The Treachery of the Dry Brook
Introduction: The Cruelty of Cliche
We come now to the heart of Job's first reply to his friends. And we must remember the setting. Job is not in a sterile, academic debate. He is sitting on an ash heap, scraping his oozing sores with a piece of pottery. He has buried all ten of his children. His wealth is gone. His wife has told him to curse God and die. And into this maelstrom of agony have come his three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. For seven days, they sat with him in a respectable silence. But the moment Job opened his mouth to lament, the dam of their tidy theology broke, and Eliphaz unleashed a torrent of pious, accusatory nonsense.
Eliphaz's speech was a master class in kicking a man when he is down, all while pretending to offer heavenly wisdom. His basic point was simple: God is just, you are suffering horribly, therefore you must be a horrible sinner. Repent of your secret wickedness, and God will restore you. It is the kind of advice that sounds profound if you have never actually suffered. It is the kind of counsel that requires no love, no empathy, only a handful of well-worn theological platitudes.
Job now responds, and in this passage, he unloads on them with one of the most powerful and painful metaphors in all of Scripture. He accuses them of being a deceitful brook, a wadi in the desert that promises life-giving water to a dying traveler, only to reveal itself as a cracked, sun-baked bed of sand and rock. This is more than just an expression of disappointment. Job is diagnosing the spiritual disease behind all false comfort. He is exposing the treachery of a friendship that is based on a fair-weather theology. And in doing so, he shows us the profound difference between the fickle loyalty of men and the steadfast lovingkindness of God.
The Text
"For the despairing man lovingkindness should be from his friend; But he forsakes the fear of the Almighty. My brothers have betrayed me like a wadi, Like the torrents of wadis which pass away, Which grow dark because of ice And upon which the snow hides itself. When they become waterless, they are silent; When it is hot, they vanish from their place. The paths of their course wind along; They go up into a formless place and perish. The caravans of Tema looked; The travelers of Sheba hoped for them. They were ashamed for they had trusted; They came there and were humiliated. Indeed, you have now become such; You see a terror and are afraid. Have I said, 'Give me something,' Or, 'Offer a bribe for me from your wealth,' Or, 'Give me escape from the hand of the adversary,' Or, 'Redeem me from the hand of the ruthless men'?"
(Job 6:14-23 LSB)
The Unbreakable Rule of Friendship (v. 14)
Job begins by laying down the fundamental law of friendship, the very thing his friends have violated.
"For the despairing man lovingkindness should be from his friend; But he forsakes the fear of the Almighty." (Job 6:14)
The word for "lovingkindness" is the great Hebrew covenant word, hesed. This is not sentimental mush. It is steadfast loyalty, covenant faithfulness, rugged commitment. Job's point is that the one non-negotiable duty of a friend, when confronted with a man in despair, is to show him hesed. This is the baseline. This is Friendship 101. When your brother is drowning, you do not stand on the shore and lecture him on the fluid dynamics of his faulty swimming stroke. You throw him a rope.
But notice the second clause. Job connects this horizontal failure to a vertical rebellion. The one who withholds hesed from his friend "forsakes the fear of the Almighty." This is a devastating charge. Job is telling Eliphaz, "Your failure to love me rightly is not just a personal failing; it is a theological apostasy. You have abandoned the fear of God." True reverence for God always manifests itself in love for your brother, especially a brother in pain. You cannot claim to fear the God you cannot see if you are cruel to the friend you can see. Your high-sounding theology, Eliphaz, is a sham because it has produced a heart of stone. It is a piety that has no room for pity.
The Parable of the Treacherous Wadi (v. 15-20)
Having stated the principle, Job now illustrates it with this masterful and biting metaphor.
"My brothers have betrayed me like a wadi, Like the torrents of wadis which pass away, Which grow dark because of ice And upon which the snow hides itself. When they become waterless, they are silent; When it is hot, they vanish from their place." (Job 6:15-17)
A wadi is a desert ravine that is a raging torrent in the rainy season but bone-dry in the summer. Job says his friends are just like this. They looked so promising at first. When the melted snow and ice from the mountains came rushing down, the wadi would look "dark" and deep, giving the appearance of a permanent, reliable river. This is a picture of Job's friends when they first arrived. They sat with him for seven days in silence, looking deep, somber, and full of sympathy. They gave every appearance of being a reliable source of comfort.
But what happens "when it is hot"? The moment the scorching sun of real trial beats down, the wadi vanishes. The moment Job's suffering became uncomfortably real, the moment he started expressing the raw heat of his anguish, their comfort evaporated. Their friendship could not stand the heat. It was a seasonal friendship, good for the spring thaws of polite grief, but useless in the summer of genuine agony.
