Job 6 — Salt for Desert Sorrow
“If only my anguish could be weighed and all my misery be placed on the scales! It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas—therefore my words have been rash” (Job 6:2–3, New International Version). Yesterday we heard Eliphaz speak of the Almighty who wounds and heals. Today Job answers: the wounding is real, the healing not yet. This chapter is the anatomy of a soul under unbearable weight.
Weight Job’s first plea is not for answers but for calibration. “Weigh my grief,” he says, “before you weigh my words.” The Hebrew poetry is bold: “the arrows of the Almighty are in me; my spirit drinks their poison; the terrors of God are arrayed against me” (English Standard Version). Job names God as the ultimate agent because biblical lament dares to speak to the One who reigns. This is not blasphemy but covenant intimacy. Gregory the Great saw here the righteous sufferer speaking Christ’s idiom: God’s arrows ultimately lodge in Christ’s own body at the cross (Psalm 38:2; Isaiah 53:5), where God bears God’s terrors for us.
Taste A strange culinary interlude: “Can that which is tasteless be eaten without salt, or is there any taste…?” (Job 6:6, English Standard Version). The rare Hebrew term may mean “white of an egg” or “juice of the mallow”—either way, blandness. Job is saying: your counsel is protein without flavor, technically correct perhaps, but loveless. In Hebrew, “taste” (ta’am) also means discernment; Abigail’s “discretion” in 1 Samuel 25:33 is literally good taste. Job finally asks, “Does not my palate discern calamity?” (Job 6:30, English Standard Version). He knows the difference between truth that heals and truth that merely sits on the tongue. Crosswinds of Scripture meet here: “Season your speech with salt” (Colossians 4:6, English Standard Version) and “Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings” (Leviticus 2:13, New International Version). Covenant truth is salted with mercy.
Water Job turns to desert hydrology: “My brothers are treacherous as a torrent-bed… the caravans of Tema look… the travelers of Sheba hope… they are ashamed” (Job 6:15–20, English Standard Version). Western readers may miss the force. In Arabia, wadis surge with snowmelt in winter and vanish under summer heat. Archaeology confirms Tema as a major oasis on the incense route; Sheba’s caravans carried frankincense north—survival hinged on reliable water. Job accuses his friends of evaporating compassion: impressive in cool seasons, gone when heat rises. Withholding hesed—covenant kindness—from a friend, he says, is practical atheism: “He who withholds kindness from a friend forsakes the fear of the Almighty” (Job 6:14, English Standard Version; hesed is the word behind “kindness”). James agrees: “Judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy” (James 2:13, English Standard Version).
A theology for the ash heap Job asks only this: “Teach me, and I will be silent” (Job 6:24, English Standard Version). Point to a real sin and I will repent. But do not prosecute the wind—“Do you think to reprove words, when the speech of a despairing man is wind?” (Job 6:26, English Standard Version). Calvin counseled pastors not to hunt heresy in the cries of the afflicted; Luther called such seasons Anfechtungen, temptations that make us speak beyond ourselves. The friends chase statements; wisdom tends to souls.
Practice for the church: - Weigh grief before you weigh words (2 Corinthians 1:8–9). - Let your counsel be salted with covenant kindness (Colossians 4:6; Leviticus 2:13). - Be a winter river, not a summer wadi; stay when the heat rises (Romans 12:15; Galatians 6:2). - Hold the tension: the God we accuse is the God we trust. Christ has stood where Job stands, and from within our lament He gives living water (John 7:37–39).
Hymn suggestion: “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah” (desert, water, faithful leading).
Prayer Holy One, weigh our sorrows and teach our tongues. Forgive our unsalted words. Make us friends who carry hesed through the heat. When Your arrows find us, shelter us in the wounds of Christ, where judgment becomes mercy and deserts bloom. Give us discernment that tastes what heals, and courage to remain by the ash heap until You speak. Amen.