Then Job answered,
“Oh that my anguish were weighed, and all my calamity laid in the balances!
For now it would be heavier than the sand of the seas, therefore have my words been rash.
For the arrows of the Almighty are within me. My spirit drinks up their poison. The terrors of God set themselves in array against me.
Does the wild donkey bray when he has grass? Or does the ox low over his fodder?
Can that which has no flavor be eaten without salt? Or is there any taste in the white of an egg?
My soul refuses to touch them. They are as loathsome food to me.
“Oh that I might have my request, that God would grant the thing that I long for,
even that it would please God to crush me; that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off!
Let still be my consolation, yes, let me exult in pain that doesn’t spare, that I have not denied the words of the Holy One.
What is my strength, that I should wait? What is my end, that I should be patient?
Is my strength the strength of stones? Or is my flesh of bronze?
Isn’t it that I have no help in me, That wisdom is driven quite from me?
“To him who is ready to faint, kindness should be shown from his friend; even to him who forsakes the fear of the Almighty.
My brothers have dealt deceitfully as a brook, as the channel of brooks that pass away;
Which are black by reason of the ice, in which the snow hides itself.
In the dry season, they vanish. When it is hot, they are consumed out of their place.
The caravans that travel beside them turn away. They go up into the waste, and perish.
The caravans of Tema looked. The companies of Sheba waited for them.
They were distressed because they were confident. They came there, and were confounded.
For now you are nothing. You see a terror, and are afraid.
Did I say, ‘Give to me?’ or, ‘Offer a present for me from your substance?’
or, ‘Deliver me from the adversary’s hand?’ or, ‘Redeem me from the hand of the oppressors?’
“Teach me, and I will hold my peace. Cause me to understand my error.
How forcible are words of uprightness! But your reproof, what does it reprove?
Do you intend to reprove words, since the speeches of one who is desperate are as wind?
Yes, you would even cast lots for the fatherless, and make merchandise of your friend.
Now therefore be pleased to look at me, for surely I will not lie to your face.
Please return. Let there be no injustice. Yes, return again. My cause is righteous.
Is there injustice on my tongue? Can’t my taste discern mischievous things?
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 28 To know whether I complain without just cause.
To know whether I complain without just cause.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–30 Job 6:1 But Job answered and said,
Job 6:1 But Job answered and said,
Ver. 1. But Job answered and said] Eliphaz thought he had silenced him, and set him down with so much reason, that he should have had nothing to reply; yet Job, desirous to disasperse himself, and to clear up his reputation, answered, and said. For indeed Negligere quid de se quisque sentiat, non solum arrogantis est, sed et dissoluti, saith one, that is, altogether to neglect what others think or speak of a man’s self, and not to make apology, is the part not only of a proud, but of a dissolute, person; silence sometimes argueth guiltiness, or at least it strengtheneth suspicion.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv2–30 My grief; either,
My grief; either,
1. My calamity, as it follows, or the cause or matter of my grief; the act being put for the object, as is usual, fear for the thing feared, &c., and the same thing being here repeated in differing words. Or,
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2. My sorrow; or, my wrath, or rage, as thou didst call it, Job 5:2. So his wish is, that his sorrow or wrath were laid in one scale of the balances, and his
calamity in the other, that so it might be known whether his sorrow or wrath was greater than his misery, as was pretended.
Were throughly weighed; were fully understood and duly considered. Thy harsh rebukes and censures of my impatience, and hypocrisy, and wickedness, proceedeth from thy ignorance or insensibleness of my insupportable calamities. I desire no favour from thee. But oh that I had a just and equal judge, that would understand my case, and consider whether I have not just cause for such bitter complaints; or, at least, whether the greatness of my burden should not procure some allowance to my infirmity, if I should speak something indecently and unadvisedly, and protect me from such severe censures!
Laid in the balances together; either,
1. Together with my grief; or rather,
2. Together with any the most heavy thing to be put into the other scale, as with the sand, &c., as is expressed in the next verse; where also the particle it, being of the singular number, showeth that there was but one thing to be weighed with the sand.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 8, 14, 22 Eliphaz, in the beginning of his discourse, had been…
Eliphaz, in the beginning of his discourse, had been very sharp upon Job, and yet it does not appear that Job gave him any interruption, but heard him patiently till he had said all he had to say. Those that would make an impartial judgment of a discourse must hear it out, and take it entire. But, when he had concluded, he makes his reply, in which he speaks very feelingly.
I. He represents his calamity, in general, as much heavier than either he had expressed it or they had apprehended it, Job 6:2, Job 6:3. He could not fully describe it; they would not fully apprehend it, or at least would not own that they did; and therefore he would gladly appeal to a third person, who had just weights and just balances with which to weigh his grief and calamity, and would do it with an impartial hand. He wished that they would set his grief and all the expressions of it in one scale, his calamity and all the particulars of it in the other, and (though he would not altogether justify himself in his grief) they would find (as he says, Job 23:2) that his stroke was heavier than his groaning; for, whatever his grief was, his calamity was heavier than the sand of the sea: it was complicated, it was aggravated, every grievance weighty, and all together numerous as the sand. "Therefore (says he) my words are swallowed up;" that is, "Therefore you must excuse both the brokenness and the bitterness of my expressions. Do not think it strange if my speech be not so fine and polite as that of an eloquent orator, or so grave and regular as that of a morose philosopher: no, in these circumstances I can pretend neither to the one nor to the other; my words are, as I am, quite swallowed up." Now, 1. He hereby complains of it as his unhappiness that his friends undertook to administer spiritual physic to him before they thoroughly understood his case and knew the worst of it. It is seldom that those who are at ease themselves rightly weigh the afflictions of the afflicted. Every one feels most from his own burden; few feel from other people's. 2. He excuses the passionate expressions he had used when he cursed his day. Though he could not himself justify all he had said, yet he thought his friends should not thus violently condemn it, for really the case was extraordinary, and that might be connived at in such a man of sorrows as he now was which in any common grief would by no means be allowed. 3. He bespeaks the charitable and compassionate sympathy of his friends with him, and hopes, by representing the greatness of his calamity, to bring them to a better temper towards him. To those that are pained it is some ease to be pitied.
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II. He complains of the trouble and terror of mind he was in as the sorest part of his calamity, Job 6:4. Herein he was a type of Christ, who, in his sufferings, complained most of the sufferings of his soul. Now is my soul troubled, Joh 12:27. My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, Mat 26:38. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Mat 27:46. Poor Job sadly complains here, 1. Of what he felt The arrows of the Almighty are within me. It was not so much the troubles themselves he was under that put him into this confusion, his poverty, disgrace, and bodily pain; but that which cut him to the heart and put him into this agitation, was to think that the God he loved and served had brought all this upon him and laid him under these marks of his displeasure. Note, Trouble of mind is the sorest trouble. A wounded spirit who can bear! Whatever burden of affliction, in body or estate, God is pleased to lay upon us, we may well afford to submit to it as long as he continues to the use of our reason and the peace of our consciences; but, if in either of these we be disturbed, our case is sad indeed and very pitiable. The way to prevent God's fiery darts of trouble is with the shield of faith to quench Satan's fiery darts of temptation. Observe, He calls them the arrows of the Almighty; for it is an instance of the power of God above that of any man that he can with his arrows reach the soul. He that made the soul can make his sword to approach to it. The poison or heat of these arrows is said to drink up his spirit, because it disturbed his reason, shook his resolution, exhausted his vigour, and threatened his life; and therefore his passionate expressions, though they could not be justified, might be excused. 2. Of what he feared. He saw himself charged by the terrors of God, as by an army set in battle-array, and surrounded by them. God, by his terrors, fought against him. As he had no comfort when he retired inward into his own bosom, so he had none when he looked upward towards Heaven. He that used to be encouraged with the consolations of God not only wanted those, but was amazed with the terrors of God.
III. He reflects upon his friends for their severe censures of his complaints and their unskilful management of his case. 1. Their reproofs were causeless. He complained, it is true, now that he was in this affliction, but he never used to complain, as those do who are of a fretful unquiet spirit, when he was in prosperity: he did not bray when he had grass, nor low over his fodder, Job 6:5. But, now that he was utterly deprived of all his comforts, he must be a stock or a stone, and not have the sense of an ox or a wild ass, if he did not give some vent to his grief. He was forced to eat unsavoury meats, and was so poor that he had not a grain of salt wherewith to season them, nor to give a little taste to the white of an egg, which was now the choicest dish he had at his table, Job 6:6. Even that food which once he would have scorned to touch he was now glad of, and it was his sorrowful meat, Job 6:7. Note, It is wisdom not to use ourselves or our children to be nice and dainty about meat and drink, because we know not how we or they may be reduced, nor how that which we now disdain may be made acceptable by necessity. 2. Their comforts were sapless and insipid; so some understand Job 6:6, Job 6:7. He complains he had nothing now offered to him for his relief that was proper for him, no cordial, nothing to revive and cheer his spirits; what they had afforded was in itself as tasteless as the white of an egg, and, when applied to him, as loathsome and burdensome as the most sorrowful meat. I am sorry he should say thus of what Eliphaz had excellently well said, Job 5:8, etc. But peevish spirits are too apt thus to abuse their comforters.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–29 But Job answered and said. Though Eliphaz thought his…
But Job answered and said. Though Eliphaz thought his speech was unanswerable, being, as he and his friends judged, unquestionably true, and the fruit of strict, laborious, and diligent search and inquiry; or, "then Job answered" (t), as the same particle is rendered, Job 4:1; after he had heard Eliphaz out; he waited with patience until he had finished his discourse, without giving him any interruption, though there were many things that were very provoking, particularly in Job 4:5; and when he had done, then he made his reply; and this was no other than what every man has a right unto, to answer for himself when any charge or accusation is brought against him; when his character is attacked, or his good name, which is better the precious ointment, is taken from him; and is what all reasonable men, and the laws of all civilized nations, allow of.
(t) "tunc respondit", Drusius.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 Job shews that he has reason to complain, ver.…
Job shews that he has reason to complain, ver. 1-7. He compassionately wishes for death, ver. 8-13. Reproves his friends for their uncharitable censures, ver. 14-30.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 Job answers, and vindicates himself; and shows that the…
CHAPTER VI
Job answers, and vindicates himself; and shows that the great
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affliction which he suffered was the cause of his complaining,
by which life was rendered burdensome to him, 1-13.
He complains that, whereas he expected consolation from his
friends, he had received nothing but the bitterest reproaches,
on the assumed ground that he must be a wicked man, else God
would not so grievously afflict him, 14-20.
He shows them that they knew nothing of his case, and that they
had no compassion, 21-23.
And then entreats them, if they can, to show him in what he has
offended, as he is ready to acknowledge and correct every
trespass, 24-30.
NOTES ON CHAP. VI
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 Job 6:1. Job answered and said — Eliphaz concluded…
Job 6:1. Job answered and said — Eliphaz concluded his discourse with an air of assurance, being very confident that what he had advanced was so plain and so pertinent that nothing could be objected to it. Job, however, is not at all convinced by it, but still justifies himself in his complaints, and condemns his friend for the weakness of his arguing. Though Eliphaz, in the beginning and some other parts of his speech, was very severe upon Job, he gave him no interruption, but heard him patiently till he had delivered his whole mind. But when he had done this, and had finished all he had to say, Job modestly, but feelingly, makes his reply. He begins with an apology for venting his grief in a manner somewhat unbecoming, and begs it may be ascribed to the great multitude and sharpness of his afflictions; but as to the advice given him by Eliphaz, to hope for an amendment of his condition: and to address God for that purpose, he tells them, that his petition to God should be of a quite different nature, namely, that he would be pleased to cut him off speedily; for that the desperateness of his condition would by no means permit him to hope for any amendment. That, however, he could not help resenting their unkind suspicions of him, that they should think him capable of such great wickedness; but, above all, should imagine him to be so abandoned as to be able to entertain a thought tending to a revolt from the Almighty. He begs them not to condemn him barely on suspicion, and on the strength of general maxims, but to consider it was possible he might be innocent.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv2–30 O that my grief were thoroughly weighed - The…
O that my grief were thoroughly weighed - The word rendered “grief” here (כעשׂ ka‛aś) may mean either vexation, trouble, grief; Ecc 1:18; Ecc 2:23; or it may mean anger; Deu 32:19; Eze 20:28. It is rendered by the Septuagint here, ὀργή orgē - anger; by Jerome, peccata - sins. The sense of the whole passage may either be, that Job wished his anger or his complaints to be laid in the balance with his calamity, to see if one was more weighty than the other - meaning that he had not complained unreasonably or unjustly (Rosenmuller); or that he wished that his afflictions might be put into one scale and the sands of the sea into another, and the one weighed against the other (Noyes); or simply, that he desired that his sorrows should be accurately estimated. This latter is, I think, the true sense of the passage. He supposed his friends had not understood and appreciated his sufferings; that they were disposed to blame him without understanding the extent of his sorrows, and he desires that they would estimate them aright before they condemned him. In particular, he seems to have supposed that Eliphaz had not done justice to the depth of his sorrows in the remarks which he had just made. The figure of weighing actions or sorrows, is not uncommon or unnatural. It means to take an exact estimate of their amount. So we speak of heavy calamities, of afflictions that crush us by their weight. etc.
Laid in the balances - Margin, “lifted up.” That is, raised up and put in the scales, or put in the scales and then raised up - as is common in weighing.
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Together - יחד yachad. At the same time; that all my sorrows, griefs, and woes, were piled on the scales, and then weighed. He supposed that only a partial estimate had been formed of the extent of his calamities.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 11, 12, 13, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27, 30 My sins, &c. In the Hebrew my wrath. He…
My sins, &c. In the Hebrew my wrath. He does not mean to compare his sufferings with his real sins; but with the imaginary crimes which his friends falsely imputed to him: and especially with his wrath or grief, expressed in the third chapter, which they so much accused. Though, as he tells them here, it bore no proportion with the greatness of his calamity. (Challoner) --- Job does not deny but he may have transgressed. (Calmet) See chap. vii. 20. --- But his is not conscious of any mortal offence; such as his friends insisted he must have committed, as he was so cruelly tormented. (Haydock) --- Some deny canonical authority to the words of Job, because God reprehended him. But St. Gregory (Mor. vii.) says, Ab æterno judice casurus laudari non potuit. (Du Hamel) --- "The man who was on the point of falling, could not be praised by the eternal Judge;" (Haydock) and it seems to be a mistake that Job erred, (Houbigant) though asserted by many. See Calmet; Worthington, &c. --- Wrath. Hebrew, "O that my grief (Haydock; or complaints. Calmet) were thoroughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together." (Protestants) (Haydock) --- A just man confesses his own sins, but not those which are wrongfully laid to his charge. (Worthington)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 B.—Job’s Reply: Instead of Comfort, the Friends bring him…
B.—Job’s Reply: Instead of Comfort, the Friends bring him only increased Sorrow
Job_6:1 to Job_7:21
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1. Justification of his complaint by pointing out the greatness and incomprehensibleness of his suffering
Job_6:1-10
1 But Job answered and said:
2 Oh that my grief were thoroughly weighed,
and my calamity laid in the balance together!
3 For now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea;
therefore my words are swallowed up.
4 For the arrows of the Almighty are within me,
the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit;
the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me.
5 Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass?
or loweth the ox over his fodder?
6 Can that which is unsavory be eaten without salt?
or is there any taste in the white of an egg?
7 The things that my soul refuseth to touch
are as my sorrowful meat.
8 Oh that I might have my request,
and that God would grant me the thing that I long for!
9 Even that it would please God to destroy me;
that He would let loose His hand, and cut me off!
10 Then should I yet have comfort:
yea, I would harden myself in sorrow; let Him not spare;
for I have not concealed the words of the Holy One.
2. Complaint over the bitter disappointment which he had experienced at the hands of his friends
Job_6:11-30
11 What is my strength that I should hope?
and what is mine end that I should prolong my life?
12 Is my strength the strength of stones?
or is my flesh of brass?
13 Is not my help in me?
and is wisdom driven quite from me?
14 To him that is afflicted pity should be shewed from his friend;
but he forsaketh the fear of the Almighty.
15 My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook,
and as the stream of brooks they pass away;
16 which are blackish by reason of the ice,
and wherein the snow is hid.
17 What time they wax warm, they vanish;
when it is hot, they are consumed out of their place.
18 The paths of their way are turned aside;
they go to nothing, and perish.
19 The troops of Tema looked,
the companies of Sheba waited for them.
20 They were confounded because they had hoped;
they came thither and were ashamed.
21 For now ye are nothing;
ye see my casting down, and are afraid!
22 Did I say, Bring unto me?
or, Give a reward for me of your substance?
23 Or, Deliver me from the enemy’s hand?
or, Redeem me from the hand of the mighty?
24 Teach me, and I will hold my tongue;
and cause me to understand wherein I have erred.
25 How forcible are right words!
but what doth your arguing reprove?
26 Do ye imagine to reprove words,
and the speeches of one that is desperate, which are as wind?
27 Yea, ye overwhelm the fatherless,
and ye dig a pit for your friend.
28 Now therefore be content, look upon me;
for it is evident unto you if I lie.
29 Return, I pray you, let it not be iniquity;
yea, return again, my righteousness is in it.
30 Is there iniquity in my tongue?
cannot my taste discern perverse things?
3. Recurrence to his former complaint on account of his lot, and accusation of God
Job_7:1-21
1 Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth?
are not his days also like the days of an hireling?
2 As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow,
and as an hireling looketh for the reward of his work;
3 So am I made to possess months of vanity,
and wearisome nights are appointed to me.
4 When I lie down, I say,
When shall I arise and the night be gone?
and I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day.
5 My flesh is clothed with worms, and clods of dust;
my skin is broken, and become loathsome.
6 My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,
and are spent without hope.
7 O remember that my life is wind!
mine eye shall no more see good.
8 The eye of him that hath seen me shall see me no more;
Thine eyes are upon me, and I am not.
9 As the cloud is consumed, and vanisheth away,
so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more.
10 He shall return no more to his house,
neither shall his place know him any more.
11 Therefore I will not refrain my mouth;
I will speak in the anguish of my spirit;
I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
12 Am I a sea, or a whale,
that Thou settest a watch over me?
13 When I say, My bed shall comfort me,
my couch shall ease my complaint;
14 then Thou scarest me with dreams,
and terrifiest me through visions;
15 So that my soul chooseth strangling,
and death rather than my life.
16 I loathe it, I would not live alway;
let me alone; for my days are vanity.
17 What is man, that Thou shouldest magnify him?
and that Thou shouldest set Thine heart upon him?
18 And that Thou shouldest visit him every morning?
and try him every moment?
19 How long wilt Thou not depart from me,
nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle?
20 I have sinned; what shall I do unto Thee, O Thou preserver of men?
why hast Thou set me as a mark against Thee,
so that I am a burden to myself?
21 And why dost Thou not pardon my transgression,
and take away mine iniquity?
for now shall I sleep in the dust;
and Thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. This discourse of Job, the first formal reply which proceeded from him, attaches itself immediately to that which was one-sided, erroneous, and unjust in the discourse of Eliphaz (comp. above, page 327. It rebukes these defects, and justifies the complaints which Job had previously uttered in regard to his miserable condition, in part repeating with increased emphasis the reproaches which in his despair he had brought against God. The tone of his discourse however is so far changed that instead of the wild and doubting agony of his former utterance he exhibits rather a spirit which may be characterized as mild, plaintive, and in some measure composed.
The discourse falls into three divisions: (1) A justification of the previous lamentation, as entirely corresponding to the fearful greatness of Job’s suffering, Job_6:2-10. (2) A sharp criticism of the friends’ conduct as unreasonably hard, as demonstrating indeed the deceptiveness of their friendship, Job_6:11-30. (3) Renewed lamentation over his inconsolable and helpless condition, together with an arraignment of God, Job_7:1-21. These three principal divisions have the same relative proportions, both as to the length and sub-divisions of each, as the three divisions of the discourse of Eliphaz; the first consisting of one, the two following consisting each of two long strophes. It is only in the last two, however, of these five long strophes (to wit, Job_7:1-21) that we find double-strophes composed of the longer strophes extending over 5–7 verses. The first three double-strophes on the contrary are composed of shorter strophes, including now three, and now four masoretic verses.
2. First Division (and Long Strophe). Justification of his former lamentation by a reference to the greatness and incomprehensibility of his suffering, Job_6:2-10.
First Strophe. Job_6:2-4. [His grief was not excessive when compared with his suffering].
Job_6:2. Oh that my grief might be but weighed, and my calamity be laid up over against it in the balances—[The use of the Inf. Absol. שָׁקוֹל with the Fut. יִשָּׁקֵל (used optatively after לוּ) shows the emphasis which Job’s mind laid on the complete exact balancing of his vexation against his suffering.—E.] כַּעַשׂ, grief, discontent, despondency, is that with which Eliphaz had reproached him [see Job_5:2. “Vexation, impatience, either the inner irritation, or outward exhibition of it, or both.” Dav.] הַיָּתִי (for which the K’ri has הַוָּתִי, as also in Job_30:13לְהַוָּתִי for הַיָּתִי) “my calamity, my ruin;” comp. the plur. הַוּוֹת used elsewhere in the same sense, Job_6:30; Psa_57:2 [1]; Psa_91:3; Psa_94:20; Pro_19:13. The two expressions are not synonymous (Kamph.), but are related to each other as subjective and objective, or as an effect produced in Job’s emotional experience, and the cause of the same. Accordingly יִשְׂאוּ יַחַד can not signify: “that it might be laid up (weighed) all at once, altogether,” i.e., my entire woe, in which case indeed we should also expect the plur. הַיּוֹתָי (הַוּוֹתָי). But נשא יחד denotes a simultaneous weighing of the despondency and the calamity, a balancing of either over against the other (comp. Job_17:16; Psa_141:10; Isa_45:8). The whole is a wish or a yearning prayer to God, to show clearly to his friends that his violent grief was most assuredly proportioned to the severity of his sufferings. [Conant objects to the view here given: “that it is not an appropriate answer to Eliphaz, whose admonitions were not based on the disproportion of the sufferer’s grief to its cause.” To which Davidson replies: “Job is not here replying to Eliphaz’s whole charge, but only to the beginning of it (as was fit in the beginning of his reply), the charge of unmanliness, to which the words are an appropriate answer”].
Job_6:3. For now is it heavier than the sand of the seas, i.e., heavy beyond measure. For the use of the expression “sand of the sea,” as a figure to set forth a weight or burden of extreme heaviness (as elsewhere it is used to set forth an innumerable multitude), comp. Pro_27:3; Sir_22:15.—יַמִּים, “seas,” poetic plural, used like the sing. יָם in Gen_49:13.—כִּי עַתָּה is rendered by Delitzsch, “for then” (as in Job_3:13), and the whole sentence he takes to be an inference from Job_6:2 : “then would it be found heavier than the sand, etc.” But this “it would be found” is simply interpolated into the text. Most modern expositors rightly render it: “For now, as the case now stands, especially in consequence of your unfriendly conduct,” etc.—Therefore do my words rave.—לָֽעוּ, with the tone on the penult, cannot be derived from לעה [Ges.], but either from לעע, or לוּעַ, but not in the sense of sucking down, or swallowing, but in the sense, for which we have the warrant of the Arabic, of stammering, raving, [Fürst]. Job therefore admits that he has heretofore “spoken foolishly” (comp. 2Co_11:17; 2Co_11:21; 2Co_11:23), but he justifies himself by appealing to his insupportable sorrow. [The translation of the Eng. Ver. “my words are swallowed up,” implying that he had been unable to speak from grief, is less significant, and less suitable to the connection than the confession that he had spoken madly: neither is it consistent with the usage of the verb elsewhere in an active sense; Oba_1:16.—E.]