"The paths of their course wind along; They go up into a formless place and perish. The caravans of Tema looked; The travelers of Sheba hoped for them. They were ashamed for they had trusted; They came there and were humiliated." (Job 6:18-20)
The image gets worse. The dry riverbed leads nowhere. It promises a destination but delivers desolation, a "formless place." This is what the counsel of Job's friends does. It promises answers but leads the soul into a wilderness of confusion. Job then brings in witnesses: the caravans of Tema and Sheba. These are professional desert travelers. They are not naive tourists. They know the maps; they know where the water sources are supposed to be. They stake their lives on finding water in that wadi.
And what is the result? They are "ashamed" and "humiliated." This is the shame of being made a fool. They trusted the wadi, and it betrayed them. Job is saying to his friends, "I am that caravan. I am dying of thirst, and I came to you, the place I expected to find life-giving water. I trusted you. And you have made me ashamed. You have humiliated me with your emptiness."
The Diagnosis and the Defense (v. 21-23)
Job now drops the metaphor and makes the accusation plain.
"Indeed, you have now become such; You see a terror and are afraid." (Job 6:21)
He says, "You are that wadi. You are that nothing." And then he gives the reason, the root cause of their failure. "You see a terror and are afraid." This is a brilliant piece of psychological and spiritual diagnosis. They saw the sheer, naked horror of his suffering, and it terrified them. It did not fit into their neat theological boxes. Their system was simple: the righteous prosper, the wicked suffer. But here was Job, the most righteous man on earth, suffering like the most wicked. This was a "terror" to their worldview. If God could do this to Job, what might He do to them? Their fear was for themselves. And so, to protect their theological system and their own sense of security, they had to find a reason for Job's suffering in Job himself. Their cruelty was a form of theological self-preservation. They were not comforting Job; they were comforting themselves.
Finally, Job defends himself against their unspoken assumption that he must want something from them.
"Have I said, 'Give me something,' Or, 'Offer a bribe for me from your wealth,' Or, 'Give me escape from the hand of the adversary,' Or, 'Redeem me from the hand of the ruthless men'?" (Job 6:22-23)
Job's point is sharp. "Did I ask you to fix my problems? Did I ask for money? Did I ask you to raise an army and rescue me? No. I did not ask for a solution. I asked for a friend." The implied request goes back to verse 14. He was asking for hesed. He was asking for loyal presence, not for pious analysis or practical fixes. He needed brothers to absorb his grief, not a committee to audit his righteousness. Their failure was not a failure of resources, but a failure of heart.
The True Friend and the Living Water
The treachery of the dry brook is a universal human experience. We have all, at some point, been the thirsty caravan arriving at a wadi we trusted, only to find it bone-dry. We have all sought comfort from friends, from family, from the church, and received instead a handful of gravel. Job's friends represent the absolute best that fallen, human-centered wisdom can offer, and its name is betrayal.
But the story does not end there. This entire painful episode is designed to make us thirst for a better friend, for a source of water that never runs dry. The parched landscape of Job's suffering is meant to point us to the Living Water.
Jesus Christ stood in the temple and cried out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink" (John 7:37). He is the Rock that was struck in the wilderness, from which the water of life flowed for a rebellious people. He is the Friend who sticks closer than a brother.
And consider the contrast. Job's friends saw his terror and were afraid. They ran from it, seeking refuge in their self-protective theology. But Jesus Christ, our great High Priest, saw the ultimate terror, the full, unshielded wrath of God against our sin, and He was not afraid. He did not run from our suffering; He ran into it. He did not stand at a safe distance and offer advice; He descended into the ash heap of our sin and death. He became a curse for us. On the cross, He experienced the ultimate thirst, the ultimate abandonment, so that we who trust in Him would never be humiliated, never be put to shame, never find the brook to be dry.
Therefore, the application is twofold. First, when you are in the furnace, when you are the thirsty caravan, you must ultimately fix your hope not on the wadis of human counselors but on the artesian well of Jesus Christ. Human friends will fail you. Pastors will fail you. Spouses will fail you. They are all, at best, leaky cisterns. But Christ is the fountain of living waters. Second, as those who have drunk freely from that fountain, we are called to be conduits of His grace, not dry gullies. We are called to offer true hesed to the despairing. When we see a brother or sister in terror, we must not be afraid. We must not retreat into the safety of our platitudes. We must, by the grace of God, move toward the pain, armed not with answers, but with the loyal, steadfast, covenant-keeping love of the Friend who never fails.