Matthew Henry Commentary Job 16:1-5

"Then Job answered and said, I have heard many such things: Miserable comforters are ye all. Shall vain words have an end? Or what provoketh thee that thou answerest? I also could speak as ye do; If your soul were in my soul`s stead, I could join words together against you, And shake my head at you. [But] I would strengthen you with my mouth, And the solace of my lips would assuage [your grief]." — Job 16:1-5 (ASV)

Eliphaz had represented Job's discourses as unprofitable and pointless; Job here gives Eliphaz's words the same characterization. Those who pass criticisms must expect to have them retorted; it is easy, it is endless, but what good does it do?

Angry answers stir up people's emotions but never convince their judgment nor set truth in a clear light.

What Job says of his friends is true of all creatures in comparison with God; sooner or later, we will be made to see and acknowledge that miserable comforters are they all. When under convictions of sin, terrors of conscience, or the arrests of death, only the blessed Spirit can comfort effectively; all others, without Him, do it miserably and to no purpose.

Whatever the sorrows of our fellow believers are, we ought, by sympathy, to make them our own; they may soon be our own.