Job_6:4. For the arrows of the Almighty are in me, whose poison my spirit drinks up.—More specifically giving the reason for 3a. By “the arrows of the Almighty” are meant the sickness, pains, and plagues which God inflicts on men: [“the emphasis lies on Almighty, the arrows of the Almighty; there was enough in that fact, in the awful nature of his adversary, to account and more than apologize for all his madness.” Dav.] comp. Psa_38:3 [2]; Deu_32:23; Eze_5:16; also below in our book, Job_16:12 seq.—עִמָּדִיi.e., lit. “with me,” not “in my body” (ἐυ τῷ σώματί μου, LXX. Pesh.). The form of expression is chosen to represent the arrows of God as something which has hurt and wounded not only his body, but also his soul, and which accordingly is ever “with him,” continually present to him (comp. Job_9:35; Job_10:13).—אֲשֶׁר חֲמָתָם, not the subj. of the relative clause (LXX., Pesh., Vulg., Rosenm. [E. V., Noy., Lee, Con., Carey], but its object, the subj. of which is rather רוּחִי “my spirit.” חֵמָה’ “heat,” here equivalent to “poison;” comp. Job_21:20; Psa_7:14 [Psa_7:13]; Psa_58:5; Deu_32:24; Deu_32:33. [“Some prefer: the poison of which drinketh up my spirit, a meaning that would account for Job’s prostration, the poison of God’s arrows was like a burning heat that dried up and drank in his spirit. It was rather, however, his violence and vehement recrimination against God which he has to excuse; impetuosity, not impotence, has to be accounted for. It is thus better to make spirit nom., the spirit drinks in the Divine virus, which works potently, as Divine poison will, excites, inflames, maddens the spirit.” Dav.].—The terrors of Eloah storm me. יַעַרְכוּנִי, an elliptical expression for יערכו מלחמה עלי, they set themselves in battle array against me, they assail me like an army: comp. Jdg_20:30; Jdg_20:33; 1Sa_4:2. Böttcher singularly attempts to render it (Neue Exeget. Æhrenlese, No. 1397): “the terrors of God cause me to arm myself—compel me to put myself in the right.” Against this it may be urged that the “terrors of God” signify not Job’s sufferings and distresses in themselves, and objectively considered, but his subjective experiences of the same, his consciousness of the fact that his suffering proceeds from the attacks and persecutions which God in His wrath directs against his life and his happiness in life (comp. Job_23:16 seq.). [They are “the conscious voluntary terrors which He actively originates, which He gathers from the ends of His dominion and the outlying posts of His power, and marshals like a sable infinite host against Job.” Dav.].
Second Strophe: Job_6:5-7. [The demand that he should submit without a murmur unnatural].
Job_6:5. Does the wild ass bray by the fresh grass, or doth an ox low at his fodder?i.e., I would certainly not lament without sufficient cause; far less would I be disposed to complain than an irrational beast, which is contentedly provided with fodder. The form of the comparison vividly reminds us of Amo_3:4-6.—For נהק, to moan, to groan, to utter doleful cries, comp. Job_30:7. Concerning the wild ass see the fuller description in Job_39:5-8.—בְּלִיל, maslin, farrago, a compound of various kinds of grain.
Job_6:6. Is that which is tasteless eaten without salt, or is there flavor in the white of an egg?i.e., can it be expected of me that I should freely and joyously relish the unsavory food of suffering, and especially of that loathsome disease, which has seized upon me? That Job uses tasteless, loathsome food as a figure for the sufferings which afflict him, appears both from Job_6:2-4, and from Job_6:8-10, where the burden of these self-same sufferings prompts him to desire death. The interpretation which refers the figure to the discourses of the friends (LXX. and other ancient expositors, also Rüetschi, Stud, und Krit., 1867) is at variance with the connection. It suits indeed the expression in the first member of the verse (תָּפֵל tasteless; comp. rem. on Job_1:22), but not the expression “slime of the yolk of an egg,” which is altogether too strong for unsuitable and harsh discourses, and which is most naturally referred to the nauseous filth, dust, and ulcerous matter of the leprosy (comp. Job_7:5). [Observe that the point of the illustration lies in the tendency of an agreeable quality, or the opposite, to produce content or discontent. Now as that which occasioned Job’s discontent was his suffering, it is doubtless this suffering which in this verse he describes negatively as tasteless, and therefore to be complained of in the next verse as positively loathsome, and therefore to be refused.—Moreover, it is not until later (Job_6:25 sq.) that Job comes to speak of the nature of his friends’ remarks. He is here justifying his complaint which had been uttered before his friends had spoken at all, and which had been prompted by their silence, of which silence, as indicating a failure of sympathy, he again complains (Job_6:15-21).—E.].—רִיר חַלָּמוּת, “the slime of the yolk,” i.e., the liquid saliva which encloses the solid part, the yellow yolk of an egg, hence the white of an egg, which was esteemed by the Hebrews to be particularly nauseating, or at least as altogether insipid. So, following the Targ. and some of the Rabbis, Rosenm., Umbreit, Ewald, Stickel, Del., Dillmann, [E. V., Hengst., Dav., Fürst, Schlottmann, Good], etc., and in general most modern writers, while the Pesh., Arab., Gesen., Heiligst., Böttcher, [Renan, Merx], translate רִיר ח׳ “portulacca-broth, purslainslime,” a rendering, however, which assigns to רִיר the sense, elsewhere unknown, of slime, broth, or soup.
Job_6:7. My soul refuses to touch, such things are to me as putrid food.—Rosenm., Welte, Delitzsch, (as before them the Vulg., Luther) [so also E. V., Noy., Ren., Elz.], take the first member as an antecedent relative clause without אֲשֶׁר, “that which my soul refuses to touch, etc.” But such an antecedent position for the relative clause when אֲשֶׁר is wanting, is a rare construction, and in order to obtain for the consequent clause a tolerable sense we should be obliged to amend כִדְוִיִ to כְּדֵי (as Rosenm. and Welte do in opposition to all the MSS. and Vsns.). Such a construction, moreover, destroys the progression of thought from a to b. The object of לנגוע is supplied of itself in that which from Job_6:2 on stands forth as the prominent conception, to wit, the suffering or calamity of Job, to which also the הֵמָּה, which stands at the head of the second member, points back, “they,” i.e., things of that sort, such things.—כִדְוֵי לַחְמִי, lit “as the disease of my bread;” i.e., as though my food were diseased, putrid, loathsome: דְּוֵי constr. state of דְּוַי, “sickness, disease,” comp Psa_41:4 [3] (so rightly Gesenius, [Fürst], Ewald, Olsh., Hahn, Schlottmann, Dillmann, etc.). Others (Cocceius, Schultens, Heiligstedt, Delitzsch) take דוי as constr. st. plur. of דָּוֶה, “sick, unclean” (comp. Isa_30:22), according to which derivation, however, we should expect to read דְּווֹת. Umbreit and Hirzel (2d Ed.) explain “the disease of my bread” as meaning, “the disease which is my daily bread” [so also Wordsworth and Renan]; Böttcher would read כִּדְוַי: “they are according to the disease of my food;” Hitzig, after the Arabic, explains: “the crumbs of my food”—purely arbitrary evasions, and less natural than the construction followed by us.
Third Strophe: Job_6:8-10. [He longs for death, and even in death would rejoice in his integrity.]
Job_6:8. Oh that my request might be fulfilled [lit. might come], and that Eloah would grant my longing! This prayer and longing are for death, as that which would bring release from his misery, which is all that he desires: see the verse which follows. מִי יִתֵּן he well-known optative formula, governing also the verbs of the following verse. [“It occurs quite frequently in the Book of Job, almost altogether, however, in. Job’s discourses, in the friends’ discourses only in Job_11:5, not once in those of Elihu and God. This indicates purpose in the linguistic structure of the argument. Job’s destiny gives him much to wish for.” Hengst.] Hupfeld’s emendation, וְתַאֲוָתִי for וְתִקְוָתִי, is uncalled for.
Job_6:9. That it might please Eloah to destroy me, that He would let down His hand to cut me off: lit. “that He would let loose His hand, and cut me off;” for הִתִּיר, Hiph. of נתר, “to spring,” signifies “to cause to spring, to unbind, set loose” (comp. Isa_58:6; Psa_105:20; Psa_146:7); the hand of God is thus conceived of as having been hitherto bound—bound, that is, by His own will.—וִיבַצְּעֵנִי, “and cut me off,” (not: “and crush me,” Luther, comp. the LXX.: ἀνελέτω με). Job’s soul, his Ego or his life, is, after the analogy of Job_4:21, regarded as an internal cord, a string, or thread, the cutting off of which is synonymous with death: comp. also Job_27:8; Ps. 76:13, also the well-known Greek representation of the Parcæ.
Job_6:10. So would it ever be my comfort.… Delitzsch rightly: “With וּתְהִי begins the conclusion, exactly as in Job_13:5.” Most expositors extend the influence of the מִי יתֵּן, Job_6:8, over this sentence, and construe the verbs here also as optatives: “and that so my comfort may still be to me,” etc. The comfort, according to this latter construction, would be Job’s speedy death. But how a speedy death could in and of itself bring any comfort is not made to appear in this connection. It is more natural with Hupf., Schlottmann, Delitzsch [Bernard, Conant, Rodwell, Hengst., Renan], especially on comparing this with the analogous passage in Psa_119:50, to find the statement of that which would bring comfort in the words of the last member: “that I have not denied the words of the Holy One,” thus treating the second member, וַאֲסַלְּדָה וגו׳, as a parenthesis.—I would leap in unsparing pain. For the use of the cohortative (וַאֲסַלְדָה) in a subjunctive sense in a parenthesis, comp. e.g.Psa_40:6; Psa_51:18.—סלד is to be explained after the Arab. zalada (“to stamp the ground, tripudiare”) [to beat hard; hence the E. V.: “I would harden myself in sorrow,” and so Lee, who explains: “Because there still is, or remains consolation,… I will not give way, whatever may be laid on me: or even though He cut me entirely off”], as also after the ἡλλόμην of the LXX. and the לֶאֱבוּעַ (“I will exult”) of the Targum. It is accordingly to be taken in the sense of a jubilant expression of joy, not in the sense of “being tormented” (Rosenm, after some of the Rabbis [who explain the verb to mean “burning;” and so Bernard]), nor: “to spring up through pain” (Schlottmann, who accordingly takes the parenthesis in a concessive sense: “although I leap up for pain”).—לֹאיַחְמוֹל (comp. Isa_30:14 seq.), a relative clause, with the omission of the adverbial אֲשֶׁר: “wherewith he spares me not,” namely, God, who is to be understood as the subject here (Rosenm., Ewald [who makes the omitted relative the direct object of the verb—“pain which he spares not;” a construction, however, which does not harmonize so well with the usage of חמל, which generally has a personal object. E.], Hirzel, Heiligstedt, Hahn, Schlottmann, Dillmann) [Renan, Hengst.]. Possibly חִילָה might be taken as the subject (so Umbreit, Vaih., Stickel) [Gesen., Rodwell, Conant]: “in pain which spares not,” against which, however, it may be urged that, while חִילָה is most simply treated as fem., the verbal form used, יחמל, is masc. In any case, the translation; “in unsparing pain,” corresponds to the sense of the poet.—That I have not denied the words of the Holy One. This fact—that he had been guilty of no denial (comp. Job_1:22; Job_2:10)—constitutes the firm confidence which Job possessed in the midst of all his distress and misery, and which he felt assured would show itself, even in death. The meaning is not essentially different which results from the other and more common construction of our verse, according to which the second member is not treated as a parenthesis, and כִּי is regarded as introducing a reason for that which precedes: “for I have not denied,” etc.
3. Second Division: A lament over the bitter disappointment which he had experienced from his friends: Job_6:11-30.
First Long Strophe: Job_6:11-20 (consisting of three short strophes, of 3, 4, and three verses respectively). [“In view of his broken strength and hopeless condition, he must reject their advice to trust in the future, and openly declare to them that he is completely disappointed in his expectations as to their friendship.” Dillmann.]
a. Job_6:11-13. [His helplessness, and consequent hopelessness. Ewald and Hengstenberg put this strophe in the First Division, to which, however, as Schlottmann has shown, there are two objections. First, it mars the completeness which the preceding long strophe possesses, when regarded as closing the triumphant declaration by Job of his integrity and confidence in God contained in Job_6:10.—Secondly, the picture which this short strophe gives of his helplessness and hopelessness is preparatory to the picture which immediately follows of the deceptiveness of his friends, and in that position adds greatly to the pathos and effectiveness of his complaint. E.]
Job_6:11. What is my strength that I should persevere [wait], and what mine end that I should be patient? The answer to this question which Job’s meaning would require is of course a pure negative: my strength is completely gone, and death is the only end which I look for, in all its nearness, nay more, with impatience. [“Two things are necessary that one may bear misfortune patiently; first, that the strength of the sufferer is in some proportion to the power of the suffering; and, secondly, that he sees before him an end, which, when reached, will reward the present struggle. Job denies both these things of himself, the first in Job_6:12, the second in Job_6:13.” Schlottmann.] For הֶאֶרִיךְ נֶפֶשׁ, “to prolong the soul, to lengthen it,” i.e. to be patient, comp. Pro_19:11; Isa_48:9. [The rendering of E. V., “prolong my life,” would rather require אַאֲרִיךְ ימַי].
Job_6:12. Or is the strength of stones my strength, or is my flesh of brass?—[The first “or” tends rather to mar the connection. E.] A poetic illustrative expansion of the thought in Job_6:11 a. [According to Hengstenberg, “stones” and “brass” are mentioned here because of their invulnerability. Rather, according to the connection, because of their power of endurance. Schlottmann says: “נחוש is properly always ‘copper,’ which the ancients, however, as is known, had learned to harden, so that in firmness it resembled iron.” E.]
Job_6:13. Verily, is not my help in me brought to nought? lit.: “Is not the nothingness of my help with me?” הֲאִם, which occurs elsewhere only in Num. 17:28 [Num_17:13], is neither a strengthened interrogative אִם (Schlottmann), nor an inversion for אִם הֲ (Delitzsch), nor a collocation of the interrogative particle הֲ with the conditional particle אִם (whether, if my help is destroyed, etc., Köster), but simply equivalent to הֲלֹא, in the sense of vivid interrogation or asseveration: “verily not” (Ewald, Dillmann). And well-being driven away from me?תּוּשִׁיּה essentially the same as in Job_5:12, well-being, enduring prosperity. The sense of the verse as a whole is: My condition is hopeless, and all promises for the future are therefore useless and null. [It is doubtless best to give to תושיה here the sense which, as Zöckler has elsewhere shown, belongs to it in the Chokma-Literature. Other interpretations are partial, and so far enfeebling: e.g. “wisdom,” E. V., or “insight” (Hengst.), “deliverance” (Noyes), “solace” (Rosenm.), “restoration” (Conant). What Job says is that every element of real and substantial good had been driven away from him. Davidson is more nearly right when he says, that not only was recovery driven away from him, “but that the possibility of it, anything which could spring, and be matured into health again, all inner strength and resource—the very base of recovery—was driven away or out of him.” The word, however, is broader even than this, including all external as well as internal resources, a man’s entire establishment of good.—E.]
b. Job_6:14-17 : [He has been disappointed in the friendly sympathy which is accorded to every one in misery, but which, in his case, has proved as deceptive as a summer brook.]
Job_6:14. To the despairing gentleness (is due) from his friends (or, is shown by his friends), and [or, even] should he have forsaken the fear of the Almighty.—[“The prep. in לַמָּם does not express so much what is due … as what is actually given in affliction. Job’s friends failed, not in giving what was due, the world and even friendship often does, but in giving what was actually and always given.” Dav.] מָם from מסם, liquefieri, denotes literally one “who is inwardly melted, disheartened” (Delitzsch)—a term strikingly descriptive of Job’s condition as one of complete depression, helpless prostration to the very ground.—חֶסֶד, “gentleness, friendliness, kindness” (comp. the πνεῦμα πραύ̈τητος of Gal_6:1), not “reproach,” as Seb. Schmidt, Hitzig, and others would explain it, after Pro_14:34; for in Job_10:12 our poet again uses חֶסֶד in its ordinary sense, and the translation: “If reproach from his friends falls on one who is despairing, he will then give up the fear of God,” gives a thought which is foreign to the context, and withal incorrect in itself. Equally untenable on grammatical grounds is the translation of Luther [and Wemyss; also of Merx, who however alters the text from לַמָּם to מֹנֵעַ]: “He who withholds mercy from his neighbor, he forsakes the fear of the Almighty.”—This rendering, however, although resting on the authority of the Targ., Vulg., and Pesh., is to be rejected on account of the singularly harsh construction of the לְ as a designation of the absol. case, as well as on account of its giving to the Partic. מם the unheard-of signification: “he who withholds, or refuses.” The second member cannot be regarded as the conclusion of the first,—not even by taking וְ in the sense of alioqui, and so translating with Schnurrer, Delitzsch [Noy., Words., Rod., Hengst.], “otherwise he might forsake the fear of the Almighty” (alioqui hic reverentiam Dei exuit). Rather, if no corruption of the text be assumed, it will be found most simple and natural to regard the first member as an ardently expressed formula of desire, with an omitted jussive from the verb היה, or to supply “is due to, belongs to,” [or “is given to”], and to find in the second member simply the continuation of the principal notion מָם, introduced by a concessive וְ: “and even if he should have forsaken” [Schlott., Dill., Ren., Lee, Dav.] (comp. Ges., § 134 [Con.-Roed., § 131] Rem. 2; Ewald, § 350, b).—Ewald, without necessity, would supply between a and b lines which, he assumes, had fallen out.1—The whole verse is evidently an expression of resentment at the fact that Eliphaz had exhibited no trace of gentle forbearance or sympathy for Job; he claims this sympathy for himself, even in case he had in his suffering departed from the fear of God, which case, however, he presents only as possible, not as actual. [Conant translates: “ready to forsake the fear of the Almighty;” Davidson: “to one losing hold of the fear of the Almighty.” “Job,” says the latter, “would not admit that he had forsaken, rather that he was forsaking, in danger of forsaking the fear of the Almighty.” And again: “in his terrible collision in darkness and doubt with the unspeaking nameless (Gen_32:25) Being he was alone—absolutely—for the Father was against him, and when one is losing hold (יַעֲזוֹב) of God, he sorely enough needs a human hand to grasp, and the sufferer’s pathos is overwhelming, when he sees God and man alike estranged.”—The continuation of the participial construction by the Imperfect, with omitted relative (see Ewald, § 338, b), fully justifies this construction, which is at once most simple and expressive. “To one whose inner man is dissolving, whose faith and life are giving way, and who in that fearful dissolution is in danger of losing hold on God, to him surely sympathy from friends is meet.”—E.]
Job_6:15-17. The conduct of Job’s three friends in disappointing his hopes, illustrated by the comparison of a torrent, which in spring rushes along full and strong, but in summer is entirely dried up, an אַכְזָב, or “lying stream,” as the same is described in Jer_15:18 (comp. the paronomasia in Mic_1:14, בָּתֵּי אַכְזִיב לְאַכְזִב, “the houses of Achzih are become a lying stream to the kings of Israel”).
Job_6:15. My brethren have been false as a torrent, i.e., my friends, whom I have loved as brothers [אַחַיּ, placed first with special emphasis],—he mentions them all, because Eliphaz had spoken in the name of all (Job_5:27)—have borne themselves treacherously towards me, have ministered to me an empty semblance of comfort, like the dried-up water of a wadi.—As the bed of torrents which overflow.יַעֲבֹרוּ not, “which vanish away” (Hirzel, Delitzsch [Hengst., E. V., Con., Dav., Noy., Carey, Ren.]), for while “passing away,” or “vanishing,” may indeed be predicated of the water of a brook, it cannot be used of the brook itself. Moreover, the continuation of the description given in the following verse, assumes the torrents to be full, not as yet in course of disappearing [and so Ewald, Dillmann, Schlott. Wemyss].
Job_6:16. Turbid are they from ice:קֹדְרִים black, foul, dark; here in the literal or physical sense, different from Job_5:11.—The snow hides itself in them; or: “down upon which (עַלֵימוֹ) the snow hides itself;” a constr. prægnans, comp. Gesen., § 141[§ 138].
Job_6:17. At the time when heat comes to them they are cut off [lit., made silent].—בְּעֵת יְזֹרְבוֹ at the time when, or so soon as they are warmed. [עֵת in the constr. state, at the beginning of a temporal clause, with omission of the relative: see Ewald, § 286, i; 332 d]. זרַֹב, Pual of זרב, a poetic variant of צרב (Eze_21:3; Pro_16:27), “to burn, to parch, to glow;” [and so E. V., Ew., Schlott., Del., Dillm., Dav., Carey, Hengst.—According to Ges., Fürst. Con., the meaning is: “at the time they are poured off,” or “flow off;” i.e., when the heat begins to melt the snow on the mountains. But as the first result of that is filling up the channels, the sense would be somewhat strained.—E.]. When it is hot, they are dried up [lit., extinguished] from their place:בְּחֻמּוֹ, in its becoming hot; i.e., when it is hot. The suffix is to be taken as neuter, not (with Hirzel) to be referred to an עֵת that is understood; (“when it, the time of the year, becomes hot”); comp. Ewald. § 295, a.
c. Job_6:18-20. A further description of the disappointment he had met with from his friends by a continuation of the simile of the treacherous torrents.
Job_6:18. The paths of their course wind about, they go up into the waste and vanish.—If, with the Masor. text, we read אָרְחוֹת, the rendering here given is the only one that is admissible; the “ways” or “paths of their course” are in that case the beds of the torrents, which go winding about, and thus favor the rapid extinction of the torrent; their “going up into the waste” (עָלָה בַתֹּהוּ) is their gradual evaporation into the air, their ascent in vapors and clouds; comp. Isa_40:23; so correctly Mercerus: in auras abeunt, in nihilum rediguntur; so also Arnh., Delitzsch [Good, Barnes, Bernard, Words., Elzas]. Most modern expositors, however, correct the text here, and in the following verse to אֹרחוֹת, plur. of אֹרְחַה (or also אֳרָחוֹת, plur. of אֹרַח, way, caravan), and translate either: “the caravans of their way turn aside” [a rendering, however, which is founded on the Masoretic text, regarding אָרְחוֹת as constr., and the meaning being “the caravans along their way;” so Conant, Davidson, Hengstenberg,—E.], or: “caravans turn aside their course, they go up into the wastes, and perish,” [so Ewald, Schlottmann, Dillmann, Wemyss, Noyes, Carey, Rodwell, Renan, Merx]. The phrase עָלָה בַתֹּהוּ seems indeed to harmonize well with this explanation. But in that case Job_6:18 would anticipate Job_6:19-20 in an unprecedented manner; after the statement of this verse, which by the expression וְיאֹבֵדוּ has already carried us forward to the complete destruction of the deceived caravans, what is said in those verses would drag along as a flat tautology. According to our interpretation Job_6:18 completes the description of the treacherous torrents begun in Job_6:15, while the two verses following dwell, with that epic repose and breadth which characterize the whole description, on the impression which such dried up torrents make on the thirsty caravans of the desert. [These reasons are certainly not wanting in force, still they are not conclusive. For (1) It is agreed by all that in the next verse אָרְחוֹת means caravans, and it is in the highest degree improbable that in two verses, so closely connected, describing the same general idea, and belonging to the same figure, the same word should be used in two different senses. (2). The language used, while most graphically appropriate according to one interpretation, can be adapted to the other only by strained constructions. This is especially true of the secönd member. “Going up into the waste,” and “perishing,” are surely farfetched expressions for the evaporation and disappearance of water. On the other hand they are, as Zockler admits, in admirable harmony with the other interpretation. Nothing indeed can be more exquisite in its pathos than the picture which they bring before the mind of a caravan, weary with travel and thirst, and still more weary with disappointment, winding along the channel of the torrent, wistfully exploring its dry bed for water, following its course upward, hoping that in the uplands, nearer the river’s sources, some little pool may be found; hoping thus from day to day, but in vain, and so wasting away into a caravan of skeletons, until at last in the far off wastes it perishes. (3). The objection that this interpretation anticipates what follows, and thus produces a tame and dragging tautology, is answered by observing that the chief motive of the description just given is not to excite pity for the fate of such a caravan, but to justify Job’s resentment at the treachery of which the dry wady is the type. Hence in the verses following Job emphasizes the disappointment which the caravan of Tema and Sheba (named by way of vivid individualization) would feel in such a plight. This is the burden of his accusation of his friends, they had disappointed, deceived him. This was to him, at this time, a more bitter fate than his destruction would have been; so that from his point of view, Job_6:19-20, so far from being an anti-climax, contain the very climax of his sorrow.—The suggestions to change יִלָּֽפְתוּ either to Kal, יִלְפְּתוּ (Fürst), or to Piel, יְלַפְּתוּ (Ewald) are unfortunate. No species could express more happily than the Niphal the helpless, semi-passive condition of an exhausted caravan, such as is here described, winding around, hither and thither, led by the channel in the search for water.—E.]
Job_6:19. The caravans of Tema looked: to wit, caravans of the Ishmaelitish Arabian tribe of תֵּמָא (Gen_25:15), in northern Arabia (Isa_21:14; Jer_25:23), which is mentioned here by way of example; so likewise in the next clause שְׁבָא, as to which see Job_1:15.—[The companies of Sheba hoped for them. לָמו is by most referred to the torrents; by Schlottmann, however, it is regarded as Dat. commodi, and so suggesting the eagerness of their search. E ] The Perfects in this and the following verse give to the whole description the appearance of a concrete historical occurrence.
