Job 16:6 Meaning Though I Speak

Domanassa: Grief Domanassa is the mind's own pain. Job's sores can be scraped with a potsherd; the thing that will not subside offers no surface to scrape. Seated among friends who came to comfort and stayed to accuse, he finds the ache untouched by anything his mouth does to it.

Salla: The dart A dart strikes twice, once as the pain and once as the anguish about the pain. The messengers arrived one after another with their news, and that was the first; the long turning over of it in front of accusers is the second. Neither talking nor swallowing the words removes a dart that is still being driven in.

Parideva: Lamentation Parideva is grief that has found a voice. Speaking is what Job has done at length, cursing the day of his birth and arguing his case aloud, and none of it has lowered the grief by an inch. Crying out sits inside the list of sufferings rather than outside it, which is why his words run out before the ache does.

Adhivāsana: Patient endurance Adhivāsana is bearing a painful feeling without pushing it away. So he tries the other side, shutting his mouth and waiting to see whether holding still buys him anything. Endurance keeps a person upright under a load for a long time, and a load held steady is still a load.

Vibhava-taṇhā: Craving to be rid of something Craving takes a form that wants something gone, and Job has already asked God to crush him and be done with it. Both halves of his effort reach for the same prize, ease, relief, the grief subsided, and the reaching keeps the sore open. A man scratching for relief will say the scratching helped; the skin says otherwise.

Anusaya: Underlying tendency Anusaya lies dormant under what is said and what is left unsaid. Pour it out or seal it in, the tendency toward aversion is not disturbed either way, which is why both experiments come back with one result. Cut a tree at the trunk and leave the root, and it sends up shoots the next season.