Job 8:16

"He is green before the sun, And his shoots go forth over his garden." — Job 8:16 (ASV)

He is green. —Here begins, as we understand it, another and an opposite picture, which fact is marked in the Hebrew by an emphatic pronoun. “Green is he before the sun , etc., quite unlike the watery paper-plant. This man is verdant and luxuriant, not in the midst of moisture, but even before the sun.” There is not the same promise of verdure, but a greater realisation of it.