Job_6:20. They were put to shame by their trust: lit. “because one trusted;” comp. Ewald, § 294, b. The phrase כִּי בָטַח describes by individualization, wherefore it is unnecessary, with Olsh., to amend to the plur. בָּטָחוּ, or with Böttcher to read בָּטָחֻ (a form which nowhere occurs). They came thither (the fem. suffix in עָדֶיהָ in the neuter sense; comp. Job_6:29), and became red with shame; as the result, namely, of their having been disappointed.—Observe the wonderful beauty of this whole illustration, which terminates with this verse. It is no less striking than clear and intelligible. The friendship of the three visitors was once great, like that rushing torrent of melting snow; now, however, in the heat of temptation, it has utterly vanished, so that the sufferer, thirsting for comfort, but meeting instead, first with silence, and afterwards with sharp and heartless censure, finds himself ignominiously deceived, like a company of travellers betrayed by a lying brook.
4. Second Division.—Second Long Strophe (subdivided like the first into shorter strophes of 3, 4, and 3 verses respectively); Job_6:21-30. The complaint concerning the faithlessness of the friends is continued [in simple, non-figurative language], passing over, however, near the close (in strophe c: Job_6:28 seq.) into an appeal for the renewal of their former friendliness.
a. Job_6:21-23. [The illustration applied, and the unfaithfulness of the friends shown from the unselfishness of the demands which Job had made on their friendship].
Job_6:21. Verily, so are ye now become nothing.—כִּי עַתָּה introduces the ground of the preceding comparison of the friends to the treacherous torrents: “for now (for as you now conduct yourselves towards me) you are become a nothing, a nullity,” to wit, for me; I have nothing at all in you, neither comfort nor support. Such is the explanation according to the Masoretic reading: בִּי עַתָּה הֱיִיתֶם לֹא; here לֹא “not” means “nothing,” as in one instance the Chald. לָה (=לָא): Dan_4:32. [Comp. לא תחטא, Job_5:24; also the similar use of אַל, Job_24:25]. According to the regular Hebrew usage, we should certainly expect: ה׳ לְאֵין or לְאֶפֶם; still the Targ. justifies our construction (adopted among modern expositors by Umbreit, Vaih., Schlottm., Hahn, Delitzsch [E. V., Fürst, Davidson, Noyes, Wordsworth, Rodwell, Renan], etc.). According to the K’ri לֹו, which in many MSS. is the reading even of the text, instead of לֹא, the explanation would be: “ye are become that” [the same]; i.e. ye are become a deceitful נחל, Job_6:15, which, however, hardly gives a tolerable sense. Still more unsatisfactory is the rendering favored by the LXX., Vulg, Pesh., Luth., etc., according to which the reading should be לִי, instead of לֹו, “Ye are become to me.” J. D. Michaelis, Ewald, Olshausen, Dillmann, also read לִי for לוֹ (לֹא), and in addition amend כִּי to כֵּן at the beginning of the verse: “so are ye become to me.” This conjecture certainly yields a complete satisfactory sense; but the sentence as it stands with לֹא commends itself by its bolder and more comprehensive form of expression.—You see a terror, and are dismayed.—The words תִּרְאוּ and וַתִּירָאוּ form a paronomasia which cannot well be reproduced in a translation: the same paronomasia between רָאָה and יָרֵא occurs also in Job_37:24; Psa_40:4 [Psa_40:3]; Psa_52:8 [Psa_52:6]; Zec_9:5. By חֲתַת [E. V. “casting down,” but rather from חתת to be broken, crushed, metaphorically with fear: hence that which causes terror.—E.] Job means the fearful calamity which has come upon him, in the presence of which his friends stand astonished and dismayed, thinking they had to do with one who was, in some extraordinary sense, an enemy of God.
Job_6:22-23. [“Their cowardice in now renouncing their friendship is all the more striking, forasmuch as he has required of them no sacrifice, or heroic achievement in his behalf, a test before which a false friendship commonly fails, but—for such is his thought—only the comfort of words, and the aid of sympathy.”—Dillmann.]
Job_6:22. Did I ever say then, Give to me, and bring presents to me from your wealth?—[הֲכִי, “is it that?—was your failure because I ever said?” שִׁחֲדוּ, Ewald § 226, d. Green. § 119:4]. The question is in a vein of derision: Did I ever require any special sacrifice of you? [and in Job_6:23] did I ever demand of you anything else, any other effort or achievement, than the exhibition of genuine compassion, of true brotherly sympathy? כֹּהַ here means wealth (opes), as in Pro_5:10; Lev_26:10. Elsewhere we find חַיִל used in this sense.
Job_6:23. [And deliver me out of the enemy’s hand, and redeem me from the hand of the oppressor (Renan: brigands)?] We are not specially to think here of a deliverance, or a redemption by means of a ransom—not, therefore, of a pecuniary ransom, although this thought is not to be excluded altogether.
b. Job_6:24-27. [A challenge to be convicted of wrong-doing, and a bitter upbraiding of the cruelty which had fastened on words spoken in agony.]
Job_6:24. Teach me, then will I be silent (i.e. I will cease my complaint); and wherein I have erred show me. From this urgent request, that he be openly instructed and admonished in regard to that of which he is assumed to be guilty, it is abundantly evident, that the conduct of his friends, when for seven days they sat with him in silence, had been felt by him as a mute accusation on their part, and a sore mortification to himself.
Job_6:25. How sweet are words of rectitude [i.e. right words]! מַה־נִּמְרְצוּ it is best to take as synonymous with מַה־נִּמְלְצוּ (comp. Psa_119:103), “how sweet, how pleasant are,” etc. According to this rendering, which is favored by the Targ. (also by Raschi, Schultens, Rosenm., Ewald, Schlottmann, Dillmann [Fürst, Renan, Wordsworth], etc.), the question in the second member of the verse, being introduced with an adversative ו, expresses a contrast with the first member: “but what does reproof from you reprove?” i.e. what does it avail or accomplish? הֹוכֵחַ, a substantive Inf. Absol. [used as subj., a very rare construction; comp. Pro_25:27]. The construction adopted by the LXX., Aq., apparently also by the Pesh. and Vulg., is etymologically admissible. According to this, מָרַץ means: “to be sick, weak, in a bad condition,” the sense of the passage being: “Why are the words of rectitude [i.e. my words] poorly esteemed by you? why do they seem to you worthy of blame?” This explanation, however, which is that essentially followed by Luther, Hahn, Ebrard [Umbreit, Hengst., Merx, who, instead of ישֶׁר, reads יָשָׁר, “the righteous man”], etc., is made less probable in that it renders מה by “wherefore.” Others (Kimchi, Delitzsch, v. Gerl.), [so also E. V., Ges., Good, Noyes, Barnes, Conant, Davidson, Carey, Rodwell, Elzas], render: “How forcible, how penetrative, are words of rectitude!” Whereas מרץ, however, can scarcely be the same with פּרץ, this rendering lacks the necessary etymological justification. The same is true of Hupfeld’s combination of the verb מרץ with מרה ,מר, acerbum acrem esse: “how bitter words of uprightness can be!” Here, moreover, the rendering of מה by quantumvis is doubtful. [The word is used elsewhere twice in Niphal, as here: 1Ki_2:8, of a grievous curse, or “a curse inevitably carried out” (Del.); Mic_2:10, of sore, unsparing destruction; and once in Hiphil: Job_16:3, in the sense of goading, provoking, and so stirring up to speak. The analogy of these passages favors the rendering: “How forcible!” To this add: (1) It agrees better with the subject, “upright, honest, sincere words.” “Words which keep the straight way of truth, go to the heart.”—Del. Comp. what is said of the word of God in Heb_4:12. (2) The parallelism favors it, as thus: Words which proceed from sincerity are effective: they have force and pungency; but the words which have proceeded from you (מִכֶּם)—what force, what pungency, what reproving power, have they?—E.]
Job_6:26. Do you think to reprove (mere) words?i.e. will you, to justify your censorious treatment of me, fasten on my words—on words spoken by me without reflection in the excitement of passion (Job 3), instead of on the fact of my blameless conduct? The whole question attaches itself closely to Job_6:25 b, and defines more closely the sense of that interrogative sentence: Do you think to make your reproof efficacious and profitable [exactly so: a good definition of נִמְרְצוּ: see above.—E.] in this way, by directing attention only to those words of mine? [הַלְהֹוכַח, Inf. constr. Hiph. with Pattach: Grn. § 126, 1]. Notwithstanding the words of a despairing man go to the wind, i.e., notwithstanding you should know that the words of one in despair (נוֹאָשׁ) are necessarily inconsiderate and spoken at random, are therefore to be judged leniently, and not pressed to the quick. The same sense is also obtained if (with Delitzsch, etc.) וּלְרוּחַ וגו׳ be treated as a circumstantial clause, and translated: “while nevertheless the words,” etc. Our adversative rendering of the ו however makes the expression stronger. [The preposition ל in לְרוּחַ is rendered with slight variations. Ewald, Dillmann, Hengstenberg, Merx, like Zöckler, render it, “speaking to the wind.” E. V., Con., Dav., Elz., Rod.: “as the wind.” And so Carey: “for wind.” Schlott., Noyes, Wem.: “but wind.” Delitzsch and Renan: “belong to the wind” (“that they may be carried away by it, not to the judgment, which retains and analyzes them.” Del.).]
Job_6:27. Ye would even cast lots for the orphan, and ye would traffic for your friend.—The severest reproach which Job pronounces on his opponents in this discourse. [Renan introduces the verse with the objurgation, “Traitors!”] The two Imperfects express what they would do in a given case, and are thus conditional or subjunctive, as in Job_3:13; Job_3:16. With תַּפִּילוּ is to be supplied גוֹרָל, after 1Sa_14:42. [Some suppose the figure in both clauses to be taken from hunting, and supply accordingly רֶשֶׁת, net, in the first: “You spread a net, and dig a pitfall for your friend.” Hengstenberg would supply “stones:” “you would stone your friend.” E. V., Good, Elz.: “cause to fall,” i.e., overwhelm, fall upon. But as Zöckler proceeds to say]: A casting of lots for an orphan might take place when unrelenting creditors appropriated the children of their deceased debtors as slaves by way of payment. Comp. 2Ki_4:1. With כָּרָה in the second member, Rosenm., Gesenius, Heiligstedt, supply שַׁחַת, “a grave” [so also E. V., Good, Noyes, Wem., Carey, Rod., Elz., Hengst.]. But partly the context, partly the similar expression in Job 40:30, as also passages like Hos_3:2, Deu_2:6, assure the signification of כָּרָה עַל to be: “to conclude a bargain for any one, to sell, to traffic in any one,” viz., as slaves. Comp. Gen_37:27 sq. [So Ewald, Dillmann, Delitzsch, Wordsworth, and Schlottmann, who argues that the ellipsis of רשת in the first member is without any analogy: that for the ellipsis of שׁחת in the second the use of חפר in Psa_35:7 cannot be cited, seeing that there שׁהת occurs in the first member, and that the construction with על, “to dig a pit against one,” would be harsh and unprecedented.]
Job_6:28-30. [An urgent appeal to consider the righteousness of his cause. Observe the sudden and touching transition from the bitter outbreak of Job_6:27, as though himself alarmed at the violent expression of his feelings, the reaction bringing back with it something of the old trust in his friends.—E.]
Job_6:28. And now be pleased to look on me.—Immediately following upon the severest reproof the discourse changes its tone to that of mild entreaty and adjuration. פָּנָה בְ, to turn the face to one, to consider attentively. Comp. Ecc_2:11. And of a truth I will not lie to your face:i.e., in maintaining unrighteously and untruthfully my innocence. אִם is the particle used in a negative oath, or a solemn asseveration that this or that is not the case (Gesen. § 155 [§ 152], 2 f.). [The rendering of E. V.: “for it is evident unto you, if I lie,” is unfortunate in its use of the present, “is;” for as Conant says: “though it was so clear to Job himself, he could not assert that it was so evident to them.” This objection, however, is obviated, if, with Gesenius, we supply the future: “it will be before your face (i.e., evident.) if I lie;” or if, with Hengstenberg, we supply the optative: “let it lie before your face (i.e., let it be determined by you, be ye judges) whether I lie.” In favor of the one or the other of these constructions, which are substantially the same, it may be said: (1) It establishes a better connection of the first and second members of this verse. Having entreated them to give earnest attention to his case, he assures them that they will be satisfied with his truth. (2) It is in better harmony with the suddenly subdued and almost plaintive tone which characterizes this strophe than the strenuous asseveration that he would not lie to their faces. (3) It brings the structure of the verse into conformity with that of the verse following, where we have the same earnest entreaty, followed by the same assurance of a satisfactory conclusion. (4) Job_6:30 seems to be the expansion of the same thought. (5) The construction is much simpler and less harsh.—E.]
Job_6:29. Return, I pray—i.e., not: “come hither in order to hear my complaint” (Schlott., Kamph.), which would be trivial and inexpressive; nor: “begin again” (i.e., try it again, v. Gerl., Del.),—a sense which cannot be referred to the simple objectless שׁוּבוּ. But the meaning is rather: “Return from the path of hostility and unfriendly suspicion towards me, on which you have entered.” For the absolute use of שׁוּב, to be converted, to return (to Jehovah), comp. Jer_3:12; Jer_3:14; Jer_3:22; 2Ch_6:24, etc. Let there be no wrong—viz: on your side, through your continuing to torture me, etc. Yea, return, I am still right therein.—With the K’ri we are to read וְשֻׁבוּ, a reiterated urgent request that they should hear him without prejudice. The K’thibh, ושׁבי, admits of no satisfactory explanation. [One commentator, e.g., supposes that Job is here addressing his wife! Some (e.g., Hengstenberg) that he is addressing his cause (personified), which his friends had dismissed as adjudicated. Others, as Schultens, regard the word as Inf. with suffix; “my return,” i.e., I will return, or again go over my case, and establish its righteousness. But, as Schlottmann remarks, this is undoubtedly one of the few cases where the K’ri is to be preferred. Renan, following, perhaps, a hint already furnished by the LXX.: καθίσατε (probably reading שְׁבוּ), supposes that, stung by Job’s reproaches, especially in Job_5:27, the friends had made a movement to depart. An ingenious but a needless conjecture, which weakens the importunity of Job’s appeal for an impartial trial of his cause.—E.] “I am still right therein, [or lit.] my righteousness is still in it,” i.e., in the mutter which we are considering [in my cause]; I still stand innocent and unconvicted in this business.
Job_6:30. Is there wrong on my tongue?i.e., have I really thus far (in that complaint, Job 3) spoken wrong? He does not therefore admit that in his vehement murmuring and cursing and lamenting he has erred; he will only acknowledge that his words have been “spoken to the wind,” i.e., thoughtlessly (Job_5:26), not that they are blameworthy or godless. Or does not my palate (חֵךְ here, as in Job_12:11, as the organ of taste) [here of course in the figurative sense of moral discrimination] discern calamities?i.e., do I not possess so much of a right judgment and understanding that I can discern the true import of my misfortune, that I can know whether my suffering is or is not deserved? To assign to חַוּוֹת another sense than that which belongs to the sing. in Job_5:2, is not suitable. Schlottmann, Dillmann, etc., interpret it rightly in the sense of “calamities, misfortunes,” while most expositors adopt the signification, “wickedness, iniquity” (“the wickedness which completely contaminates feeling and utterance.” Del.), a signification which is scarcely supported by its use in other passages. [Besides its correspondence with the sing. in Job_5:2, the sense here given for חַוֹוּת is favored by the comparison of suffering with food in Job_6:6-7, and also by the circumstantial and painful description of his sufferings, into which he plunges in the following chapter. This view, moreover, results in less tautology than the other.—E.] For the sense of the passage, as a whole, it matters not whether we translate as above, or: “does not my palate discern iniquity?” In any case, Job by this question gives evidence of his entanglement in Pelagian notions, under the influence of which he will plead guilty neither to error nor to wrong.
5. Third Division: A return to the previous lamentation because of his fate, and an accusation of God: Job_7:1-21.
First Long Strophe: Job_7:1-11, (subdivided into two strophes of 6 and 5 verses): A lamentation over the wearisomeness of life on earth in general, and over his own hopeless condition in particular.
a. Job_7:1-6. [Job’s weariness of life on account of its misery and brevity. “In antagonism to Eliphaz’s fascinating picture of the Supreme, the Father directing all the currents of creation’s influence for mercy and good, Job’s inflamed eye throws up against the sky in gigantic outline an omnipotent slave driver, and fills the earth with miserable wretches overworked by day, and shaken by feverish weariness and dreams of torture by night.”—Davidson].
Job_7:1. Has not man a warfare on earth, and are not his days like the days of a hireling?—[“The fact that Job in ver 1 brings his suffering into connection with the misery of the whole human race, indicates progress in relation to Job 3, where, predominantly at least, he limited himself to the representation of his individual condition. By this advance the question concerning God’s righteousness and love receives a much more forcible significance. The question is no longer about a solitary exception, which may have a secret personal reason for its existence. Job now stands forth as representative of the whole of suffering, oppressed humanity, arraigning God because of His injustice.” Hengstenberg. אֱנוֹשׁ, used continually in Job, as in the Psalms, of man in his weakness and mortality; comp. Job_5:17; Job_7:17; Job_13:9; Job_14:19; Job_15:14; Job_25:6; or of man in his insignificance and impurity as contrasted with God: comp. Job_4:17; Job_9:2; Job_10:4-5; Job_25:4.—E.]. By many the verse is translated: “Has not man a service [the service, viz., of a vassal] on earth, and are not his days as the days of a hireling?” (so e.g. Hahn, Vaih., etc.). But in the original text the figure first presented is rather the military one (צָבָא, military service, soldiering, as in Job_14:14; Isa_40:2; Dan_10:1) [“in silent antithesis to Eliphaz’s fascinating picture, Job 5,” Dav.], while the figure taken from the peaceful life of a tiller of the soil (שָׂכִיר, hireling, one who works for wages, comp. Job_14:6) follows in the second member. This latter comparison, belonging to the sphere of agricultural life, is continued in the more detailed description of the following verse.
Job_7:2. Like a slave, who pants after the shadow [soil. of evening; see Gesenius], and like a hireling who waits for his wages. The כְ used in each member is not the continuation of the כְּ in כִּימֵי־שׂכְיר, Job_7:1, but stands in cor-relation to the כֵּן which begins Job_7:3, that verse being the apodosis to this. [For the reason just given the translation should not be: “as a slave he pants, etc.” Neither: “as a slave pants,” which would be כַּאֲשֶׁר]. פֹּעַל that which is earned by working, wages: comp. Pro_21:6; Jer_22:13; also the synonymous פְּעֻלָּה, Lev_19:13; Isa_40:10, etc. [The reward of the day’s labor is to be understood as being looked forward to by the laborer here not so much for its own sake, as because it marks the close of the day’s work, because having received his wages he rests.—E.]
Job_7:3. So months of wretchedness are allotted to me, and nights of distress are appointed for me.—יַרְחֵי־שׁוְא is translated by Delitzsch [Schlott., Hengst., Davidson, E. V.]: “months of disappointment,” which certainly corresponds more nearly to the literal signification of שָׁוְא (vanity, nothingness, falsehood, the opposite of תֻּשִׁיָּה), but furnishes no point of comparison that is altogether suitable in connection with what precedes. Moreover the signification: “wretchedness, misfortune is sufficiently assured for שָׁוְא by Job_15:31; Isa_30:28 [and so Umbr., Ew., Dil., Noy., Con.]. הָנְחַלְתִּי, lit., “I am made to inherit, are appointed to me as my lot” (נחלה), with accus. of the object. The Passive expresses “the compulsoriness of the lot” (Hirzel). [“A pathetic word, made to inherit, through no cause or fault of mine, it is the mere arbitrary effect … of the will of him whose slave I am. לִי adds force to the passive, both show the non-participation of Job in causing his troubles, and his helplessness to dispose of them.” Davidson]. From the months of wretchedness to the nights of distress, there is a progression in the thought; the latter are related to the former as the sharp and sudden destruction effected by a bombardment to the preceding and accompanying sufferings which a protracted siege produces among those who are beleaguered. [Dillmann states the progression thus: “in contrast with the days of the hireling are the months and even the nights of the misery.” It seems scarcely necessary, however, to assume a progression here. The term “months” indicates the long duration of the suffering, the term “nights” indicates its incessant recurrence, and is chosen, moreover, because it is in the night that the pressure of pain is most keenly felt.—E.]. Our verse is, however, one of the most decisive evidences that our poet imagined a wide interval to have elapsed between the outbreak of Job’s disease and the beginning of the controversy; comp. above, or Job_2:11.—[On מִנּוּ, 3d plur., used indefinitely “without any thought of the real agency concerned in the action spoken of, and where the English would require a passive construction,” see Green, § 243, 2, b].
Job_7:4. When I lie down, then I think, [lit., say]: When shall I arise, and the night be gone?וּמִדַּד־עֶרֶב is commonly translated: “and the night lengthens itself, the night stretches itself out long” (מִדַּד, Piel of מדד, written with Pattach: comp. Gesenius, § 52 [51], Rem. 1). The accents, however, favor rather the rendering adopted by Raschi, Mercerus, Rosenm., Delitzsch, [and so E. V., Noyes, Con., Dav., Carey], according to which מִדַּד is the const. st. of a verbal noun from נדד, the meaning of the noun מִדָּד being “flight, departure,” and the sense of the entire clause being: “when will the flight of the evening be? when will the evening come to an end?” That עֶרֶב is by this interpretation regarded as synonymous with לַיְלָה furnishes no valid reasoning against this rendering; for the word has this meaning no less according to the other rendering, and in general means this quite often in Hebrew; comp. Gen_1:5 seq. [“The night is described by its commencement, the late evening, to make the long interval of the sleepiness and restlessness of the invalid prominent.” Delitzsch].—And I became weary with restlessness until the dawn.—נֶשֶׁף, here as in Job_3:9, the morning dawn. נְדֻדִים, lit., the rolling around, tossing to and fro on the bed. The word forms a paronomasia with מִדַּד, as Ebr. and Delitzsch rightly remark. [Thus in English: “When will the night toss itself away? And I am weary with tossings until the dawn.” And this paronomasia is not without weight as an argument in favor of the interpretation given above to מִדַּד in Job_7:4.—E.].
Job_7:5. My flesh is clothed with worms and crusts of earth. רִמָּה, decay, rottenness, which passes over into worms, vermin; comp. Job_17:14; Job_21:26.—גִּישׁ, for which the K’ri substitutes the common reading of the Talmud, גוּשׁ, is elsewhere “clods of earth;” here crusts, scabs, such as cover indurated ulcers [used here, says Delitzsch, because of the cracked, scaly, earth-colored skin of one suffering with elephantiasis].—My skin heals (רָגַע, shrinks together, contracts, becomes hard and stiff) and breaks out again, lit., “is again melted,” [festers again], יִמָּאֵם, a variant. of יִמַּם (comp. Ewald, § 114 b) [Green, § 139, 3], Psa_58:8.
Job_7:6. My days pass away more swiftly than a weaver’s shuttle. אֶרֶג not the “web” itself, as the Pesh. and Vulg. render it, but the shuttle, κερκίς, radius; comp. Job_9:25, where precisely, as here, swift motion forms the point of comparison.—And vanish without hope, i.e. without hope of deliverance (comp. Job_9:25-26), not: without hope of a better lot after death, as Hirzel, Hahn, Delitzsch, etc., explain, with a reference to Job_14:12; Job_14:19. The reference to the life beyond is as yet altogether foreign to the connection. [The rendering of Good, Wemyss, Elzas assumes אֶרֶג to mean yarn for the web, the verb קלל “to be slight,” and תִּקְוָה thread; and so they translate:
“My days are slighter than yarn,
They are finished by the breaking of the thread.”
What is thus gained, however, in the symmetrical completeness of the figure, is lost in depth of feeling. There is inexpressible pathos in the sentiment that his days are wasting away (יִכְלוּ) without hope; the use of the preposition בְּאֶפֶם, lit. in the extreme end, at the vanishing point, being also exquisitely appropriate.—E.]
b. Job_7:7-11 : A plaintive plea for God’s compassion, out of which, however, the suppliant sinks back into hopeless lamentation.
