In this message we will cover chapters sixteen through eighteen.
According to 16:1-6 Job rejected his friends' word. Although Job's friends had come to him for the purpose of comforting him, he regarded them as "troubling comforters," and he called their words "words of wind." He asked them, "What has provoked you that you so respond?" (v. 3b). The answer is that they were provoked by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In verses 4 and 5 Job continued, "I also could speak like you,/If your soul were in my soul's stead;/I could join my words together against you / And shake my head at you. /I could strengthen you with my mouth,/And the movement of my lips would mitigate your pain." Job realized that his friends' word was vanity, and he rejected it.
It was Job's desire that God would adjudicate for him in his case in the painful situation caused by God (16:7—17:16).
Job complained that God had worn him out and had desolated all his company, though there was no violence in his hands and his prayer was pure (16:7-17). Job went so far as to say that God had torn him to pieces, had delivered him over to the unjust and cast him down into the hands of the wicked, had broken him apart, had taken him by the neck and dashed him to pieces, and had set him up as His target. Thus, Job's face was reddened with weeping, and on his eyelids was the shadow of death.