Verse 16. - Therefore doth Job open his mouth in vain; or, in vanity (comp. ver. 13). He multiplieth words without knowledge; i.e. he is bold to speak words that are vain and insensate, because God has not, as he might have done, punished him for his previous utterances.

35:14-26 As in prosperity we are ready to think our mountain will never be brought low; so when in adversity, we are ready to think our valley will never be filled up. But to conclude that to-morrow must be as this day, is as absurd as to think that the weather, when either fair or foul, will be always so. When Job looked up to God, he had no reason to speak despairingly. There is a day of judgment, when all that seems amiss will be found to be right, and all that seems dark and difficult will be cleared up and set straight. And if there is Divine wrath in our troubles, it is because we quarrel with God, are fretful, and distrust Divine Providence. This was Job's case. Elihu was directed by God to humble Job, for as to some things he had both opened his mouth in vain, and had multiplied words without knowledge. Let us be admonished, in our afflictions, not so much to set forth the greatness of our suffering, as the greatness of the mercy of God.Therefore doth Job open his mouth in vain,.... In uttering such unbecoming expressions, observed, and refuted, in his loud complaints of God, and of his dealings with him, and in defence of himself;

he multiplieth words without knowledge; both against God and in answer to others; being in a great measure ignorant of the nature and number of his sins, and of his afflictions; and of the end of God in them, and of the right he had to lay them upon him; us well as of his duty patiently to bear them, and trust in God, and wait his own time for deliverance out of them; and or the truth of this he was afterwards convinced, and acknowledged it, Job 42:3.