Job_7:7. Remember that my days are a breath (רוּחַ, wind, breath of air, the same as הֶבֶל, Job_7:17), that mine eye shall never behold prosperity. Lit. “will not return to see;” or mine eye will nevermore see good,—when it is broken off, that is, in death, when, therefore, this earthly life of mine shall reach its end. It is not the absolute cessation of all sight, observation, consciousness, life in general, that Job here affirms of the Hereafter, but only that he will cease to behold happiness and well-being (טוֹב, as in Job_2:10; Job_21:13; Job_36:11; Psa_4:7 (6); Psa_25:13; Psa_34:13 (12), etc.), that days of prosperity will never return: and so in the three verses following.
Job_7:8-9. The eye of him who looketh after me shall see me no more. עֵין רֹאִי, the eye of my beholder, my visitor, and so of my friend, who comes to see me and to comfort me. So according to the reading רֹאִֽי, with the tone on the last syllable, while the accentuation רֹֽאִי for רֳאִי, preferred by Arnheim, Stickel, Vaihinger, etc., pausal form, would give the sense, which here is less suitable [and which Schlottmann justly characterizes as insipid]: “an eye of seeing=a seeing eye.” [Comp. ראה in 2Sa_13:5; 2Ki_8:29].—Thine eyes (supply: look, are turned) towards me: I am no more. The address, as in the preceding verse, is directed to God: If Thou seekest me there, I shall be no more; Thou wilt therefore be able to show me no manner of kindness. [The anthropomorphism of a heart stung by pangs of the bitterest disappointment: I have been deceived in my fondest hopes, when I looked for sympathy and help, they were not to be found. So be it! The day will come when perhaps Thou wilt feel moved to show me some kindness, but—too late. Thou wilt look for me among the living—but I shall not be.—E.] That (the “being no more” is to be understood, not absolutely, but only relatively, is evident from the following verse, which, through the simile of the cloud which vanishes without leaving a trace of it behind, illustrates the hopelessness of the return of the departed from Sheol, not, however, their complete annihilation. Concerning שְׁאוֹל, Hell, i.e. the underworld, the realm of the dead (to be derived, indeed, from שָׁאַל, “to demand,” rather than from שָׁעַל, “to be hollow”); comp. notes on Pro_1:12; Pro_2:18; Pro_7:27; Son_8:6. [“שְׁאוֹל is now almost universally derived from שָׁעַל=שָׁעַל, to be hollow, to be deepened; and aptly so, for they imagined the Sheôl as under ground, as Num_16:30; Num_16:33, alone shows, on which account even here; as from Gen_37:35 onwards יָרַד שְׁאֽוֹלָה is everywhere used. It is, however, open to question, whether this derivation is correct: at least passages like Isa_5:14; Hab_2:5; Pro_30:15 seq. show that in the later usage of the language, שָׁאַל, to demand, was thought of in connection with it: derived from which Sheôl signifies (1) the inevitable and inexorable demand made on everything earthly (an infinitive noun like פְּקוֹד ,אֱלֹוהַּ; (2) conceived of as space, the place of shadowy duration, whither everything on earth is demanded (3) conceived of according to its nature, the divinely appointed fury which gathers in and engulfs everything on the earth.”—Del.]
[Job_7:9. The cloud is vanished [or consumes away), and is gone (a figure particularly expressive in the East); so he that goes down to the underworld cometh not up. See on Job_7:8.]
Job_7:10. He returns no more to his house, his place knows him not again;i.e. his home (מָקוֹם, as in Job_8:18; Job_20:9; Psa_103:16 [with which the second member corresponds literatim]), which formerly on his return from a journey rejoiced and greeted him as it were, will not recognize him again (עוֹד), even because he will not return. Of any hope of a resurrection to new life and prosperity in life Job manifestly exhibits here no trace: no more is it the case in Job_10:21; Job_14:10 seq.; Job_16:22.—It is otherwise on the contrary in Job_19:25 seq.
Job_7:11. [This verse Schlottmann, Conant, Wemyss, Davidson, Carey, Renan, connect with the next strophe: while Noyes, Dillmann, Del., agree with Zöckler in placing it at the end of the present strophe. Ewald and Hengstenberg treat it as an independent verse, a passionate convulsive outcry of rebellious discontent in the midst of the plaintive moaning of a crushed and helpless heart, which pervades the rest of the chapter.—E.]—Therefore will I also not restrain my mouth, I will speak in the anguish of my spirit:i.e. since God hears me so little, since He abandons me so pitilessly to the lot of those who dwell in the realm of the dead, therefore neither will I on my part (גַם אֲנִי for this so-called גַםtalionis, compare Eze_16:43; Psa_52:7 (5); Hab_2:9, etc.) give any heed to Him, rather will I let my grief and anguish have free course. I will complain in the anguish of my soul: lit. in the bitterness of my soul; comp. Job_10:1, as also the adjective phrase מַר נֶפֶשׁ, disturbed, troubled in soul: 1Sa_1:10; 1Sa_22:2, etc.
6. Third Division. Second Long Strophe: Job_7:12-21 (consisting of two strophes of five verses each): A vehemently passionate arraignment of God on account of the unrelenting severity with which He persecutes and oppresses him.
a. Job_7:12-16. [“The first conceivable cause of Job’s troubles—he might be a menace to heaven.” Dav.]
Job_7:12. Am I a sea, or a monster [of the deep], that Thou (כִּי as in Job_3:12; Job_6:11) settest a watch upon me?מִשְׁמָר, “guard, watch-post,” an expression which strictly belongs only to the second element in the comparison, the תַּנִּין (sea-monster, dragon, whale), being less suited to the first. A watch is set, however, on the raging and tossing sea by means of dams and dikes (comp. Job_38:8 seq.; Jer_5:22; Jer_31:35). [Schultens quotes from an Arabic poet, who calls Tamerlane “a vast sea, swallowing up everything.”] According to Hirzel, Delitzsch, etc., we are to understand by יָם the Nile, and by תַּנִּין the crocodile. This interpretation, however, rests on grounds equally insufficient with the specifically Egyptian reference which is fancied to lie in various other figures and descriptions of our book; comp. Introduction, § 7. [“The image must be left in all its magnitude and generality; if there is any particular reference, it is in יָם to the tumultuous primitive abyss which God watched and confined, and still watches and enchains (Psa_104:9) lest it overwhelm the world; and in תַּנִּין to those vast creatures with which the early waters of creation teemed, Gen_1:21.”—Dav. and so Schlottmann.]
Job_7:13. When I think, my bed shall comfort me.—כִּי, when, so often as; as in Job_5:21 b. [There is no good reason for rendering אָמַרְתִּי “I think,” rather than “I say.” As Hengstenberg says: In violent grief thought passes easily into words.] The whole verse is he protasis, to which Job_7:14-15 form the apodosis. My couch shall help to bear my complaint.—[מִשְׁכָב, the general word, place of lying; עֶרֶשׂ, canopied couch]. נָשָׁא בְ, to help to bear anything [בְּ partitive] sublevare, as in Num_2:17; comp. Neh_4:4; Neh_4:11. [“The vast images called up by the terms ‘sea’ and ‘sea-monster’ are very significantly followed by those of the ‘bed’ and ‘couch,’ as comforters and helpers sought in vain, bringing before our minds the littleness of man’s lot.” Schlott.] For שִׂחַ, complaint, comp. Job_9:27; Job_10:1; Job_21:4.
Job_7:14-15. Then Thou scarest me [וְחִתַּתַּנִי, liter. “Thou shakest me”] with dreams, and makest me to tremble through visions of the night.—מֵחֶזְיֹונוֹת, “out of visions,” and so through them, in consequence of them.—So that my soul chooseth strangling.—ו in וַתִּבְחַר introduces a consequent to that which precedes, “and so then, in consequence of those terrifying dreams and visions, my soul chooseth strangling.” Death rather than these my bones:i.e. rather than this body reduced to a skeleton; comp. Job_19:20. The מִן in מֵעַצְמוֹתָי is comparative, not causal—“death which is produced from these bones” (Stickel, Rüetschi), or again—“death from my own bones,” i.e. by my own hand, suicide (Merx, Umbreit, Schlottmann, [Carey]). The last interpretation is by no means supported by מַחֲנַק, which signifies only strangling, not self-strangulation (comp. words of analogous structure like מוּצַק ,מִרְמַם, and Ewald, § 106, c). [Although the sing עֶצֶם is used of self, it would be forced and against all usage to take the plur. in that sense, or in the sense of members, hands. Moreover, the usual force of מִן after בָּחַר is comparative. To this add what is said in the following extract from Avicenna of the sensation of suffocation in elephantiasis. This description of himself as “bones” is most strikingly suggestive when compared with the conception of himself as a “sea” or a leviathan in Job_7:12, capable of vexing and obstructing the Almighty. “There is fearful irony in the comparison of this skeleton, impotent and helpless, his very weakness a terror to himself and his onlookers, to the great heaven-assaulting ocean, lifting itself up in the consciousness of infinite power, or to some dragon of the prime in which the whole energy of creation in its youth lay compressed” (Davidson).—E.] With the description here given of the symptoms of elephantiasis in its advanced stages, comp. what Avicenna says in his description of the same: “During sleep there come frequent atrabilious dreams.… The breathing becomes excessively hard and labored. There is severe constriction of the chest, and extreme hoarseness. The lips become thick and black, and the body is covered with lumps, and becomes entirely black. It often becomes necessary to open the jugular vein to relieve the hoarseness and the tendency to suffocation,” etc.
Job_7:16. I loathe it—מָאַסְתִּי—not: “I pass [waste] away” (Rosenm., Stick.) [Conant, Renan], but “I despise,” viz., life—I am disgusted with life. That this is to be supplied as the object of the verb, which is used absolutely, is made apparent by the clause immediately following: “I would not live always.” [Those who render מָאַסְתִּי “disappear,” take the remainder of the line as in like manner affirming Job’s mortality. Thus Conant: “I waste away, I shall not live always.”] Let me alone—i.e., desist from continually assailing and besieging me, from the מִשְׁמָר of Job_7:12. The request is addressed to God (not to Job’s own life, as Hahn thinks), and expresses not a humble modest desire, but a stormy demand on the part of Job, sorely distressed as he was, and so weary of life. [Hence Davidson renders it: “Away from me!”] On the reason given for this request: “for my days are a breath,” comp. Job_5:7 a (רוּחַ=הֶבֶל).
b. Job_7:17-21. [“The other conceivable cause of Job’s sufferings, sin.” Dav. “The discourse in these verses assuming a calmer tone, as if to justify the vehemence of his doubt.” Ew.]
Job_7:17. What is man that Thou magnifiest him, and that Thou settest thy mind on him?—These questions (in this and the following verse) parody in deliberate form and with bitter irony the words of Psa_8:5 sq. (comp. Psa_144:3; Lam_3:23). “There it is said that God exalts puny man to a kingly and divine position among His creatures, and distinguishes him continually with new tokens of His favor; here, that instead of ignoring him, He makes too much of him, by selecting him, insignificant as he is, as the object of ever new and ceaseless sufferings.” Del. [“David’s ‘What is man that thou shouldst think of him to bless him?’ is turned into ‘What is man that thou shouldst think of him to curse him?’ ” Dav. Herein lies the wonderful irony of the passage. Wordsworth: “Why shouldst thou break a fly upon a wheel?”]
Job_7:18. And that thou visitest him every morning?—On פקד, to visit, inspect, comp. above on Job_5:24, also Psa_8:5. And every moment triest him?—תִּבְחָנֶנּוּ, i.e., puttest his patience and power to the test continually, and by sufferings which are ever renewed.
Job_7:19. How long dost Thou not look away from me?—כַּמָּה, lit.: how much? how often? here in the sense of quamdiu, construed with the Imperf. in the sense of a Future, as in Psa_35:17שָׁעָה with מִן, to look away from, as in Isa_22:4; here in the special sense of turning away from any one a look expressive of displeasure and punishment, exactly as in Job_14:6, where moreover שָׁעָה is connected with מֵעַל. Nor lettest me alone till I swallow my spittle—i.e., for one little instant—a proverbial expression for a minimum of time, in use also among the Arabians and Persians; comp. Schultens and Umbreit on the passage.
Job_7:20. If I have sinned (חָטָאתִי, an elliptical conditional clause, comp. Ewald, § 357 b), what could I do (thereby) to Thee?—[the fut, אֶפְעַל in the potential sense]: i.e., what harm would I thereby occasion to thee? what detriment would I cause to Thy self-sufficient greatness and glory? (comp. Job_35:3-8, especially Job_7:6). Ewald and Olshausen construe מה אפעל־לך as a relative clause of more precise specification, dependent on חטאתי, and so equivalent to an accus. of this verb: “If I have sinned in what I do to thee.” Grammatically possible, but much tamer and less emphatic than our rendering. [“If I have sinned in what I do unto thee, why hast thou made me thy mark?” would be, says Conant, “a challenge without any pretence of justification.” It would certainly involve a meaningless non sequitur. If Job had sinned, that certainly was a reason why God should set Himself against him. The clause מה־אפ׳ is thus needed to mediate between חטאתי and למה שׂ׳.—E.] Thou watcher of men!—This appellation, which of itself is one that conveys praise of God and comfort to men (comp. Psa_121:3; Isa_27:3), is used here not sensu bono, but with bitter irony, in the sense of an austere pitiless scrutinizer of men, without giving it, however, the shamefully frivolous sense given in Renan’s rendering: O espion de l’homme. [“This sense of being continually tracked, of having the Divine shadow ever at his heels, following him about with evil eye, speechless but malevolent, puts the sufferer out of himself. How long wilt thou not look away from me? What is the meaning of this horrible espionage?” Davidson.] Wherefore dost Thou make me thy point of attack?—מִפְגַּע, the object against which one rushes, or impinges (פָּגַע בְּ), an expression of not exactly the same, but yet of similar signification with מַטָּרָה, “target,” in Job_16:12; Lam_3:12. [“Such an obstacle the Deity had made to Himself of Job. Job was in His way. He was perpetually striving against Him—a tremendous figure.” Dav. This is vividly put: the conception of a perpetual stumbling-block in God’s way, however, is scarcely the one conveyed by the term. The idea here and in Job_16:12 is that Job was a mark, against which God deliberately directed His power. There the figure is drawn from archery; here from war.—E.] So that I am become a burden to myself: (ו consec. as in Job_7:15 a; the whole expression as in 2Sa_15:33). The LXX. read here עָלֶיךָ (εἰμὶ δὲ επὶ σοὶ φορτίον), and moreover the Masoretic tradition affirms that one of the eighteen corrections of the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible (תִּקּוּנֵי סֹפְרִים) obtains here, the original עָלֶיךָ having been set aside on account of its objectionable meaning [being too bold or blasphemous]—“wherefore became I a burden to Thee?”—and exchanged for the less objectionable עָלַי. In any case, this latter reading gives a striking sense.
Job_7:21. And why dost Thou not pardon my transgression?—וּמֶה (with the vowel e, according to Ewald, § 152 b) [Green, § 75, 1], here=וְלָמָה. The question expresses what was to be expected, instead of the incessant hostile assaults of God on him, the presumed sinner, if he had really transgressed,—namely, the pardon of his guilt, since verily his end was now nigh. [And put away my iniquity.—According to Hengstenberg, there lies a certain irony in the use by Job of the strong expressions פשע and עון to designate the sins which to his consciousness proceeded only from infirmity.] For הֶעֱביר (to pass over, to overlook, ἀγνοεῖν) as a synonym of נשׂא, to bear, to forgive, comp. 2Sa_12:13; 2Sa_24:10. For now shall I lie in the dust, and if Thou seekest after me, I am no more—i.e., death will soon hurry me away, and Thou wilt then have no further opportunity to show me favor; unless therefore Thou doest this immediately, Thy character will be seen to be that of a cruel being, who unnecessarily torments men. This reason for the question: why will not God forgive without further question or delay? is akin to the thought in Job_7:7 a, 8b, and 16b.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. In poetic elevation of thought, nervous strength of expression, and in wealth of figurative ornamentation, this first discourse of Job is not inferior to that of Eliphaz. It resembles the same also in that it conducts the argument more upon the basis of that Divine wisdom which belongs to mankind universally than of that which is specifically theocratic, and serves to express a religious consciousness which is firmly rooted in faith in a personal God (Eloah, Shaddai). That, however, which it sets forth as the contents and voice of this consciousness, with its faith in Jehovah, is no less obnoxious to the charge of one-sidedness, of beclouding the truth by many wrong representations and religiously impure sentiments, and indeed of partially eclipsing the same by grave errors, than the contents and tendency of that discourse of Eliphaz. There are one-sided representations, partly related and partly opposed to those of Eliphaz, to which we see Job here giving his adherence. Like him he is inclined to regard being a man and committing sin, or sensuousness and sinfulness, as inseparably connected together, and accordingly to look on the forgiveness of sin by God as a matter of course—as something which is to be expected on the part of man without giving himself any further concern on the subject (Job_7:21; comp. Job_6:14; Job_7:7-8; Job_7:16). But in the disposition which he shows to make his sin as small as possible, to represent himself as in the main guiltless, and his friends as unjustly suspecting his innocence (Job_6:10; Job_6:24; Job_6:26; Job_6:29 sq.; Job_7:20), he in turn comes in conflict with Eliphaz, the zealous champion of the universal sinfulness of all men. In consequence of the unqualified way in which he rejects the conjectures of the latter respecting his moral guiltiness in the matter of his suffering, he exhibits a stronger pelagian bias, greater self-righteousness, and more of the conceited arrogance of virtue, than his opponent. And when he upbraids him, and the two other friends who are like-minded with him, with a want of love, with a lack of gentleness, and even with a faithless neglect of their duty to comfort him (Job_6:11-20; especially Job_6:14 sq.), this reproach seems—even quite apart from the bitter satirical tone in which it is clothed—in so far intemperate and exaggerated, in that he most decidedly declines to allow himself to be charged by them with any crime whatsoever, and so finds in their conduct only unfriendliness, hostility, and bitterness, and on the other hand wholly misapprehends the partial truth of that which is said by Eliphaz in their name. So far is he from submitting to being exhorted by them to penitence, that he seems rather to think he must preach repentance and conversion to them (Job_6:29)—like so many church-goers of our day, who, under the influence of pelagian prejudice and rationalistic blindness, complain of their preacher that, instead of ministering to them the consolation of the Gospel, he does nothing but exhort them to repent, thereby showing his own need of repentance (on account of “fanaticism, intolerance, hypocrisy, muckerism, obscurantism [puritanical bigotry],” etc.). Comp. Hengstenberg, p. Job 202: “It should not be overlooked that suffering would not have inflicted its crushing power on Job to such a degree if he had possessed the foundation of a theodicy in a deeper knowledge of human, and especially of his own, sinfulness. It is the lack of this that first gives to his suffering its real sting.… For the sufferings of this life sometimes wax so great that a moderate knowledge of what sinfulness is will be found altogether inadequate. Job’s description in this section shows that very clearly. Its lesson is that even the mildest and most moderate pelagianism, or semi-pelagianism, must inevitably lead in its consequences to blasphemy.”
The most doubtful point of antagonism to Eliphaz into which Job is led is when, instead of complying with his repeated exhortations to humble himself beneath the mighty hand of God, he falls rather into the tone of bitter, angry contention and litigation with God, and goes so far as to accuse Him of injustice and want of compassion, speaking of the poisoned arrows of the Almighty which are in him (Job_6:4), attributing to God the purpose, or at least the disposition, to crush and destroy him, even though he had in no wise sinned against Him (Job_6:9-10), charging Him with making ceaseless hostile assaults upon him, and decreeing wanton tortures for him (Job_7:12 sq.), and with reference to this giving Him in bitter sarcasm the name of a “watcher of men” (in the unfavorable sense of the expression), a hostile sentinel or jailer of men (Job_7:20). And these harsh and presumptuous speeches against God are accompanied by no qualifications, or partial retractions, such as we find in nearly all the lamentations of the Psalmists, or of the Prophet Jeremiah, where they make use of similar expressions, and represent God now by this, and now by that figurative expression, as their unsparing persecutor, and their stern unpitying judge. Job persists in all that he says in this direction of a doubtful character; he takes nothing of it back; he concludes his discourse immediately after the most passionate and presumptuous of these sayings has passed from his lips. Comp. Delitzsch (1:131 seq.): “We should be mistaken if there were sin in the expressions in themselves considered by which Job describes God’s hostility against himself. We may compare, e.g. Lam_3:9-10 : “He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone; He hath made my paths crooked; He is to me as a bear lying in wait, as a lion in the thicket.” It is, moreover, not Job’s peculiar sin that he thinks God has changed to an enemy against him; that is the view which comes from his vision being beclouded by the conflict through which he is passing, as is frequently the case in the Psalms. His sin does not even consist in the inquiries, How long? and Wherefore? The Psalms, in that case, would abound in sin. But the sin is that he hangs on to these doubting questions, and thus attributes apparent mercilessness and injustice to God. And the friends constantly urge him on still deeper in this sin, the more persistently they attribute his suffering to his own unrighteousness. Jeremiah (in Job 3 of the Lamentations), after similar complaints, adds: Then I repeated this to my heart, and took courage from it: the mercies of Jehovah, they have no end; His compassions do not cease, etc. Many of the Psalms that begin sorrowfully end in the same way; faith at length breaks through the clouds of doubt. But it should be remembered that the change of spiritual condition which, e.g. in Psalms 6, is condensed to the narrow limits of a lyric composition of eleven verses, is here in Job worked out with dramatic detail as a passage of his life’s history: his faith, once so heroic, only smoulders under ashes; the friends, instead of fanning it to a flame, bury it still deeper, until at last it is set free from its bondage by Jehovah Himself, “Who appears in the whirlwind.”
