Why are you making such a fuss over your food? This is how parents chide their children who cry rather than eat a perfectly good meal. There's nothing wrong with your food, they say, so why are you crying? This is a trivial example, but we shall see that it is close to the illustration Job himself uses to show the difference between him and his comforters (Job 6:5-7).

Job's first speech runs through chapters 6 and 7. Chapter 6 seems to be addressed to his three friends, whereas chapter 7 is spoken to the Almighty God. Eliphaz has asked Job why he is making such a fuss about things (see 4:2, 5; 5:2). That may seem strange, given the depth of Job's sufferings. And yet the depth of Job's lament in chapter 3 goes beyond the sadness of a man bankrupted, bereaved, and sick; it is a lament against God.

Eliphaz doesn't think Job should do this. But Job insists that if his ″anguish could be weighed and all my misery placed on the scales″, it ″would surely outweigh the sand of the seas″ (6:2-3). Verse 4 shows why it is so unbearably bad. It is not simply that it hurts; it is that it comes from God! The Almighty God has fired poisoned arrows into Job, and it terrifies him.

In verses 5-7, Job uses an illustration similar to the one I gave earlier: a wild animal doesn't make a fuss when it has decent grass or fodder, but the diet I have been given is utterly disgusting! I am not making a fuss about nothing; I am troubled because it is right to be distressed when experiencing the wrath of God. (By his diet, Job may mean the wrath of God or the useless words of his friends.)

Job is so desperate that in verses 8-13, he wishes God would kill him while he is still able to be patient and not deny God. He feels very weak, but he doesn't want to deny God, for he is a real believer.

From verses 14 to 21, he compares his friends to a wadi or stream bed in the desert hills. A caravan of desert travellers turns aside to find water in this wadi, but when they get there, they find it is bone dry, and they perish. Job's friends are like that: he has turned to them for words of hope, but they have nothing. The reason they have nothing is that there is no good news in what they say, no message that will bring help or comfort to a sufferer. They ″have proved to be of no help″ (v. 21).

Job hasn't asked his friends for money or military help; he just wants to hear words that will enable him to understand and bear up under his pain (vv. 22-23). But they have nothing–no gospel, no hope, just the empty words of human morality and religion. It's just ″good things to good people″ and ″bad things to bad people″; that ″system″ has no gospel, for there is then no possibility of guilty people being blessed–which is the gospel!