^16:21 My friends are verbose; my eye drips toward God.
^16:22 And would that a man might be judged with God as the son of man is judged with his companion!
^16:23 For behold, brief years pass by, and I walk a path by which I shall not return.

266. My friends are verbose, etc. After Job described the greatness of his adversity and his humility and innocence, he proceeds further to disprove the vain consolation that his friends frequently repeated to him, namely, concerning the hope of recovering temporal prosperity; whence Eliphaz also had said above: Is it a great thing that God should console you?, and the rest. Therefore, intending to show the vanity of this consolation, he first says: My friends are verbose, as if to say: they promise me empty words; for my consolation is not in the recovery of temporal things but in attaining the enjoyment of God, and this is what he adds: my eye drips toward God, that is, it sheds tears out of desire for God, according to that saying of the Psalm: My tears have been my bread day and night, while it is said to me daily: Where is your God?

267. And in explanation of what he had said, he adds: And would that a man might be judged with God as the son of man is judged with his companion! For a man is judged with his companion when one is present to the other and they mutually set forth their reasons to each other. Therefore he desired to be present to God and to know the reasons for divine works and judgments, in which human happiness consists; in the hope of this was his consolation, not in the empty words of his friends, by which they promised the recovery of temporal prosperity. And therefore, to show the vanity of this promise, he adds: For behold, brief years pass by, because, namely, man lives for a short time, as was said above in 14:1; but a great part of the time of Job’s life had already passed, whence brief years remained for him, in which, if there were prosperity, it would not bring great consolation because of the shortness of the time. Now there were some who believed that man after death returns again to the course of the present life, and thus it could seem that, in the hope of recovering earthly prosperity at least in that future life, Job could have consolation. And therefore, to exclude this, he adds: and I walk a path by which I shall not return; for man in this mortal life tends toward death through the course of age, nor can there be repetition in this course, namely, that man should again be a boy and pass through the ages of this life.