2. Notwithstanding these manifold tokens of a profound and grievous darkening of soul from which Job suffered during this discourse, it presents scattered through it much that is true, much that is directly conducive to the knowledge and appropriation of revealed truth. To these points of light, in which is comprised whatever in the two chapters is really significant in a doctrinal and ethical respect, belong:
(a) The beautiful sentiment: “To one that is despairing gentleness is due from his friends, even though he should have forsaken the fear of the Almighty” (Job_6:14); a genuine pearl of ethical theological wisdom, an unconscious prophetic saying, anticipating from afar such New Testament utterances as: “They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick” (Mat_9:12); or: “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness” (Gal_6:1); or: “Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins” (Jam_5:19-20; comp. 1Pe_4:8).
b. The sorrowful lamentation over the misery of human life at the beginning of Job 7 (Job_7:1-6), which, even in those parts of it that have special reference to Job’s fearful sufferings as a leper, admits of a measure of generalization, and analogical extension to the condition of all men as sinners, and as suffering in consequence of their sins. For not only that which in this earthly life, with its thousand troubles and hardships, resembles the service of the soldier and of the hireling, but also the months of evil which are to be lived through, and the nights of misery which are to be watched through, likewise the many harbingers of death and of decay, swallowing up the bodily life corroded and disintegrated by diseases of all kinds (comp. Job_7:3-5)—all this even suits more or less the experience which all men have of life, inasmuch as there is no one, under the present order of existence, who is absolutely free from the law of sin and death, which through our first parents has descended upon all the race; comp. Rom_7:24-25; Rom_8:10; 2Co_4:16, etc.
c. Connected with this lamentation is the reflection upon the evanescence and vanity of the days of man on earth, as well as upon the injustice and cruelty which would be exercised, if God should treat a being so weak and frail, so much like a breath in his nothingness, only according to the severity of His justice, and not rather according to the gracious fulness of His love and mercy (Job_7:7 seq.—especially Job_7:21). In Job’s sense, indeed, who does not adequately appreciate the bitter malignity and ill-desert of sin, and who is inclined, in view of the helpless moral misery of mankind, to rest his appeal for the forgiveness of his sins by God, not on the ground of its being fitting, but on a ground of formal right, this reflection is inadmissible before God, proceeding equally from the pride of the natural man, and from moral levity. It sounds almost like the frivolous remark of a Voltaire, or a Heine, like the notorious saying: “Dieu me pardonnera, c est son metier!” At least it enables us to forebode how frivolous men might gradually reach such an abyss of wicked principles and of outrageous continued sinning against God’s grace!—But even this reflection exhibits a certain relationship to those deep and undeniable truths in respect to the weakness of the natural man, and the necessity of pointing him to the power of divine grace which alone can deliver him, and which the Old Testament embodies in such expressions as those of Psa_89:48; Psa_90:5 seq.; Psa_102:12 (11); Psa_103:14, but the New Testament in its testimonies, infinitely more consoling, to the salvation which is found only in Christ, such as Act_4:12; Rom_3:23 seq.; Rom_8:34 seq.; Rom_11:30 seq.; Gal_3:22; Eph_2:8 seq., as well as in the not less comforting assurances of the gracious hearing which our Heavenly Father will grant to all prayers addressed to Him in the name of Jesus, and in trust exercised only in His grace (Luk_11:5-13; Luk_18:1-8; Joh_14:13 seq.; Joh_16:23 seq.). Comp. Hengstenberg, p. Job 215: “Job cannot once give up the thought that God is a God of love, and so it seems to him to contradict His nature if, through the immediate prospect of death, the opportunity is taken away from Him of making amends for His severity by love.”
d. Finally, the way in which Job, in Job_7:7-10, expresses himself concerning his destiny after death, though not properly belonging to the luminous side of his discourse, should still be reckoned among those expressions in it which contain positive instruction, and which are important in the development of the Old Testament Revelation. In this gloomy description of the dismal prospect beyond the grave, Job is as far as possible from exhibiting any hope of a resurrection, especially such as is so distinctly and gloriously revealed in Christianity. He knows nothing of such a hope. Just as little, however, does he know anything of any annihilation of his existence, of its total extinction after death. His disconsolateness in view of certain and near death is not that of the materialistic atheist, or of the heathen sage, who, with the hope of a resurrection, abandons also all hope of immortality. When in Job_7:8, and in like manner, in Job_7:21, he speaks of soon “being no more,” this strong expression explains itself by means of the parallel passages which surround it, as meaning that he shall be no more on this earth, that this earthly life and earthly happiness will never again return (see Job_7:7 b; Job_7:8 b; Job_7:21 c), but that, on the contrary, he anticipates a cheerless and prospectless confinement in Hades. He recognizes an existence after death, but one that is necessarily devoid of happiness, unilluminated by a single ray of the Messianic grace of salvation glimmering from afar. His outlook into the Hereafter is essentially one with his dread of Hades, the “king of terrors,” the realm of a never-ending death-gloom, a desolate and horrible darkness relieved by no light (comp. Job_10:20 sq.; Job_20:9 sq.; also the similar gloomy descriptions of the condition of being in Hades in the Psalms: Psa_6:6 [Psa_6:5]; Psa_30:10 [Psa_30:9]; Psa_88:11 [Psa_88:10] sq.; Psa_115:17; in the Proverbs, in Ecclesiastes, etc.). He evidently belongs as yet to those who are groaning under the yoke of bondage to death, which preceded the coming of Christ, those whom the Epistle to the Hebrews designates as τούτους, ὅσοι φόβῳ θανάτου διὰ παντὸς τοῦ ζῆν ἔνοχοι ἦσαν δουλείας (Heb_2:15). He stands, at least in the preceding discourse (it is otherwise later in Job_19:25 sq.), decidedly on the stand-point of those who, being as yet subject to the œconomia Legis, had not learned to view the destiny of the dead in the mild light of the grace of Jesus Christ. Comp. Brentius: “The condition of death or of Hades is such that by its own nature it holds all whom it embraces, and releases them not until Christ, the Son of God, shall by death descend into Hades, i.e. until He shall have died; for through Him, death and Hades being conquered, as many as have been renewed by faith are set free.” Also Delitzsch (1:130 sq.): “From this chaotic conception of the other side of the grave, against which even the psalmists still struggle, the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead had not been set forth at the time of Job, and of the author of the book of Job. The restoration of Israel buried in exile (Ezekiel 37) first gave the impulse to it; and the resurrection of the Prince of Life, who was laid in the grave, set the seal upon it. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was first of all the actual overthrow of Hades.… We shall see by and by how the more his friends torment him, the more he is urged on to the longing for a future life (i.e. a bright Hereafter, full of life and being, a Hereafter worthy of the name); but the word of revelation, which could alone change desire into hope, is wanting. The more tragic and heart-rending Job’s desire to be freed by death from his unbearable suffering is, the more touching and importunate is his prayer that God may consider that now soon he can no longer be an object of His mercy.”
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
A sermon on the whole of the preceding discourse of Job must have two chief divisions: I. Job’s complaint concerning his friends as poor comforters, Job_6:2. Job’s arraignment of God as his cruel, merciless persecutor. In both divisions it would be necessary to set forth so much of Job’s utterances as is blameworthy, perverted, and one-sided, along with that which is of a higher character (such as, in the First Division, that passage particularly, which, from Job’s stand-point, is comparatively justifiable, in which he claims gentle treatment, Job_6:14; and in the Second Division, more particularly the opening and closing verses of chap. 7).—In view of the length of the whole discourse, it will be better, for the most part, to divide it into two texts, corresponding to the usual division by chapters, having in view a final consideration of both chapters. The following thoughts from ancient and modern practical commentators may serve as hints for the homiletic treatment of particular passages.
Job_6:2 sq. Starke: The cross must be weighed not according to reason, but in comparison with the future glory, 2Co_4:17.—Zeyss: That which the much afflicted Job said of the greatness, heaviness, and severity of his suffering, might with much more justice and in the truest sense be said of the suffering of our Redeemer.
Job_6:11 sq. Brentius: Most truly, and at the same time most impatiently, Job confesses that he cannot endure patiently such torments of hell…. Verily, although it is impossible for the flesh to stand in judgment, in Christ all things are possible, and by His virtue even hell is conquered. When, therefore, you hear it said that no amount of fortitude will suffice to bear the wrath of God, you may learn to fear the Lord and to commit yourself to His hands, so that you may be delivered; for He says: Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.
Job_6:14 sq. Idem: Ungodly hypocrites—if at any time they see one in affliction, they presently revile him with much chiding and upbraiding, and seeking out every thing about him from infancy up that is most disgraceful, if they do not report it, they at least suspect it.… On the contrary, it is the nature of piety to plead, to reprove, to be urgent, εὐκαιρως ἀκαίρως, so long as the Lord spares, and grants time for repentance. For He Himself also bears the wicked with the utmost long-suffering, to the end that He might in the meanwhile by doctrine, exhortation and reproof persuade them to repentance.
Job_6:22 sq.: Osiander: Our flesh is altogether restive under the cross, and is wont to show particular resentment toward friends if they do not immediately come to our relief.—Starke (on Job_6:24): A wise man is glad to be admonished when he has erred; Jam_3:17.
Job_7:1 sq. Seb. Schmidt: Each of these (the servant and the hireling) continues in perpetual toils and miseries. Every man may rightly be compared with either, seeing that throughout his life he is overwhelmed with toils and miseries, looks in vain for rest before death.—Starke: Our present life is nothing else than a service. Well for us if therein we serve God; but woe be to us if we yield ourselves to the service of sin; Rom_6:13.—Wohlfarth: Human life is a continuous strife and conflict; a conflict with the infirmities of the body, with the sufferings of this life, with sin! But why does thine eye look sad? Where there is strife, there is victory; and more than all, a noble prize is put before the Christian to strive for, both in this life and in the life beyond.
Job_7:5-6. Weim. Bib.: Our life is empty and fleeting, and all human beauty is perishable; Psa_102:4; Psa_144:4; Psa_103:15.—Wohlfarth: How swift the ceaseless flight of time! How rapidly the moments resolve themselves into hours, the hours into days, the days into months, the months into years! How much even the longest human life resembles a short dream of the morning! Yes, our life hastes away like a weaver’s shuttle, like a breath, like a cloud!
Job_7:8-10. Brentius (on Job_7:9): A beautiful comparison. As a cloud passes away, vanishes, and returns not, so he who goes down into the under-world, and never returns from thence.… In Hades there is no redemption through the feeling of despair, or by one’s own strength or virtues, but there is abundant redemption even in hades through the Lord’s compassion and restoring grace. (Comp. also the words of this expositor quoted above near the end of the Doctrinal and Ethical Remarks.)
Job_7:12-16 : To those who are tried it seems as though God had shut them up in a dark prison, or had even thrust them from Him, while they are still in His hand!—It is not an uncommon thing for those who are tried to be haunted by the purpose of taking their own life; these persons must not be allowed to go unwatched.—Wohlfarth: How shall we overcome the temptation to suicide?
Job_7:19-21 (on Job_7:19): Cocceius: One of two things is to be desired by the godly: either that they may live without fear, that they may enjoy some good in this life, by which they may understand that God is at peace with them, and does not wish to show forth His wrath and justice towards them; or that they may die speedily. Now the godly live in perpetual afflictions and trials, or at least they are always troubled with anxiety and fear concerning them. Hence nothing is more natural than that they should desire to die at once. For truly to live without comfort is harder than to die. And so human nature is not able to bear even the least pressure of God’s wrath. Hence it is plain to see what every discourse of Job’s aims at, to wit, to possess the comfort of the Gospel.—Joach. Lange: We must truly humble ourselves under the mighty and heavy hand of God (1Pe_5:6). Only then do we come to know ourselves, and become poor in spirit, when we become a real burden to ourselves (Job_7:20 c). And that is then the right way of becoming rich towards God (Mat_11:28; Luk_12:21).—Starke: All saints should with Job pray God for the forgiveness of their sins (Psa_32:6).… He who is assured of the forgiveness of his sins can die peacefully and joyfully, Luk_2:29.—See Remarks by Hengstenberg and Delitzsch above, under “Doctrinal and Ethical.”
Footnotes:
[1]“To him who despairs there is love from a friend [from a brother sympathy for him who is bowed down by God, in order that he may not succumb to the grief of his heart], and forsake the fear of the Almighty.”
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv3–30 the sand-- (Pro 27:3).
the sand-- (Pro 27:3).
are swallowed up--See Margin [that is, "I want words to express my grief"]. But Job plainly is apologizing, not for not having had words enough, but for having spoken too much and too boldly; and the Hebrew is, "to speak rashly" [UMBREIT, GESENIUS, ROSENMULLER]. "Therefore were my words so rash."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 First long strophe — JUSTIFICATION BY JOB OF HIS…
First long strophe — JUSTIFICATION BY JOB OF HIS LAMENTATION, Job_6:2-10.
First strophe — His grief is so great that it cannot be weighed, Job_6:2-4.
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2. Grief — כעשׂ, vexation or wrath. See on Job_5:2. Job would have the test made, whether his vexation were greater than his calamity justified.
The balances — Probably the common balance of Egypt, which was also used in early times among the Hebrews. Lepsius gives a representation from an Egyptian tomb, in which a person appears to be weighing rings of gold or silver with weights in the form of a bull’s head. The weighing of words and thoughts in scales is a figure, as Canon Cook (SPEAKER’S Commentary) shows, derived from the remotest antiquity. In the Egyptian ritual, the day of weighing words is a common term for the day of judgment, as in chapter i; and the vignette to the 125th chapter represents the weighing of the heart in the presence of Osiris.
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
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 Ch. Job_6:1-13. Job defends the violence of his complaints…
Ch. Job_6:1-13. Job defends the violence of his complaints and his despair
Eliphaz had made no reference directly to sin on Job’s part; but he drew dark pictures of the evilness of human nature before the eye of his friend, and for his advantage. Job shews a dislike to touch this point. His dislike is that of a man conscious of his innocence, and who can hardly believe that his friends seriously mean what their indirect allusions seem to imply. Hence he attaches his reply to what Eliphaz had openly expressed, namely, his wonder at the despair of Job and his blameable impatience. The idea of his having sinned he touches only in passing and with strong repudiation of it (ch. Job_6:28-30).
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Eliphaz had used the word “confounded” of Job’s hopeless despair (ch. Job_4:5); he had spoken of “impatience,” and “passion”; and had referred to the “fool” or godless man, as shewing this kind of temper under affliction (Job_6:2). All this wounds Job deeply, and he first of all replies to it, justifying the bitterness of his complaints by the overwhelming heaviness of his sorrow.
First, he wishes that his impatience and his calamity were laid against one another in the balance. His calamity is heavier than the sand of the sea. For that which gives it its terror is that it is from God. The arrows of the Almighty are in him, and his spirit drinks in their poison and is paralysed, Job_6:1-4.
Second, a more kindly judgment, he thinks, would have reasoned the other way from his friends, namely, from the violence of his complaints to the greatness of his sufferings. So men reasoned with regard to beasts even. No creature complained if it had no want or no pain; neither would he complain if what was unbearable were not thrust upon him, Job_6:5-7.
Third, so far he goes in his defence. But so keenly does he realize as he describes it (Job_6:6-7) the misery and loathsomeness of his state that here he breaks out into a passionate cry for death, his mind passes into a momentary frenzy, and he says he would leap for joy in the midst of unsparing pain, if it brought death with it. This is the consolation that he seeks. And this consolation he can look for, for he has never denied the words of the Holy One. And no other can he look to, for his flesh is not brass that it should resist his exhausting afflictions; and what issue has he to expect that he should be patient? Job_6:8-13.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 (1) But Job answered and said.—Job replies to Eliphaz…
VI.
(1) But Job answered and said.—Job replies to Eliphaz with the despair of a man who has been baulked of sympathy when he hoped to find it. We cannot trace, nor must we expect to find, the formal reply of a logical argument, fliphaz, he feels, has so misjudged his case that he is neither worthy of a direct reply nor susceptible of one. It is enough for him to reiterate his complaint, and long for one who can enter into it.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 Ch. 6 and 7 contain Job"s reply to Eliphaz.…
Ch. 6 and 7 contain Job"s reply to Eliphaz. In ch. 6 he confines himself to three points:
(1) a justification of his "griefi.e. of his vexation and impatience (vers. 1-7);
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(2) a declaration that the destruction with which he has been threatened, (Job_4:9-11, 21 5:2) is exactly the thing which he most longs for (vers. 8-13); and
(3) a retort upon his friends, whom he regards as having all spoken by the mouth of Eliphaz, and whom he reproaches with their want of sympathy (vers. 14-23), and with the weakness of their arguments (vers. 24-30).
Vers. 1, 2. But Job answered and said, Oh that my grief were throughly weighed! rather, my anger, or my vexation the same word as that used by Eliphaz when reproaching Job, in Job_5:2. Job wishes that, before men blame him, they would calmly weigh the force of his feelings and expressions against the weight of the calamity which oppresses him. His words may seem too strong and too violent; but are they more than a just counterpoise to the extreme character of his afflictions? The weighing of words and thoughts was an essential element in the Egyptian conception of the judgment, where Thoth held the balance, and in the one scale were placed the merits of the deceased, in the other the image of Ma, or Truth, and his fate was determined by the side to which the balance inclined ("Ritual of the Dead," ch. 125.; Wilkinson, "Ancient Egyptians," vol. 5. p. 252). And my calamity laid in the balances together. My calamity placed in one scale, and my vexation in the other, and so weighed, each against each.
Vers. 1-13. Job to Eliphaz: 1. Apologies and prayers.
I A DESPERATE MAN"S DEFENCE.
1. Job"s calamities surveyed.
(1) Their weight. Heavier than the sand of the seas. Employed elsewhere to depict what is innumerable (Gen_22:17 Psa_78:27) and immeasurable, (1Ki_4:29 Jer_33:22) the sand upon the seashore is here selected to set forth the notion of incomparable weight. (Pro_27:3) Like the ocean beach stretching away measureless and oppressive, the sorrow of the patriarch was intolerably burdensome. Scripture designates as burdens afflictions and temporal calamities of all sorts, whether of individuals (Psa_55:22 2Ki_9:25) or of nations. (Isa_15:1 Isa_17:1 Isa_19:1) Yet more crushing and intolerable even than these is the burden laid by sin upon awakened and sensitive souls. (Psa_38:4)
(2) Their intensity. Likened to the wounds of poisoned arrows, with a multitude of which Job describes himself as transfixed, not in body only, but in spirit too. Arrows are put in Scripture for afflictions, calamities, judgments, which, like them, are often swift, (Zec_9:14) unexpected, (Psa_91:5) sharp, (Psa_45:5) difficult to be removed, (Psa_38:1, Psa_38:2) and deadly, especially when sent in wrath. (Deu_32:42)
(3) Their effect. Exhausting; the venom shot into Job"s veins setting them on fire, corrupting his blood, inflaming his flesh, enfeebling his spirit, and generally producing a sensation of constantly increasing weakness; terrifying, inspiring his trembling heart with ghostly alarms and paralyzing fears, which seemed to gather round him like a troop of pale specters from the outlying posts of God"s dominions, and to marshal themselves like a sable host against him; nauseating, causing his soul to revolt against them as the stomach turns sickly at the sight of loathsome food.
(4) Their origin. From God. This was the principal aggravation of the patriarch"s misery. So long as a sufferer can see God"s face, the heaviest load of calamity will not crush him; but when God"s favour appears to be withdrawn, the spirit sinks like lead in the mighty waters. (Job_9:13)
2. Job"s grief justified.
(1) Compared with his calamities, it was not extravagant. His heated words (ver. 3) had not been disproportioned to the misery which had given them expression. Not balancing the two things his friend had unjustly accused him of impatience and rage. Weighed together, the overwhelming character of his sorrow would "swallow up" his words as a wholly inadequate utterance of his grief. That Eliphaz failed to estimate accurately the intensity of Job"s sufferings was natural, since no man can put himself exactly in another"s place, and only the heart that suffers can know its own bitterness. (Pro_14:10) Yet charity should have moved him to judge with leniency, and speak with tenderness of, a grief whose cause he did not comprehend. At the same time, it is hardly doubtful that Job"s misery did not warrant the appalling outburst of ch. 3; but men at all times (and especially in affliction) are readier to excuse themselves than others.
(2) Considered in itself, it was not unnatural. It was not without cause. Even the senseless ass and the stupid ox were wise enough to hold their tongues when placed in circumstances of asinine and bovine felicity; i.e. when they had plenty of food; and surely he had as much discernment as these irrational creatures, and could distinguish whether he was miserable or happy, and cry out or be silent accordingly. Then having a cause, it was likewise irrepressible, it being as impossible for him not to complain as it was for a person to eat what was unsavoury or tasteless without making wry faces and giving vent to his displeasure.
II A MISERABLE MAN"S PRAYER.
1. Job"s urgent request. "Oh that I might have my request; and that God would grant me the thing that I long for!" (ver. 8) that thing being death. (Job_3:21) Job longed for death as a release from his sufferings; (Job_3:13) Elijah, under a sense of weariness and disappointment; (1Ki_19:4) Jonah, in a fit of rage and self-conceit; (Jon_4:8) St. Paul, through ardent longing for heaven; (Php_1:23) Christ, through vehement desire after man"s salvation. (Luk_12:50)
2. Job"s pitiful entreaty. "Even that it would please God to destroy me; that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off" (ver. 9). That Job does not think of taking his own life, although often strongly tempted to do so by his peculiar malady, (Job_7:15, Job_7:16) although death was theparamount desire of his heart, and although he professed himself free from anxiety about the future, was a proof, not only of Job"s regard for the sanctity of life, and of his clear recognition of God"s proprietorship in that life, but also of his own moral integrity, and of the intensity with which he still shrank from the perpetration of known sin.
3. Job"s melancholy plea. "Then should I yet have comfort" (ver. 10). The mere anticipation of a speedy dissolution would not only cause him to forget his misery, it would thrill him with extreme delight; yea, if God would but assure him that every stroke was hastening his end, he would bear without a murmur the most unsparing affliction that might be laid upon him.
4. Job"s twofold motive.
(1) No fear of death. "For I have not concealed the words of the Holy One" (ver. 10). Had Job been apprehensive of meeting God, he would not so earnestly have longed, or so vehemently entreated, to be removed. The only thing that could have damped his exultation in the prospect of death would have been uncertainty about his future. But of this he was devoid, since he had not concealed, i.e. had not denied or neglected, but openly has practised, the words of the Holy One.
(2) No hope of life. "What is my strength, that I should hope? and what is mine end, that I should prolong my life?" (ver. 11). It was impossible that his strength, which was not that of stones or of brass (ver. 12) could hold out much longer, and therefore idle in Eliphaz to speak, or him to think, of restoration. Nay, supposing he should recover, it could only be for so short a period that it was not worth while fostering expectation of it. But in point of fact, all natural power of rallying had departed from him, and nought remained that could be matured into health again (ver. 13). Job clearly judged in this matter on the principles of sense and reason, forgetting that all things were possible with God, that God can raise a feeble man up from the very brink of the grave, (Isa_38:10-20) ay, even from the dead, (contrast the faith of Abraham, Rom_4:19 Heb_11:19) and that God delights to perfect his strength in human weakness. (2Co_12:9)
Learn:
1. Though religion requires sufferers to submit to God"s chastisements, it does not oblige them to yield to man"s unjust accusations. Job sinned not in replying to Eliphaz.
2. It is extremely hard to hold the balance evenly between the soul"s calamities and the heart"s griefs, whether in ourselves or others. Job blamed Eliphaz for not justly weighing his sufferings and his sorrow, while practically Eliphaz censured Job for a like offence.
3. Though it is a sore trial to a good man in affliction to miss the sympathy of friends, it is incomparably more painful and distressing to lone the sense of God"s favour, not to speak of experiencing the frowns of God"s anger. Shaddai"s arrows and Eloah"s terrors were infinitely harder for Job to bear than Eliphaz"s insinuations.
4. The best of men are "poore sillie creatures" when God presseth them with judgments, quite incompetent to bear the shock of outward calamity unless God shall hold them up. Job"s standing upright in the midst of such a tempest of tribulation as swept around him was a proof, not of man"s strength, but of God"s grace.
5. It is no sin to long for death, provided we wait God"s time for its coming. Job, though urgent for release from his sufferings, would not be released by any hand but God"s.
6. The best way to overcome the fear of death is to have a comfortable outlook into the future. Job was not afraid of dying, because not afraid of meeting God.
7. The best preparation for both death and eternity is not to conceal from our vision, but to hide within our hearts, the words of the Holy One.
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON Vers. 1-13. The sufferer"s self-justification.
(Ch. 6, 7) We have seen that Eliphaz"s counsels, though well-meant, were ill-timed. They were right words"but not fitly spoken as to person, time, and place. They cause the poor sufferer to wince afresh instead of soothing his pain. The tumult of his spirit is now aggravated into a very tempest of woe. The human spirit is a thing of moods. We have watched the marvellous changes that pass over the surface of a lake beneath a tempestuous sky. And such are the rapid changes of pain that now pass over the mind of Job, relieved here and there by flashes of calmer reflection, of faith and hope. The picture is instructive, teaching us how feeble and unstable a thing is the human mind, and how deeply it needs to look out from itself for a sure support in the Eternal. Let us briefly take note of these moods. Not without profit shall we try to understand them if we thereby cultivate that deeper sympathy with our brethren in adversity which Job seemed to demand at the hand of his friends in vain.
I THE EXPERIENCE OF THE IMMENSITY OF SUFFERING. (Vers. 1-14) There are times when every nerve of the sensitive organization seems to be turned into a channel of pain; when the creature, instead of basking in the brilliant ether of unbounded joy, is submerged in a boundless ocean of misery. "All thy waves and billows have gone over me." It is with this feeling that Job exclaims, "Would that a term, a measure, a weight, might be applied to my sufferings!" A day, an hour, of such woe seems as an eternity!
II THE FEAR OF SINNING WITH THE TONGUE. Ver. 3, which appears to mean, "Therefore my words idly bubbled," like the impatient cries and reproaches of little children against the parents whom they level But this is the only definite sin of which Job is conscious. And he prays that he may be delivered from it in this trying hour. So said the psalmist, "I will take heed to my ways, that I offend not with my tongue." Let Christians imitate this example. Let them bridle their tongues with holy reverence, and cast upon them as a spell the prayer of Jesus in the garden. "Forgive these wild and wandering cries, Forgive them when they fail in truth, And in thy wisdom make me wise!
III THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF HIS SUFFERINGS TRACED TO GOD. (Ver. 4) It is his arrows which have fastened themselves with poisonous inflammation in his breast; his host of terrors that have beleaguered his soul. Though in such extreme moments it is hard to reconcile our sufferings with the goodness of God, it is well to hold firmly to the clue of Divine causation. That which has not come causelessly will not causelessly remain. This is the one crevice through which light steals into the dungeon: "God is in all I suffer.
IV APOLOGY FOR HIS COMPLAINTS. (Vers. 5-7) They are true to nature. God has given to all animals their natural voice of pleasure and of pain. And these voices express natural tastes and repugnances. The ox and the ass are silent at the well-filled stall. It is only when unsavoury food is offered that we hear the cries of complaint. And what an unsavoury mess is this which his friends would place before him, in their rigid application to him of the doctrine that his suffering witnesses his guilt!
V DEATH CRAVED AS A BOON. (Vers. 8-13) The very thought of it excites a frantic joy. Whereas Eliphaz had spoken of deliverance from death as one of the privileges of the blessed man, and of its lingering approach in a happy old age, Job would crave a speedy dismissal as the last boon which he feels entitled, in a clear conscience, to ask of God I "I have not denied the words of the Holy One; I shall not pass, an impenitent, rejected soul; grant me this last, this speedy favour, to die!" If such a state of mind excites our keenest pity, what shall we think of the condition of those Buddhists or pessimists among the heathen and ourselves, who have built a doctrine upon this horror-stricken mood, and teach that the highest good for man is absorption in some Nirvana of dreamless, unconscious nothingness? Truly, the gospel of Christ is the only remedy for these melancholy aberrations. M. Naville says that the impassioned earnestness of Lacroix, the great Indian missionary, which he had listened to in earlier years, was only fully understood by him when subsequent study had acquainted him with the gloomy beliefs of the Oriental world.
VI CONFESSION OF UTTER WEAKNESS AND DESPONDENCY. (Vers. 11-13) He has neither strength nor patience to look forward to the end which is to reward endurance. Sooner or later death must be the end; and why not sooner rather than later? But weakness cannot wring from his tortured breast the confession of a guilt which conscience refuses to own. He has not denied the words of the Holy One. His heart has been true to God. This consciousness is still a kind of strength in weakness, and enables him to ask this last boon at God"s hands a speedy death. J.
HOMILIES BY R. GREEN Vers. 1-13. A true estimate of grief under the severities of affliction.
Even the strong man cries for help and release. Job, in his extreme sufferings, desires that a fair judgment may be formed of them and of his complaint. Put this into one seals, and them into the other, and behold which of them is the lighter. Thus he describes them
I THE INSUFFERABLE WEIGHT OF HIS AFFLICTION. It is as the unknown weight of the sand of the seashore. Affliction is truly as the pressure of a great weight upon the frail body. The idea of patience is gained from bearing up under a load. Heavy is the load, indeed, under which this servant of the Lord is bowed down. It is not to be estimated. No onlooker can determine it. Therefore should judgment be withheld when from the life of the sufferer there escapes the sigh of complaint. He only knows his sufferings; and he may know that his cry does not fully represent them. The untouched observer but hears the cry, and cannot put that into comparison with a pain that he feels not, and the measure of which pain the cry is supposed to represent. How shall a just judgment, therefore, be given?
II THE KEENNESS OF THE PANG OF HIS SUFFERINGS. They pierce as doth an arrow; and are as poisoned arrows; and as arrows shot forth by no feeble arm, but by the Almighty. They penetrate to the inner spirit. The strength of their burning poison drinks up burns up his spirit. He does not encounter a feeble foe. "The terrors of God set themselves in array" against him. Is it wonderful that his words are hasty? Is there not a cause? "Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass?
III THE ABHORRENT CHARACTER OF THE THINGS WITH WHICH HE HAS TO DO. "That which my soul refused from which I turned away in disgust I am compelled to take as my daily bread. Yea, that which should give me comfort, even my refreshing food, is loathsome to me. Sadly does he thus represent the nature of the foul disease that cleaveth to him. The onlookers are pained, hut they taste it not. To him it is as his food.
IV HE FURTHER DESCRIBES HIS SUFFERING CONDITION AS SO SAD THAT HE LONGS FOR DEATH. "That it would please God to destroy me!" How low is life reduced when there seems to be no release but in the gravel Worn to the earth, this sufferer cries for an end to be put to his pains. He has not strength to bear up patiently under the weight of them. He cannot desire prolonged life; for what shall the end of it be? Weary, indeed, is that spirit that craves rest in the tomb. Job feels himself so utterly powerless, that continued endurance is impossible to him. He little knew that he could survive all that he could yet pass through all, and bear honour to God, and perceive in the end the testimony of the Divine approbation. To him it was true, and he would prove it, though the words had not fallen on his ear, "With man it is impossible, but not with God; for with God all things are possible." Job"s history, therefore, illustrates the sufficiency of the Divine grace to sustain men beneath the uttermost pressure of sorrow. R.G.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 10, 14, 15, 24, 25 But Job answered and said.
Job_6:1-30
But Job answered and said.
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Jobs answer to Eliphaz
We must come upon grief in one of two ways and Job seems to have come upon grief in a way that is to be deprecated. He came upon it late in life. He was in solid prosperity and positive and genuine comfort. Grief must tell heavily whenever it comes upon a man in such a condition. This accounts for his lamentation, and whine, and long-drawn threnody. He was not accustomed to it. Some have been born into trouble, and they have become acclimatised. Blessed are they who come upon grief in that method. Such a method appears to be the method of real mercy. Grief must come. The devil allows no solitary life to pass upward into heaven without fighting its way at some point or other. Grief delights in monologue. Job seems scarcely to lay himself down mentally upon the line adopted by Eliphaz. It is most difficult to find the central line of Jobs speech. Too much logic would have spoiled the grief. Reasoning there is, but it comes and goes; it changes its tone; it strikes the facts of life as the trained fingers of the player might strike a chord of music. Note how interrogative is Jobs speech. More than twenty questions occur in Jobs reply. Grief is great in interrogation. Job is asking, Are the old foundations still here? Things have surely been changed in the nighttime, for I am unaccustomed to what is now round about me. Notice how many misunderstandings there are in the speech of the suffering man! Job not only misunderstood his friends and his pain, he misunderstood all men, and the whole system and scheme of things. How suffering not rightly accepted or understood colours and perverts the whole thought and service of life! Job thinks life not worth living. So much depends on our mental mood, or our spiritual condition. Hence the need of our being braced up, fired, made strong. We are what we really are in our heart and mind. Keep the soul right and it will rule the body. The Bible never shrinks from telling us that there is grief in the world, and that grief can be accounted for on moral principles. The Bible measures the grief, never makes light of it. But it can be sanctified, turned into blessing. Any book which so speaks as it does deserves the confidence of men who know the weight and bitterness of suffering. Do not come to the Bible only for condolence and sympathy; come to it for instruction, inspiration, and then you may come to it for consolation, sympathy, tenderest comfort, for the very dew of the morning, for the balm of heaven, for the very touch of Christ. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Jobs first reply
In his reply to Eliphaz, Job first takes hold of the charge of impatience and hasty indignation made in the opening of the fifth chapter. He is quite aware that his words were rash when he cursed his day and cried impatiently for death. But had Eliphaz duly considered his state, the weight of his trouble causing a physical sense of indescribable oppression? We need not fall into the mistake of supposing that it is only the pain of his disease which makes Jobs misery so heavy. Rather is it that his troubles have come from God; they are the arrows of the Almighty. Mere suffering and loss, even to the extremity of death, he could have borne without a murmur, But he had thought God to be his friend. Why on a sudden have these darts been launched against him by the hand he trusted? What does the Almighty mean? The evil-doer who suffers knows why he is afflicted. The martyr, enduring for conscience sake, has his support in the truth to which he bears witness, the holy cause for which he dies. Job has no explanation, no support. He cannot understand Providence. The God with whom he supposed himself to be at peace suddenly becomes an angry, incomprehensible Power, blighting and destroying His servants life. Existence poisoned, the couch of ashes encompassed with terrors, is it any wonder that passionate words break forth from his lips? A cry is the last power left to him. So it is with many. The seeming needlessness of their sufferings, the impossibility of tracing these to any cause in their past history, in a word, the mystery of the pain confounds the mind and adds to anguish and desolation an unspeakable horror of darkness. Sometimes the very thing guarded against is that which happens; a mans best intelligence appears confuted by destiny or chance. Why has he, amongst the many, been chosen for this? Do all things come alike to all, righteous and wicked? The problem becomes terribly acute in the case of earnest, God-fearing men and women who have not yet found the real theory of suffering. Endurance for others does not always explain. All cannot be rested on that. Nor, unless we speak falsely for God, will it avail to say, These afflictions have fallen on us for our sins. For even if the conscience does not give the lie to that assertion, as Jobs conscience did, the question demands a clear answer, why the penitent should suffer--those who believe--to whom God imputes no iniquity. If it is for our transgression we suffer, either our own faith and religion are vain, or God does not forgive excepting in form, and the law of punishment retains its force. We have here the serious difficulty that legal fictions seem to hold their ground even in the dealings of the Most High with those who trust Him The truth is, that suffering has no proportion to the guilt of sin, but is related in the scheme of Divine providence to life in this world, its movement, discipline, and perfecting in the individual and the race. (Robert A. Watson, D. D.)
Jobs great suffering
It was--
I. Unappreciated by men. This is the meaning of the first five verses. Eliphaz had no conception of the profundity and poignancy of Jobs suffering. There are two things indicated here in relation to them.
1. They were unutterable. My words are swallowed up. His whole humanity was in torture.
(1) He suffered in body. He was smitten with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of the head, and he took a potsherd to scrape himself withal, and sat down amongst the ashes.
(2) He suffered in mind. The arrows of the Almighty were within him, whose poison drank up his spirits.
2. They were irrepressible. Doth the wild ass bray when tie hath grass? Or loweth the ox over his fodder? The idea here is, I cannot but cry; my cries spring from my agonies. Had not the wild ass his grass, he would bray with a ravenous hunger; and had not the ox his fodder, he too would low in an agony for food; this is nature, and my cries are natural--I cannot help them. Who can be silent in torture? His suffering was--
II. Misunderstood by friends. Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt? or is there any taste in the white of an egg? This language seems to me to point to Jobs impression of the address which Eliphaz had delivered to him. Job seemed to feel--
1. That the address of Eliphaz was utterly insipid. Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt? As if he had said, your speech lacks that which can make it savoury to me; it does not apply: you misunderstand my sufferings: I suffer not because I am a great sinner, as you seem to imply: my own conscience attests my rectitude: nor because I need this terrible chastisement, as you have said: you neither understand the cause nor the nature of my sufferings, therefore your talk is beside the mark.
2. That the address of Eliphaz was truly offensive. The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meats. Does not this mean what Dr. Bernard says, the things you speak--your unmeaning, insipid words and similes--are as the loathsomeness of my food, or are as loathsome to my soul as food now is to my body? You intrude remarks on me that are not only tasteless, because of their unsuitability, but that are as disgusting as loathsome food.
III. Intolerable to himself. He longed for death; he believed that in the grave he would have rest.
1. Though his life was unbearable, he would not take it away himself. He felt that he Was not the proprietor, only the trustee of his life.
2. He was not forgetful of his relation to his Maker. I have not concealed the words of the Holy One. I have not shunned to declare my attachment to Himself and His cause. His sufferings did not obliterate his memory of his Creator, drive him from His presence, or impel him to blasphemy or atheism. No, he still held on. God was the Great Object in his horizon; he saw Him through the thick hot steam of his fiery trials.
3. Though his life was unbearable, he knew that it could not last long. What is my strength that I should hope? and what is mine end that I should prolong my life? etc. Whether God will loose His hand and cut me off, and thus put an end to my existence or not, I cannot endure long. I am not made of stone or brass, and I cannot stand these sufferings long. However powerful the human frame may be, great sufferings must sooner or later break it to pieces.
4. Though his life was unbearable, he was conscious of an inner strength. Is not my help in me? And is wisdom driven quite from me? No strength like this, physical strength is good, intellectual strength is better, but moral strength is the best of all. (Homilist.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Job 6, 7
VIII.
MEN FALSE: GOD OVERBEARING
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Job 6, 7
JOB SPEAKS
WORST to endure of all things is the grief that preys on a mans own heart because no channel outside self is provided for the hot stream of thought. Now that Eliphaz has spoken, Job has something to arouse him, at least to resentment. The strength of his mind revives as he finds himself called to a battle of words. And how energetic he is! The long address of Eliphaz we saw to be incoherent, without the backbone of any clear conviction, turning hither and thither in the hope of making some way or other a happy hit. But as soon as Job begins to speak there is coherency, strong thought running through the variety of expression, the anxiety for instruction, the sense of bewilderment and trouble. We feel at once that we are in contact with a mind no half-truths can satisfy, that will go with whatever difficulty to the very bottom of the matter.
Supreme mark of a healthy nature, this. People are apt to praise a mind at peace, moving composedly from thought to thought, content "to enjoy the things which others understand," not distressed by moral questions. But minds enjoying such peace are only to be praised if the philosophy of life has been searched out and tried, and the great trust in God which resolves all doubt has been found. While life and providence, ones own history and the history of the world present what appear to be contradictions, problems that baffle and disturb the soul, how can a healthy mind be at rest? Our intellectual powers are not given simply that we may enjoy; they are given that we may understand. A mind hungers for knowledge, as a body for food, and cannot be satisfied unless the reason and the truth of things are seen. You may object that some are not capable of understanding, that indeed Divine providence, the great purposes of God, lie so far and so high beyond the ordinary human range as to be incomprehensible to most of us. Of what use, then, is revelation? Is it given merely to bewilder us, to lead us on in a quest which at the last must leave many of the searchers unsatisfied, without light or hope? If so, the Bible mocks us, the prophets were deceivers, even Christ Himself is found no Light of the world, but a dreamer who spoke of that which can never be realised. Not thus do I begin in doubt, and end in doubt. There are things beyond me; but exact or final knowledge of these is not necessary. Within my range and reach through nature and religion, through the Bible and the Son of God, are the principles I need to satisfy my souls hunger. And in every healthy mind there will be desire for truth which, often baffled, will continue till understanding comes.
And here we join issue with the agnostic, who denies this vital demand of the soul. Our thought dwelling on life and all its varied experience-sorrow and fear, misery and hope, love threatened by death yet unquenchable, the exultation of duty, the baffling of ambition, unforeseen peril and unexpected deliverance-our thought, I say, "dealing with these elements of life, will not rest in the notion that all is due to chance or to blind forces, that evolution can never be intelligently followed." The modern atheist or agnostic falls into the very error for which he used to reprove faith when he contemptuously bids us get rid of the hope of understanding the world and the Power directing it, when he invites us to remember our limitations and occupy ourselves with things within our range. Religion used to be taunted with crippling mans faculties and denying full play to his mental activity. Scientific unbelief does so now. It restricts us to the seen and temporal, and, if consistent, ought to refuse all ideals and all desires for a "perfect" state. The modern sage, intent on the study of material things and their changes, confining himself to what can be seen, heard, touched, or by instruments analysed, may have nothing but scorn or, say, pity for one who cries out of trouble-
"Have I sinned? Yet, what have I done unto Thee, O Thou Watcher of men?
Why hast Thou set me as Thy stumbling block,
So that I am a burden to myself?
And why wilt Thou not pardon my transgression,
And cause my sin to pass away?"
But the man whose soul is eager in the search for reality must endeavour to wrest from Heaven itself the secret of his dissatisfaction with the real, his conflict with the real, and why he must so often suffer from the very forces that sustain his life. Yes, the passion of the soul continues. It protests against darkness, and therefore against materialism. Conscious mind presses toward an origin of thought. Soul must find a Divine Eternal Soul. Where nature opens ascending ways to the reason in its quest; where prophets and sages have cut paths here and there through the forest of mystery; where the brave and true testify of a light they have seen and invite us to follow; where One stands high and radiant above the cross on which He suffered and declares Himself the Resurrection and the Life, -there men will advance, feeling themselves inspired to maintain the search for that Eternal Truth without the hope of which all our life here is a wearisome pageant, a troubled dream, a bitter slavery.
In his reply to Eliphaz, Job first takes hold of the charge of impatience and hasty indignation made in the opening of the fifth chapter. He is quite aware that his words were rash when he cursed his day and cried impatiently for death. In accusing him of rebellious passion, Eliphaz had shot the only arrow that went home; and now Job, conscientious here, pulls out the arrow to show it and the wound. "Oh," he cries, "that my hasty passion were duly weighed, and my misery were laid in the balance against it! For then would it, my misery, be found heavier than the sand of the seas: therefore have my words been rash." He is almost deprecatory. Yes: he will admit the impatience and vehemence with which he spoke. But then, had Eliphaz duly considered his state, the weight of his trouble causing a physical sense of indescribable oppression? Let his friends look at him again, a man prostrated with sore disease and grief, dying slowly in the lepers exile.
"The arrows of the Almighty are within me,
The poison whereof my spirit drinketh up.
The terrors of God beleaguer me."
We need not fall into the mistake of supposing that it is only the pain of his disease which makes Jobs misery so heavy. Rather is it that his troubles have come from God; they are "the arrows of the Almighty." Mere suffering and loss, even to the extremity of death, he could have borne without a murmur. But he had thought God to be his friend. Why on a sudden have those darts been launched against him by the hand he trusted? What does the Almighty mean? The evildoer who suffers knows why he is afflicted. The martyr enduring for conscience sake has his support in the truth to which he bears witness, the holy cause for which he dies. Job has no explanation, no support, he cannot understand providence. The God with whom he supposed himself to be at peace suddenly becomes an angry incomprehensible Power, blighting and destroying His servants life. Existence poisoned, the couch of ashes encompassed with terrors, is it any wonder that passionate words break from his lips? A cry is the last power left to him.
So it is with many. The seeming needlessness of their sufferings, the impossibility of tracing these to any cause in their past history, in a word, the mystery of the pain confounds the mind, and adds to anguish and desolation an unspeakable horror of darkness. Sometimes the very thing guarded against is that which happens; a mans best intelligence appears confuted by destiny or chance. Why has he amongst the many been chosen for this? Do all things come alike to all, righteous and wicked? The problem becomes terribly acute in the case of earnest God-fearing men and women who have not yet found the real theory of suffering. Endurance for others does not always explain. All cannot be rested on that. Nor unless we speak falsely for God will it avail to say, These afflictions have fallen on us for our sins. For even if the conscience does not give the lie to that assertion, as Jobs conscience did, the question demands a clear answer why the penitent should suffer, those who believe, to whom God imputes no iniquity. If it is for our transgressions we suffer, either our own faith and religion are vain, or God does not forgive excepting in form, and the law of punishment retains its force. We have here the serious difficulty that legal fictions seem to hold their ground even in the dealings of the Most High with those who trust Him. Many are in the direst trouble still for the same reason as Job, and might use his very words. Taught to believe that: suffering is invariably connected with wrong doing and is always in proportion to it, they cannot find in their past life any great transgressions for which they should be racked with constant pain or kept in grinding penury and disappointment. Moreover, they had imagined that through the mediation of Christ their sins were expiated and their guilt blotted out. What strange error is there in the creed or in the world? Have they never believed? Has God turned against them? So they inquire in the darkness.
The truth, however, as shown in a previous chapter, is that suffering has no proportion to the guilt of sin, but is related in the scheme of Divine providence to life in this world, its movement, discipline, and perfecting in the individual and the race. Afflictions, pains, and griefs are appointed to the best as well as the worst, because all need to be tried and urged on from imperfect faith and spirituality to vigour, constancy, and courage of soul. The principle is not dearly stated in the Book of Job, but underlies it, as truth must underlie all genuine criticism and every faithful picture of human life. The inspiration of the poem is so to present the facts of human experience that the real answer alone can satisfy. And in the speech we are now considering some imperfect and mistaken views are swept so completely aside that their survival is almost unaccountable.
Beginning with the fifth verse we have a series of questions somewhat difficult to interpret:-
"Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass?
Or loweth the ox over his fodder?
Can that be eaten which is unsavoury, without salt?
Or is there any taste in the white of an egg?
My soul refuseth to touch them;
They are to me as mouldy bread."
By some these questions are supposed to describe sarcastically the savourless words of Eliphaz, his "solemn and impertinent prosing." This, however, would break the continuity of the thought. Another view makes the reference to be to Jobs afflictions, which he is supposed to compare to insipid and loathsome food. But it seems quite unnatural to take this as the meaning. Such pain and grief and loss as he had undergone were certainly not like the white of an egg. But he has already spoken wildly, unreasonably, and he now feels himself to be on the point of breaking out afresh in similar impatient language. Now, the wild ass does not complain when it has grass, nor the ox when it has fodder; so, if his mind were supplied with necessary explanations of the sore troubles he is enduring, he would not be impatient, he would not complain. His soul hungers to know the reason of the calamities that darken his life. Nothing that has been said helps him. Every suggestion presented to his mind is either trifling and vain, without the salt of wisdom, like the white of an egg, or offensive, disagreeable. Ruthlessly sincere, he will not pretend to be satisfied when he is not. His soul refuses to touch the offered explanations and reasons. Verily, they are like mouldy bread to him. It is his own impatience, his loud cries and inquiries, he desires to account for; he does not attack Eliphaz with sarcasm, but defends himself.
At this point there is a brief halt in the speech. As if after a pause, due to a sharp sting of pain, Job exclaims: "Oh that God would please to destroy me!" He had felt the paroxysm approaching; he had endeavoured to restrain himself, but the torture drives him, as before, to cry for death. Again and again in the course of his speeches sudden turns of this kind occur, points at which the dramatic feeling of the writer comes out. He will have us remember the terrible disease and keep continually in mind the setting of the thoughts. Job had roused himself in beginning his reply, and, for a little, eagerness had overcome pain. But now he falls back, mastered by cruel sickness which appears to be unto death. Then he speaks:-
"Oh that I might have my request, That God would give me the thing I long for, Even that God would be pleased to crush me, That He would loose His hand and tear me off; And I should yet have comfort, I should even exult amidst unsparing pain, For I have not denied the words of the Holy One."
The longing for death which now returns on Job is not so passionate as before; but his cry is quite as urgent and unqualified. As we have already seen, no motion towards suicide is at any point of the drama attributed to him. He does not, like Shakespeares Hamlet, whose position is in some respects very similar, question with himself,
"Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?"
Nor may we say that Job is deterred from the act of self-destruction by Hamlets thought,
"The dread of something after death
that makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of."
Job has the fear and faith of God still, and not even the pressure of "unsparing pain" can move him to take into his own hands the ending of that torment God bids him bear. He is too pious even to dream of it. A true Oriental, with strong belief that the will of God must be done, he could die without a murmur, in more than stoical courage; but a suicide he cannot be. And indeed the Bible, telling us for the most part of men of healthy mind, has few suicides to record. Saul, Zimri, Ahithophel, Judas, break away thus from dishonour and doom; but these are all who, in impatience and cowardice, turn against Gods decree of life.
Here, then, the strong religious feeling of the writer obliges him to reject that which the poets of the world have used to give the strongest effect to their work. From the Greek dramatists, through Shakespeare to Browning, the drama is full of that quarrel with life which flies to suicide. In this great play, as we may well call it, of Semitic faith and genius, the ideas are masterly, the hold of universal truth is sublime. Perhaps the author was not fully aware of all he suggests, but he feels that suicide serves no end: it settles nothing; and his problem must be settled. Suicide is an attempt at evasion in a sphere where evasion is impossible. God and the soul have a controversy together, and the controversy must be worked out to an issue.
Job has not cursed God nor denied his words. With this clear conscience he is not afraid to die; yet, to keep it, he must wait on the decision of the Almighty-that it would please God to crush him, or tear him off like a branch from the tree of life. The prospect of death, if it were granted by God, would revive him for the last moment of endurance. He would leap up to meet the stroke, Gods stroke, the pledge that God was kind to him after all.
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,
Though a battles to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
And bade me creep past.
According to Eliphaz there was but one way for a sufferer. If Job would bow humbly in acknowledgment of guilt, and seek God in penitence, then recovery would come; the hand that smote would heal and set him on high; all the joy and vigour of life would be renewed, and after another long course of prosperity, he should come to his grave at last as a shock of corn is carried home in its season. Recalling this glib promise, Job puts it from him as altogether incongruous with his state. He is a leper; he is dying.
"What is my strength that I should wait,
And what my term that I should be patient?
Is my strength the strength of stones?
Is my flesh brass?
Is not my help within me gone,
And energy quite driven from me?"
Why, his condition is hopeless. What can he look for but death? Speak to him of a new term; it was adding mockery to despair. But he would die still true to God, and therefore he seeks the end of conflict. If he were to live on he could not be sure of himself, especially when, with failing strength, he had to endure the nausea and stings of disease. As yet he can face death as a chief should.
The second part of the address begins at the fourteenth verse of chapter 6. (Job_14:6) Here Job rouses himself anew, and this time to assail his friends. The language of their spokesman had been addressed to him from a height of assumed moral superiority, and this had stirred in Job a resentment quite natural. No doubt the three friends showed friendliness. He could not forget the long journey they had made to bring him comfort. But when he bethought him how in his prosperity he had often entertained these men, held high discourse with them on the ways of God, opened his heart and showed them all his life, he marvelled that now they could fail of the thing he most wanted-understanding. The knowledge they had of him should have made suspicion impossible, for they had the testimony of his whole life. The author is not unfair to his champions of orthodoxy. They fail where all such have a way of failing. If their victim in the poem presses on to stinging sarcasm and at last oversteps the bounds of fair criticism, one need not wonder. He is not intended as a type of the meek, self-depreciating person who lets slander pass without a protest. If they have treated him badly, he will tell them to their faces what he thinks. Their want of justice might cause a weak man to slip and lose himself.
Pity from his friend is due to the despairing,
Lest he forsake the fear of the Almighty:
But my brethren have deceived as a torrent,
Like the streams of the ravine, that pass away,
That become blackish with ice,
In which the snow is dissolved.
What time they wax warm they vanish,
When it is hot they are dried up out of their place.
The caravans turn aside,
They go up into the desert and are perishing.
The caravans of Tema look out,
The merchants of Sheba hope for them.
They were ashamed because they had trusted,
They came up to them and blushed.
Even so, now are ye nought.
The poetical genius of the writer overflows here. The allegory is beautiful, the wit keen, the knowledge abundant; yet, in a sense, we have to pardon the interposition. Job is not quite in the mood to represent his disappointment by such an elaborate picture. He would naturally seek a sharper mode of expression. Still, the passage must not be judged by our modern dramatic rules. This is the earliest example of the philosophic story, and elaborate word pictures are part of the literature of the piece.
We accept the pleasure of following a description which Job must be supposed to have painted in melancholy humour.
The scene is in the desert, several days journey from the Jauf, that valley already identified as the region in which Job lived. Beyond the Nefood to the west towers the Jebel Tobeyk, a high ridge covered in winter with deep snow, the melting of which fills the ravines with roaring streams. Caravans are coming across the desert from Tema, which lies seven days journey to the south of the Jauf, and from Sheba still farther in the same direction. They are on the march in early summer and, falling short of water, turn aside westward to one of the ravines where a stream is expected to be still flowing. But, alas for the vain hope! In the wadi is nothing but stones and dry sand, mocking the thirst of man and beast. Even so, says Job to his friends, ye are treacherous; ye are nothing. I looked for the refreshing waters of sympathy, but ye are empty ravines, dry sand. In my days of prosperity you gushed with friendliness. Now, when I thirst, ye have not even pity. "Ye see a terror, and are afraid." I am terribly stricken. You fear that if you sympathised with me, you might provoke the anger of God.
From this point he turns upon them with reproach. Had he asked them for anything, gifts out of their herds or treasure, aid in recovering his property? They knew he had requested no such service. But again and again Eliphaz had made the suggestion that he was suffering as a wrong doer. Would they tell him then, straightforwardly, how and when he had transgressed? "How forcible are words of uprightness," words that go right to a point; but as for their reproving, what did it come to? They had caught at his complaint. Men of experience should know that the talk of a desperate man is for the wind, to be blown away and forgotten, not to be laid hold of captiously. And here from sarcasm he passes to invective. Their temper, he tells them, is so hard and unfeeling that they are fit to cast lots over the orphan and bargain over a friend. They would be guilty even of selling for a slave a poor fatherless child cast on their charity. "Be pleased to look on me," he cries; "I surely will not lie to your face. Return, let not wrong be done. Go back over my life. Let there be no unfairness. Still is my cause just." They were bound to admit that he was as able to distinguish right from wrong as they were. If that were not granted, then his whole life went for nothing, and their friendship also.
In this vivid eager expostulation there is at least much of human nature. It abounds in natural touches common to all time and in shrewd ironic perception. The sarcasms of Job bear not only upon his friends, but also upon our lives. The words of men who are sorely tossed with trouble, aye even their deeds, are to be judged with full allowance for circumstances. A man driven back inch by inch in a fight with the world, irritated by defeat, thwarted in his plans, missing his calculations, how easy is it to criticise him from the standpoint of a successful career, high repute, a good balance at the bankers! The hasty words of one who is in sore distress, due possibly to his own ignorance and carelessness, how easy to reckon them against him, find in them abundant proof that he is an unbeliever and a knave, and so pass on to offer in the temple the Pharisees prayer! But, easy and natural, it is base. The author of our poem does well to lay the lash of his inspired scorn upon such a temper. He who stores in memory the quick words of a sufferer and brings them up by and by to prove him deserving of all his troubles, such a man would cast lots over the orphan. It is no unfair charge. Oh for humane feeling, gentle truth, self-searching fear of falsehood! It is so easy to be hard and pious.
Beginning another strophe Job turns from his friends, from would be wise assertions and innuendoes, to find, if he can, a philosophy of human life, then to reflect once more in sorrow on his state, and finally to wrestle in urgent entreaty with the Most High. The seventh chapter, in which we trace this line of thought, increases in pathos as it proceeds and rises to the climax of a most daring demand which is not blasphemous because it is entirely frank, profoundly earnest.
The friends of Job have wondered at his sufferings. He himself has tried to find the reason of them. Now he seeks it again in a survey of mans life:-
"Hath not man war service on earth?
And as the days of a hireling are not his?"
The thought of necessity is coming over Job, that man is not his own master; that a Power he cannot resist appoints his task, whether of action or endurance, to fight in the hot battle or to suffer wearily. And there is truth in the conception; only it is a truth which is inspiring or depressing as the ultimate Power is found in noble character or mindless force. In the time of prosperity this thought of an inexorable decree would have caused no perplexity to Job, and his judgment would have been that the Irresistible is wise and kind. But now, because the shadow has fallen, all appears in gloomy colour, and mans life a bitter servitude. As a slave, panting for the shade, longing to have his work over, Job considers man. During months of vanity and nights of weariness he waits, long nights made dreary with pain, through the slow hours of which he tosses to and fro in misery. His flesh is clothed with worms and an earthy crust, his skin hardens and breaks out. His days are flimsier than a web (Job_7:6), and draw to a close without hope. The wretchedness masters him, and he cries to God.
"O remember, a breath is my life
Never again will mine eye see good."
Does the Almighty consider how little time is left to him? Surely a gleam might break before all grows dark! Out of sight he will be soon, yea, out of the sight of God Himself, like a cloud that melts away. His place will be down in Sheol, the region of mere existence, not of life, where a mans being dissolves in shadows and dreams. God must know this is coming to Job. Yet in anguish, ere he die, he will remonstrate with his Maker: "I will not curb my mouth, I will make my complaint in the bitterness of my soul."
Striking indeed is the remonstrance that follows. A struggle against that belief in grim fate which has so injured Oriental character gives vehemence to his appeal; for God must not be lost. His mind is represented as going abroad to find in nature what is most ungovernable and may be supposed to require most surveillance and restraint. By change after change, stroke after stroke, his power has been curbed; till at last, in abject impotence, he lies, a wreck upon the wayside. Nor is he allowed the last solace of nature in extremis; he is not unconscious; he cannot sleep away his misery. By night tormenting dreams haunt him, and visions make as it were a terrible wall against him. He exists on sufferance, perpetually chafed. With all this in his consciousness, he asks, -
"Am I a sea, or a sea monster,
That thou keepest watch over me?"
In a daring figure he imagines the Most High who sets a bound to the sea exercising the same restraint over him, or barring his way as if he were some huge monster of the deep. A certain grim humour characterises the picture. His friends have denounced his impetuosity. Is it as fierce in Gods sight? Can his rage be so wild? Strange indeed is the restraint put on one conscious of having sought to serve God and his age. In self-pity, with an inward sense of the absurdity of the notion, he fancies the Almighty fencing his squalid couch with the horrible dreams and spectres of delirium, barring his way as if he were a raging flood. "I loathe life," he cries; "I would not live always. Let me alone, for my days are a vapour." Do not pain me and hem me in with Thy terrors that allow no freedom, no hope, nothing but a weary sense of impotence. And then his expostulation becomes even bolder.
"What is man," asks a psalmist, "that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?" With amazement Gods thought of so puny and insignificant a being is observed. But Job, marking in like manner the littleness of man, turns the question in another way:- "What is man that Thou magnifiest him, And settest Thine heart upon him? That Thou visitest him every morning, And triest him every moment?"
Has the Almighty no greater thing to engage Him that He presses hard on the slight personality of man? Might he not be let alone for a little? Might the watchful eye not be turned away from him even for a moment? And finally, coming to the supposition that he may have transgressed and brought himself under the judgment of the Most High, he even dares to ask why that should be:-
"Have I sinned? Yet what have I done unto Thee,
O Thou Watcher of men?
Why hast Thou set me as Thy butt,
So that I am a burden to myself?
And why will Thou not pardon my transgression,
And cause my sin to pass away?"
How can his sin have injured God? Far above man the Almighty dwells and reigns. No shock of human revolt can affect His throne. Strange is it that a man, even if he has committed some fault or neglected some duty, should be like a block of wood or stone before the feet of the Most High, till bruised and broken he cares no more for existence. If iniquity has been done, cannot the Great God forgive it, pass it by? That would be more like the Great God. Yes; soon Job would be down in the dust of death. The Almighty would find then that he had gone too far. "Thou shalt seek me, but I shall not be."
More daring words were never put by a pious man into the mouth of one represented as pious; and the whole passage shows how daring piety may be. The inspired writer of this book knows God too well, honours Him too profoundly to be afraid. The Eternal Father does not watch keenly for the offences of the creatures He has made. May a man not be frank with God and say out what is in his heart? Surely he may. But he must be entirely earnest. No one playing with life, with duty, with truth, or with doubt may expostulate thus with his Maker.
There is indeed an aspect of our little life in which sin may appear too pitiful, too impotent for God to search out. "As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth." Only when we see that infinite Justice is involved in the minute infractions of justice, that it must redress the iniquity done by feeble hands and vindicate the ideal we crave for yet so often infringe; only when we see this and realise therewith the greatness of our being, made for justice and the ideal, for moral conflict and victory; only, in short, when we know responsibility, do we stand aghast at sin and comprehend the meaning of judgment. Job is learning here the wisdom and holiness of God which stand correlative to His grace and our responsibility. By way of trial and pain and these sore battles with doubt he is entering into the fulness of the heritage of spiritual knowledge and power.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 I. Justifies his complaint (Job_6:2).
JOB’S REPLY TO ELIPHAZ
I. Justifies his complaint (Job_6:2).
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“O that my grief were thoroughly weighed,” &c. Job’s case neither apprehended nor appreciated by his friends. Desires fervently that his suffering and his complaining were weighed against each other; or that his calamity and the grief occasioned by it were thoroughly considered. The weight of it beyond that of the “sand” of the sea,—too numerous to be counted and too heavy to be weighed. The greatness of it beyond his ability to express, being also the cause why he had expressed himself so vehemently and inconsiderately;—“therefore my words are swallowed up,” or, “were rash” or “vehement.” Job’s outward trials accumulated and intense beyond all precedent. These at first endured with extraordinary meekness and patience. Now, through the nature of his disease and Satan operating on his mind in consequence of it, all viewed on the dark side. Our sufferings very much as we are made to view them. The bitterest part of Job’s sufferings now probably internal ones; his external trials being viewed as sent from God, not in love but in unaccountable anger.—Describes these sufferings (Job_6:4) according to his views and feelings:—
(1.) As “arrows:” Sharp and penetrating; coming swiftly, suddenly, and with great force; not one but many, coming in quick succession.
(2.) “Arrows of the Almighty.” Shot by Him as at an enemy, or as a mere butt for His archery. The Almighty’s arrows must be especially sharp and deadly. That they were the Almighty’s arrows the bitterest circumstance connected with them.
(3.) “Poisoned arrows.” Hence especially deadly, and discharged by a deadly foe. Indicates the intensely painful character of his sufferings; poisoned arrows inflicting especially painful and inflammatory wounds.
(4.) These arrows not only discharged against him, but abiding “within” him, or being “with” him. His distress unintermitting.
(5.) The effect of the arrows, their poison “drinking up his spirit”—exhausting his vital energy; or, his spirit drinking up their deadly poison.
The Arrows of the Almighty
No power of man or angel able to withstand these arrows. No shield but the shield of faith able to receive them. No hand but the pierced hand of Jesus able to extract them. No balm but the blood of the Cross able to heal their burning wounds. One of these arrows able to bring down the stoutest adversary. “O Galilæan, thou hast conquered,”—said by one of the most determined enemies of Christ, Julian the Apostate Emperor, while dying on the battle-field. Job’s miseries scarcely half-told in the preceding history. His outward calamities rather the occasion than the cause of his intensest suffering. A believer’s inward trouble in time of trial sometimes greater than the outward trouble which occasioned it. His greatest distress often from a cause entirely different from the outward trial. Heavy outward trouble often light in comparison with inward distress from spiritual and unseen causes. The rankling arrows of the Almighty much more dreadful than either the loss of property and children, or bodily affliction. A terrible aggravation of Job’s outward trouble. Apprehended wrath on the part of God the greatest of all troubles to a believer. The essence of the Redeemer’s suffering, as of that of the patriarch’s,—“My God, my God,” &c. The awful experience of the lost. No greater hell than these arrows, “sharp in the hearts of the King’s enemies” (Psa_45:5). Fully discharged against the Son of God while standing as the Sinner’s Substitute. That Substitute accepted becomes Himself the Sinner’s Shield. The arrows felt in the conviction of sin (Act_2:37). Bringing the sinner to the feet of the Saviour they become arrows of mercy. The arrows extracted and the wounds healed by simple trust in Jesus and His blood. Discharged against the believer rather in his own apprehension than in reality. The apprehension intended as a discipline and trial of faith (Isa_54:8; Isa_57:17-18). The experience removed when the object has been served (Jer_31:18-20). Satan, working on our unbelief in time of trouble, able to make his own darts to be mistaken for the arrows of the Almighty. The Almighty’s arrows now in the Saviour’s hand (Psa_45:5; Rev_6:2).
Job’s condition sufficient to account for his complaint. Even beasts do not utter their cries when they have food. (Job_6:5)—“Doth the wild ass bray?” &c. The ass found in a wild state, large, fleet, and strong, in Arabia and west of the Euphrates. A hint at the want of sympathy on the part of his friends. It is easy to be quiet when suffering nothing. True sympathy makes us suffer in the distress of another (1Co_12:26). Natural to feel and utter complaint under severe suffering. Men cannot eat insipid and tasteless food without mixing salt with it. (Job_6:6)—“Can that which is unsavoury?” &c. Salt so important with the Arabs as to be used as a synonym for food, their diet being chiefly vegetable. Mentions, as an example of the insipid, the “white of an egg,” or perhaps the herb “purslain,” proverbial among the Arabs for its insipidity. Perhaps Job quotes a proverb in common use. Indicates not only the naturalness of complaint, but the need of sympathy and encouragement in time of trouble. Insipid things need salt to make them palatable. Speech to be with grace seasoned with salt for the benefit of others (Col_4:6). “A word spoken in season, how good is it.” “Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop, but a good word maketh it glad” (Pro_12:25). The true humanity of Jesus seen in His craving for human sympathy in His distress (Mat_26:37-40). A bitter aggravation of trouble when “lover and friend are put far from us” (Psa_88:18). The deepest poverty is to be without a friend to sympathize with us in our sorrow.—Job reasserts his sad condition. (Job_6:6)—“The things which my soul refused to touch,” &c. Sad reverse when what we could not even touch before is now our daily but sorrowful and nauseous food. Job’s loathsome ulcers now as his daily bread. Similar sentiment (Psa_102:9; Psa_42:3; Psa_80:5). Learn:
(1) Painful reverses to be prepared for.
(2) Moderation and humility our duty in prosperity. Sometimes but a short step from affluence to destitution (Pro_23:5; 1Ti_6:17). The beauty of health speedily exchanged for the loathsomeness of disease. A single day may put Dives in the place of Lazarus, or a worse.
(3) The uncertainty of earthly possessions and enjoyments to be improved to the securing of heavenly ones. Grace teaches the rich man to rejoice in that he is made low (Jas_1:10).
II. Repeats and justifies his desire for death (Job_6:8, &c)
“O that I might have my request,” &c. His request a release from present sufferings by death. Asked also as a favour from God by Elijah under the juniper tree, and by Jonah at Nineveh (1Ki_19:4; Jon_4:3; Jon_4:8). God the arbiter of life and death. Job leaves his time in God’s hand (ch. Job_14:14). Satan and Job’s wife would have had him taking the matter into his own. Ancient heathens believed they had a right to end their life when they pleased. Desire for death a natural feeling under deep and protracted distress. Often, however, rather from the impatience of the flesh than the aspiration of the spirit. Only men’s waywardness and hardness of heart once awakened something of the feeling in Jesus (Mat_17:17). Paul’s desire to depart was to be with Christ (Php_1:23). Desire for death no proof of fitness for it. The choice between life and death best referred to God Himself. Preparation for death implies some ability to glorify God in life. Soon enough to rest when our work is done. A favour to “cease at once to work and live.” Job’s request not granted. Some prayers better refused than answered. A sick child may be spared to die a felon’s death.
The reason of Job’s desire for death:—
(1) The comfort in the prospect of a speedy release from his extreme distress. (Job_6:10)—“Then should I yet have comfort (or, this should be my comfort); yea, I would harden myself in sorrow: let Him not spare” (or, I would leap for joy in my unsparing sorrow).
(2) The consciousness of having been God’s faithful servant: “For I have not concealed (or denied) the words of the Holy One.” Implies—(i.) Fearlessness in confessing the truth; (ii.) Faithfulness in communicating it. The sin of the heathen that of “holding or keeping down the truth in unrighteousness.” Truth inwardly believed is to be outwardly professed (Rom_10:10). God honoured and the world benefited by a bold and consistent profession of the truth. The practice of God’s faithful servants in every age (Psa_71:17; Psa_119:46). Examples: Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Daniel. Truth received in order to be communicated (2Co_4:6; Php_2:15-16). The language of Job used by David and his great Antitype (Psa_40:9-10). The testimony of a good and enlightened conscience a precious comfort in the midst of suffering and in the prospect of death (2Co_1:12; 2Ti_4:6-8). The testimony of Job’s conscience, that he had neither by fearfulness nor faithlessness concealed
The Words of the Holy One
These words found in the shape of—
(1) Doctrines;
(2) Promises;
(3) Commands. They were God’s words, as—
(1) Communicated by Him to Adam and others, and handed down to their posterity;
(2) Revealed to Job himself. “God at sundry times and in divers manners spake to the fathers” (Heb_1:1). The Church of God in possession of such words from the beginning. Faint echoes and distorted forms of these words found everywhere among the heathen. Prominent among these was the proto-evangel of Gen_3:15. These words the precious treasure of the children of God in every age. A light to their feet and a comfort to their heart. Employed by Job in instructing, sustaining, and comforting others (ch. Job_4:3-4). God known in Job’s time as “the Holy One.” So called, Isa_40:25; Hos_11:9; Heb_3:3. His name Holy (Isa_57:15). God alone holy (Rev_15:4). Peculiarly and essentially holy (1Sa_2:2). Thrice holy (Isa_6:3; Rev_4:8). Contrasted with the gods of the heathen. These acknowledged by their very worshippers to be impure and unworthy of imitation. The Greeks and Romans justified their own impurity by that of their gods. People naturally resemble the deities they worship. Solemn obligation resting on the worshippers of the true God to be holy (Lev_11:44; 1Pe_1:16). His children made partakers of his holiness (Heb_12:10; 2Pe_1:4).
Job justifies his desire for death on the ground of his grievous affliction. His strength unable to hold out under such accumulated evils (Job_6:11). “What is my strength,” (—or power of endurance—) “that I should hope,” (—indulge the slow protracted hope of recovery and the enjoyment of those temporal blessings held out by Eliphaz)? “And what is mine end” (—the end of these miseries)—“that I should prolong my life?” (—or continue to exercise patience). The language of the flesh. Spoken according to sense. Justified by appearance and carnal reasoning. Despondency and impatience natural in the absence of faith. Faith battles with appearances and triumphs over them (Psa_42:11; Mic_7:7-8; Hab_3:17-18). No time long to faith. Abraham’s faith held out twenty-five years for the promised birth, till his own and his wife’s body were as good as dead. Faith the mother of patience. Looks not at the weakness of the creature, but the power of the Creator. Difficulties and apparent impossibilities the true matter for faith. “Laughs at impossibilities,” because leaning on Omnipotence. Faith often to seek in a storm. “Every man is a believer in a fair day” [Rutherford]. No express promise of recovery and restoration given to Job. The fact of God’s omnipotence, and the truth that He is the hearer of prayer, that He interposes sooner or later in his servants’ behalf, and that He does all things well,—enough for faith to rest upon in time of trouble. Faith at times triumphant in Job, though not with reference to any temporal deliverance (ch. Job_19:25, &c.; Job_23:10).—Job_6:12. “Is my strength the strength of stones, or is my flesh of brass?”—the symbol of hardness and durability. The nature of unbelief to dwell in personal weakness. Faith looks not on human weakness but on Divine strength. Hence makes its possessor strong in his weakness. Through faith, believers “out of weakness were made strong” (Heb_11:34). Faith enabled Paul rather to glory in his infirmities, and to say: “When I am weak, then am I strong” (2Co_12:9-10).
Job justifies his despondency on the ground of his thorough and apparently hopeless prostration (Job_6:13). “Is not my help in me? And is wisdom driven quite from me?” (Rather,—Is it not the fact that no help for me is in myself, and that recovery (or health) is quite fled from me?). Expresses his real case as viewed by the eye of sense. Abraham’s faith, however, did not stagger even when the child of promise was to be offered on the altar. Our weakness and helplessness the proper theatre for the display of God’s power and Christ’s grace. Divine strength magnifies itself in realized weakness (2Co_12:9). A higher experience than that attained by Job reserved for God’s children in the Gospel age (Heb_11:40; Mat_11:11). The feeble to be then like David, and the House of David as God (Zec_12:8; Isa_30:26).
III. Complains of his friends’ want of sympathy (Job_6:14-21).
Kindness to the afflicted
1. Job states a moral truth (Job_6:14). “To him that is afflicted,” &c.
Compassionate kindness to the suffering a dictate of humanity, and one of the first principles of religion (Jas_1:27; Mat_9:13). The good Samaritan Christ’s chosen example for His disciples, and His own commentary on the second table of the law. Mercy accompanied with truth the essence of moral perfection, and the true spirit of Christianity (Psa_85:10; Psa_89:14). Pity to be shown to the afflicted—
(1) In words of sympathy and kindness;
(2) In practical assistance, as far as in our power;
(3) In refraining from what may unnecessarily wound the feelings;
(4) In commending the sufferer’s case to God (Psa_141:5; Jas_5:15-16). This to be done for any in affliction, especially for a friend (Luk_10:29-37; Luk_17:17).
2. Applies this truth to the case of his friends. “But he forsaketh the fear,” &c.,—viz., Eliphaz and the others, in their want of kindness and sympathy towards Job. Want of love to our neighbour proves want of love to God. Love to our neighbour enjoined by Divine authority as the second part of the law. The want of it, therefore, an evidence of the want of fear as well as love towards God. Pity is love to our neighbour in affliction. Our neighbour has always a claim on our love, and in affliction on our pity. That pity engendered by the fear of God, as—
(1) Our neighbour is God’s own offspring;
(2) Our suffering neighbour is the object of His special regard. Pity required by God towards a suffering neighbour as He has had pity on ourselves (Mat_18:33-35). Mercy and compassion His own character, to be imitated by all His children (Luk_6:36). The fear of God therefore the guarantee of right feelings towards man. The guardian of all the social and relative duties. Love to God unable to dwell in the same heart with indifference to man. Selfishness incompatible with the fear of God. After God’s example, kindness and pity to be shown to the afflicted, whatever his character and religion. Illustrated by the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the legend of Abraham and the Idolater. As a motive to shew kindness to the poor and the afflicted, God has identified their cases with His own (Pro_14:31; Pro_19:17). Pity due to an afflicted fellow-creature, still more to an afflicted friend. Duties and obligations enhanced according to relationship (Mal_1:6; Pro_17:17; Pro_18:24).
The disappointing conduct of the friends touchingly set forth by a continued simile (Job_6:15, &c.). “My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook,” (or wady—a narrow valley or bed of a stream between two rocky hills, filled with water in winter but usually dried up in summer)—“as the stream of brooks they (or, which) pass away,” viz. in the heat of summer. Three points in the comparison:—
(1) The former profession of friendship,—resembling the noisy, rushing wady-stream, full of water through the melted ice, and snow, and rains of winter, when less required. (Job_6:16).—
(2) The failure in real kindness and sympathy when needed,—like the drying up of the brook through the summer heat, and the entire disappearance of the waters, having vanished into vapour or been lost in the sands of the desert. (Job_6:17-18).—
(3) The bitter disappointment,—like that of the caravans of Tema or Ishmaelites, and the trading companies of Sheba or Arabia Felix, when, contrary to their expectation, they find the stream dried up, and are unable to obtain a supply of water (Job_6:19-20). Observe—
(1) The right of the afflicted to expect kindness and sympathy, especially from their friends.
(2) Care to be taken to make a visit of condolence to correspond with its profession.
(3) A great part of friendship, to be true in time of trouble. Affection not to be cooled by affliction. A brother born for adversity. False friends like vermin that abandon a sinking vessel, or swallows that depart at the approach of winter. True friends like ivy that adheres to the tree in its decay. Genuine friendship, like the light of phosphorus, brightest in the dark.
(4) Our views of a friend’s character not to be lightly changed, least of all by his circumstances. Base even to suspect a friend. Love “hopeth all things” and “thinketh no evil.”
The ground of his complaint (Job_6:21). “For now ye are nothing,”—are to me like the vanished wady-stream, as though you had never been. Friends by profession to prove themselves worthy of the name. Base to profess friendship and to be destitute of its feelings, or to withhold its offices. Love to be not in word and in tongue, but in deed and in truth (1Jn_3:18).—“Ye have seen my casting down,” (my prostration and calamity) “and are afraid.” Their feelings read in their faces. Only one had spoken with his lips, all with their looks. Their fear as if a pious dread at the signal display of Divine judgment, and horror at the discovery of secret wickedness. Afraid—
(1) Of being found sympathizing with a guilty man;
(2) Of being involved in the same calamity;
(3) Of being called upon to relieve or defend the sufferer. Base to withhold sympathy and kindness from regard to our own comfort, credit, or convenience.
IV. Remonstrates with his friends on the baseness of their conduct (Job_6:22-24)
1. He had asked no favour at their hands (Job_6:22-23). “Did I say (or, is it because I said) Bring unto me (for my relief); or Give a reward for me of your substance (to repair my losses or obtain the favour of the judge); or, Deliver me from the enemy’s hand? Or, redeem me from the hand of the mighty?”—(who have robbed me of my property, or are now adding to my affliction). The right of the afflicted and suffering to receive not only sympathy but practical help. Afforded by Abraham to his captive nephew (Gen_14:14). This a noble mind recoils from asking, though thankful in receiving. The favour Job refused to ask, afterwards liberally accorded (ch. Job_42:11). Sometimes the only service we can render is a cordial sympathy.
2. They had not attempted to show him his sin (Job_6:24). “Teach me and I will hold my tongue; and cause me to understand wherein I have erred.” Mark of an honest and ingenuous mind to be willing to be convinced of error or wrong-doing. A prejudice or superstition simply to infer sinning from suffering. Absurd to exhort to repentance without attempting to convince of sin. Job’s friends unable to point out any fault in his former life, except by inference. The language of his Antitype partially his—“Which of you couvinceth me of sin?” (Joh_8:46). All sin an erring or straying from the path of rectitude and the will of God. Found in all, Job not excepted; his friends only challenged to point out any breach of morality or religion as the cause of his peculiar suffering. To point out sin when we see it, is a duty we owe to our neighbour. Faithful and wise reproof required by the law of love (Lev_19:17). Job’s sense of the value of such reproof (Job_6:25).
Right Words
“How forcible are right words!” (Heb. “words of uprightness”).
1. The form of such words—
(1) Argument;
(2) Reproof;
(3) Instruction;
(4) Admonition;
(5) Persuasion.
2. The character of the words—“right.”
(1) Right and true in themselves—unmixed with error and falsehood—“sound speech that cannot be condemned” (Tit_2:8). In speaking to others we are to beware of daubing with untempered mortar (Eze_13:10); or of corrupting the Word of God (2Co_2:17). To speak forth only “the words of truth and soberness” (Act_26:25); “acceptable words,” but also “words of truth” (Ecc_12:10). Arguments to be sound,—premises true, and conclusions just. Our statements to be according to the law and the testimony (Isa_8:20).
(2) The whole truth, so far as necessary, in connection with the subject. Nothing profitable to be kept back, either from fear or favour. No mere one-sided view of the truth to be given. Teachers not to be partial in the law (Mal_2:9). Truth to be exhibited in all its parts, and in their due propositions. The word of truth to be rightly divided (2Ti_2:15). The mercy of God not to be enlarged upon to the ignoring of His justice, nor the converse. The promises not to be without the precepts, nor the precepts without the promises. Faith not to be urged without works as its fruits, nor works without faith as their foundation. Not morality without religion, nor religion without morality. Not the law without the Gospel, nor the Gospel without the law. Words, to be right words, must be evangelical words—“the truth as it is in Jesus.” Pardon not to be held out apart from Christ’s blood which procures it. Holiness not to be urged apart from Christ’s indwelling spirit as its author.
(3) Correct in their application. Truth may be so applied as to become practical error. The fault in Job’s friends. Pillows not to be sewed to all armholes; and those not to be made sad, even with truth, whom the Lord does not make sad (Eze_13:18-22). Meat to be given in season as each requires and is able to bear it. Milk to babes, strong meat to those of mature age. Some to be sharply reproved. The bruised reed to be bound up with tender hand. Not only truth to be preached, but seasonable truth—“the present truth,” (2Pe_1:12). Sound doctrine not to be so preached as to become a soporific. The words of the wise to be as goads, therefore to be wisely directed. “A word spoken in season, how good is it?”
(4) Spoken in uprightness and sincerity. Without fear or favour. Without prejudice or passion. Without self-seeking or time-serving. With simplicity and godly sincerity. As in the sight of God and in the view of eternity. The speaker to be, and therefore to appear, in earnest. Truth not to be spoken as if it were fiction, as if not believed by the speaker himself. To be spoken in love, in tenderness, sympathy, and concern for the hearer’s welfare. The speaker’s spirit to preach as well as his speech, his manner as well as his matter. The words of truth on the speaker’s lips not to be falsified by the manner in which they are spoken, or by the inconsistency of his life.
3. The efficacy of such words. “Forcible,”—powerful, efficacious.
(1.) In enlightening she understanding, discovering truth, and to producing faith. “So spake that a great multitude believed.” (Act_14:1). A well-constructed argument having truth for its basis, irresistible [A. Clarke]. In awakening the conscience, convincing of sin, and so producing repentance. So Peter’s words at Pentecost, and Paul’s before Felix (Act_2:37; Act_24:25).
(3.) In moving the affections and will, and so restraining from sin, and persuading to duty. So with the awakened at Pentecost (Act_2:41). The Ephesians burned their ungodly books (Act_19:19). Herod heard John gladly and did many things (Mar_6:20).
(4.) In comforting the afflicted, sustaining the weak, and succouring the tempted. “Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop—a good word maketh it glad” (Pro_12:25). The effect of Job’s own words in his former condition (chap. Job_4:3-4).
V. Complains of his friends’ reproof and their conduct towards him (Job_6:25-27)
1. Their argument and reproof had been pointless and profitless (Job_6:25). “What doth your arguing reprove? (or, “what conviction is there in the reproof you have administered?”) Eliphaz, their chief speaker, had
(1) shewn no sin on the part of Job as meriting his severe treatment;
(2) Exhorted to repentance without showing the grounds for its necessity. In discoursing to others we are to have a clear aim and definite purpose. That aim to be a right one and important in the circumstances. Our purpose to be prosecuted in a wise and suitable manner. The preacher not to speak “as uncertainly,” nor to preach “as one that beateth the air.”
2. Their reproof was directed only against words uttered in deep distress and great disquietude of spirit (Job_6:26). “Do ye imagine to reprove words, and the speeches of one that is desperate, which are as wind?” (or, “and to scrutinize, sift, or ‘air’ the speeches of one that is desperate?”) The fault of Job’s friends that they had attacked the words of his complaint instead of showing the evil of his life. As a rule, by our words we shall be justified or condemned (Mat_12:37). The reason, “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” Ordinarily, a man is as his speech. Allowance, however, to be made for words uttered under deep distress, and in exceptionally trying circumstances. A high offence in God’s sight to make a man an offender for a word (Isa_29:21). Observe—
(1.) Rash words, especially under provocation, an “easily besetting sin” (Heb_12:1). Great temptation to such words under excited feeling. The heart to be kept with all diligence, especially in time of trouble (Pro_4:23). The mouth to be kept as with a bridle when God’s hand is heavy on us (Psa_39:1-10).
(2.) The case of a believer may appear “desperate” to himself and others, when it appears the very opposite to God. A child of God often writes bitter things against himself when his Father does not. A tried believer apt to judge of his case from feeling and appearance. The flesh a blind judge as to a man’s real case and character. That case can never be desperate which is linked to the Almighty’s throne. “Thou hast nothing to fear who hast Cæsar for thy friend.” A man’s case cannot be desperate who has—,(i) a place in the Almighty’s heart; (ii) his hand in His heavenly Father’s; (iii) an interest in the everlasting covenant (2Sa_2:3; 2Sa_2:5).
Job strongly inveighs against his friend’s conduct (Job_6:27). “Yea, ye overwhelm (margin, ‘cause [a net or noose] to fall upon’) the fatherless, and ye dig a pit for your friend” (seeking to catch him in ungarded words, and to make him out to be a hypocrite and transgressor). Rightly or wrongly, Job construes his friends’ language and looks into malice. Their conduct harsh and unfeeling, but according to Job, diabolical. Strong language and exaggerated views of the conduct of others towards ourselves, a natural result of deep trouble and excited feeling. Men capable, however, of the conduct here ascribed by Job to his friends. Joseph’s brethren an example. The words strictly true of the enemies of Jesus, their truest and best friend. The conduct of Job’s friends all the guiltier as being—
(1) Under colour of friendship;
(2) Under profession of piety;
(3) With considerable knowledge of Divine truth. Cruellest feelings sometimes covered with the garb of greatest sanctity. Example: Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisitors. Important prayer—“Search me, O God, and know my heart” &c. (Psa_139:23).
VI. Job’s challenge to his friends (Job_6:28-30)
1. Appeal of conscious integrity (Job_6:28). “Now, therefore, be content, look upon me: for it is evident unto you (margin, ‘it is before your face’) if I lie” (or, “shall I lie to your face?”) Observe:—
(1) Conscious innocence not only allows but solicits examination. A good conscience enables a man to live in a glass-house. So Jesus—“Which of you convinceth me of sin” (Joh_8:46). A mark of grace to come to the light that our deeds may be made manifest (Joh_3:21). Paul prays for believers that they may be “sincere,”—able, in heart and life, to bear the scrutiny of daylight (Php_1:10). A child of God is careful to be truthful both in lip and life. A Christian is one who is more concerned to be than to appear such.
(2) Truth and sincerity read in the countenance. The face the dial-plate of the soul. An upright heart makes an open countenance (Job_6:29). “Return, I pray you, let it not be iniquity (or, ‘let there no injustice’—no unjust or partial judgment); yea, return again, my righteousness is in it” (margin, “in this matter”—I shall be found innocent in the trial). Truth and innocence court investigation. The consciously upright desire only impartial and unprejudiced trial. The language of Jesus, and of those wrapped in His righteousness—“Who is he that condemneth” (Isa_1:9; Rom_8:32-34). The believer a paradox—“Black but comely”—black in himself, comely in Christ; guilty and yet righteous—guilty in his own person, righteous in his righteous Head (2Co_5:21). Renounces all righteousness but Christ’s in the sight of God, yet careful to maintain a spotless character in the sight of men.
2. The ground of Job’s appeal—his ability to distinguish and judge of moral conduct (Job_6:30). “Is there iniquity (literally, or, a depraved taste) in my tongue? Cannot my taste (margin, ‘palate’) discern perverse things?” (am I not able to distinguish between right and wrong?) No small excellence to possess a correct moral judgment. Moral sense obscured and weakened by the fall and by a course of sin. The moral judgment becomes depraved by sin as the taste by disease. The character of the ungodly to call evil good, and good evil. The mature Christian, one who has his senses exercised to discern both good and evil (Heb_5:14). A fruit of renewing grace to know and approve “the good, the perfect, and the acceptable” (Rom_12:2). “Judgment” to “approve things that are excellent,” or to “distinguish between things that differ,” a gift of grace (Php_1:9-10). A part of spiritual wisdom to understand what the will of the Lord is, and the opposite (Eph_5:17). Grace indicated not only by a tender, but an enlightened conscience. The ungodly know not what at they stumble. “They know not what they do.” In murdering Christ’s followers, men were to think they were doing God service (Joh_16:2). Paul’s former case (Act_26:9-11). Important prayer—“Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk” (Psa_143:8).
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 The First Speech of Job (Job 6, 7)
The First Speech of Job (Job 6, 7)
1-13. Job, smarting under the remarks of Eliphaz, which he feels are not appropriate to his case, renews and justifies his complaints. He bemoans the heaviness of God's hand, and wishes that He would slay him outright.
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2, 3. Job admits that he was rash in his remarks (in Job 3), but declares that his language was justified by his miserable condition.
3. Are swallowed up] RV 'have been rash.'
4. It is because he feels that his troubles are due to God that he is almost beside himself, since he cannot understand their motive. In Job 3 he had not charged God with being the author of his sorrows.
5-7. Job continues to assert that he would not complain without good cause.
5. The animals cease their cries when their wants are satisfied.
6. Unsavoury] without flavour.
The white of an egg] Some prefer RM 'the juice of purslain.'
7. RV 'My soul refuseth to touch them They are as loathsome meat to me.' Job_6:6-7 may mean that Job's afllictions are as intolerable to him as loathsome food.
8-10. Job longs for the stroke of death to descend and release him from his pain.
10. Yea, I would, etc.] RV 'Yea, I would exult in pain that spareth not: for I have not denied,' etc. Job fears not death, for he is unconscious of sin towards God. The passage is difficult, since J ob does not expect retribution after death. The original text may not be correctly preserved.
11. Prolong my life] RV 'be patient.' Since there is nothing but death before him, how can he help being impatient for its arrival?
12. He is not made of stone or brass that he can bear such troubles.
13. RV 'Is it not that I have no help in me, and sound wisdom is driven quite from me?' He is exhausted and without resource.
14-30. Job complains of the lack of sympathy and false conclusions of the friends. They have bitterly disappointed the hopes he had set on them.
14. But he forsaketh] RV 'even to him that forsaketh.' Kind words from his friends might have helped Job to retain his trust in God, which he feared to lose.
15-20. Job likens the treatment of the friends to sudden torrents, which fill the deep ravines or wadies of his land after storms. These flow abundantly in the winter, when they are least needed. In the parching heats of summer they dry up, and are sought in vain by wandering caravans which perish from thirst. So his friends fail him when most wanted.
16. In the winter the torrents are black and turbid with melting snow. There is plenty of ice in winter in the upper parts of Edom.
18. RV 'The caravans that travel by the way of them turn aside' (in search of water). They go up into the waste, and perish.
19, 20. Troops] RV 'caravans.' Tema.. Sheba] in Arabia. The vv. describe the disappointment (ashamed) of the Arab caravans.
21. Ye are nothing] RM 'ye are like thereto,' i.e. to the deceptive brooks. But it would be better to read 'so have ye been to me.' And are afraid] perhaps of showing sympathy, since they thought him guilty of sin. 22, 23. All that Job looked for from them was sympathy.
25. Forcible] perhaps 'irritating' would be better, a bitter sarcasm.
What doth your arguing reprove?] At what sin are they aiming?
26. 'Are you finding fault with desperate words uttered in distress?'
27. Render, 'Would you sadden the bereaved and wound your friend?'
28. Look upon me] i.e. in the face. For it is evident, etc.] RV 'For surely I shall not lie to your face.'
29. Render, 'Reconsider my case; do not do me such injustice.' Yes, reconsider it; my cause is a righteous one!
Iniquity] RV 'injustice.'
30. Is there iniquity, etc.] rather, 'Is my tongue perverted?'Cannot my taste, etc.] 'Cannot I distinguish between right and wrong as well as you can?'
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv14, 23 (See Scofield "Psa 19:9").
fear
(See Scofield "Psa 19:9").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 CHAPTERS 6-7 Job’s Answer
CHAPTERS 6-7 Job’s Answer
1. His Despair justified by the greatness of his suffering (Job 6:1-7)
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2. He requests to be cut off (Job 6:8-13)
3. He reproacheth his friends (Job 6:14-30)
4. The misery of life (Job 7:1-7)
5. Two questions: Why does God deal with me thus? Why does He not pardon? (Job 7:8-21)
Job 6:1-7. He meets first of all the reproach and accusation of Eliphaz (Job 4:1-5). Because his sufferings are so great his utterances are so desperately wild. If Eliphaz only would consider this he would find how enormous the Pressure is “heavier than the sand of the seas” which weighs him down and he would have shown the sympathy and tenderness for which Job longed. And then the description of what his agony is:
For the arrows of the Almighty are within me
The heat whereof my spirit drinketh up.
God’s terrors now against me are arrayed.
This inward suffering of his soul was even greater than the loathsome disease which covered his body. He felt that God’s hand in holy anger was upon him and he knew not what he learned afterward, that all was love and compassion from God’s side. Satan must have had a share and part in these increasing soul-agonies of Job. But has he not a perfect right to complain? The animals in God’s creation do not complain without reason. If the wild ass has grass and the ox fodder, they utter no sound. Nor would he complain if all was well with him. But his afflictions are like loathsome meat, and should he not murmur and complain. It is all the language of despairing grief.
Job 6:8-13. And now he returns to his great lamentation:
Oh that I might have my request;
And that God would grant me the thing I long for!
Even that it would please God to crush me;
That He would let loose His hand, and cut me off!
This is still greater despair. And that he looks upon as comfort; yea, he would exult in pain that spareth not. It would end his sufferings and then after death he need fear nothing. He was conscious that he was right with God. “For I have not denied the words of the Holy One.” Here is the first note of self-righteousness, of justifying himself, which later on becomes more pronounced in his answers.
Job 6:14-30. The sympathetic kindness he expected from his friends had not come. Eliphaz’s address gave the evidence of it.
E’en to th’ afflicted, love is due from friends;
E’en though the fear of God he might forsake.
But my brethren have dealt deceitfully, like a brook
Like streams whose flowing waters disappear,
And are hidden by reason of the ice
And of the snow, which, falling, covers them. (Companion Bible.)
He had been bitterly disappointed in his friends. Their silence first, their wailing, and the outward signs of deepest grief, had led him to hope for comfort from their lips. They were like water brooks promising an abundant supply of refreshing water in winter time when not needed. But--
What time it waxeth warm, they disappear
When it is hot they vanish from their place.
The travelling caravans by the way turn aside
They go up into the waste, and perish.
Such were his friends. They were like dried up brooks in the summer’s heat. He had not asked them to give.
Did I say, Give unto me?
Or, Offer a present for me of your substance?
Or, Deliver me from the Adversary’s power?
Or, Redeem me from the Oppressor’s hand?
Nothing like this he had asked of their hands; all he craved was kind and tender sympathy. He urges them to teach him, to show him in what he has sinned, if he suffers for his sins. He urges them to look straight into his face and see if he is lying. He solemnly assures his friends of his innocence.
If only Job had not looked to his friends but to Him whose goodness and mercy he knew so well, he would not have suffered such disappointment. And what a contrast with David’s faith: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.”
Job 7:1-7. This section is one of great beauty, describing human existence and the misery connected with it, as it was so markedly in his own case.
As soon as I lie down to sleep, I say:
How long till I arise, and night be gone?
And I am full of tossings till the dawn.
My flesh is clothed with worms, and clods of earth;
My broken skin heals up, then runs afresh.
Swifter than weaver’s shuttle are my days,
And they are spent without a gleam of hope.
It is the picture of despair. The dark shadow of the enemy who had so wrongfully accused him must have told him “without a gleam of hope” as if God had now forsaken him.
Job 7:8-21. Why did God deal with him in this way? He thinks God must be his enemy and asks:
Am I a sea? or a monster of the deep;
That Thou settest a watch over me?
He had dreams too, not like the dreams of Eliphaz which reveal the greatness of God, but dreams of terrifying visions, so that he loatheth his life.
... I would not live always: Let me alone; for my days are vanity.
Poor, suffering, despairing Job! To think of Him whose love had been so fully demonstrated in the past, as his enemy and to pray to Him, “Let me alone,” was indeed horrible despondency. And if he has sinned, why does not God pardon and take away his iniquity? But this is not confession of sin. A different thing it is when finally he cries out, “Behold I am vile, I abhor myself.”
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 14 Job Defends his Desire for Death
Job Defends his Desire for Death
v. 1. But Job answered and said,
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v. 2. Oh, that my grief were throughly weighed, namely, the suffering which he was enduring, and my calamity, the bitter and unexplainable affliction, laid in the balances together! Both pans being thus adjusted, his misfortunes would be found to out weigh his sorrows, his complaint.
v. 3. For now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea, his woe was heavy beyond measure; therefore my words are swallowed up, rather, "they raved," they were spoken rashly. Although the greatness of his misery explained his complaining, yet he himself confessed that this fact did not really justify his untamed sorrow, his foolish raving. His better knowledge told him that he should not indulge his grief, but the unequaled greatness of his misery drove his tongue to the complaint which he made.
v. 4. For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the sickness, pains, and plagues which God inflicted upon him, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit, like a venom whose burning heat dried up his soul; the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me, like an attacking army storming a citadel, Isa 42:13. Job now argues that the demand which wanted him to submit without a murmur is unnatural.
v. 5. Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass, literally, "by the fresh grass"? Or loweth the ox over his fodder? That is, even an irrational beast will not groan or utter discontented cries if it is fully provided with food; much less would Job lament without sufficient cause.
v. 6. Can that which is unsavory, tasteless, be eaten without salt? Or is there any taste in the white of an egg? In either case the lack of flavor, the insipid taste, tends to make the food nauseating; even so Job cannot relish his present sufferings, which to him are like a loathsome food.
v. 7. The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat, or, What my soul abhorred to touch, that is to me as my loathsome food; he had to smell and touch the putrid matter of leprosy day after day.
v. 8. Oh, that I might have my request, literally, "that it might come," be fulfilled; and that God would grant me the thing that I long for! He was crying and longing for release from his misery.
v. 9. Even that it would please God to destroy me, snuffing out his life by an early death; that He would let loose His hand and cut me off! The picture is that of the cutting of a cord or string, which was synonymous with death. It was an intense, an impatient desire for death.
v. 10. Then should I yet have comfort, he would find consolation in this fact; yea, I would harden myself in sorrow. Let Him not spare, rather, "I would leap up in unsparing pain," due to its excessive force which promised him no respite; for I have not concealed the words of the Holy One. The fact that he had not denied the Lord was Job’s confidence in the midst of all distress and misery, even if the pain it caused him should be practically unbearable.
v. 11. What is my strength that I should hope, continue to wait, persevere as heretofore? And what is mine end that I should prolong my life, literally, "lengthen my soul," be patient? His strength was completely gone, and therefore he looked forward to death with eager impatience.
v. 12. Is my strength the strength of stones? Or is my flesh of brass? He certainly did not have the power of endurance which inorganic matter possesses.
v. 13. Is not my help in me, rather, "Is not the nothingness of my help with me," that is, Am I not utterly helpless? And is wisdom driven quite from me? His well-being, his prospect of strength in the future, of an eventual recovery, had been driven away from him and thus utterly lost. An early death was the only hope he cherished, and that he desired with an intense longing. A Christian will always be ready for death, but it would be wrong for him to demand death at the hands of God. We must at all times submit our will to that of our heavenly Father.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 4, 7, 10, 12, 14, 18, 21, 24, 26, 28 if only my anguish were weighed; if only all…
if only my anguish were weighed; if only all my calamity were laid in the balance
Here the writer uses two different statements to convey a single idea, the burden of Job's suffering. This can be stated in active form. AT: "if only I could weigh my anguish and all my calamities in the balance" (See: Parallelism and Active or Passive)
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in the balance
"on a scale"
For now it would be heavier than the sand of the seas
Job compares the burden of his suffering to the weight of wet sand; both can crush a person. AT: "For my anguish and calamities would be heavier than the sand on the seashore" (See: Simile)
my words were reckless
"I spoke recklessly" or "I spoke rashly"
translationWords
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unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 6, 9, 14, 19, 27, 30 6:1–7:21 Job’s response attacks his counselors (ch 6) and…
6:1–7:21 Job’s response attacks his counselors (ch 6) and challenges God (ch 7). He excuses his passionate words by referencing the depths of his misery (6:2-3; 7:11). Job says that Eliphaz has failed to offer comfort or sympathy as a friend, having chosen instead to haggle over stale theological precepts.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.