5 Mark me, and be astonished, And lay your hand upon your mouth.
And they said unto him, Hold thy peace, lay thy hand upon thy mouth, and go with us, and be to us a father and a priest: is it better for thee to be priest unto the house of one man, or to be priest unto a tribe and a family in Israel?
The princes refrained from talking, And laid their hand on their mouth;
If thou hast done foolishly in lifting up thyself, Or if thou hast thought evil, `Lay' thy hand upon thy mouth.
And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his robe, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven.
My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, And I am escaped with the skin of my teeth. Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; For the hand of God hath touched me.
I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; Because thou didst it.
The nations shall see and be ashamed of all their might; they shall lay their hand upon their mouth; their ears shall be deaf.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Job 21
Commentary on Job 21 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 21
This is Job's reply to Zophar's discourse, in which he complains less of his own miseries than he had done in his former discourses (finding that his friends were not moved by his complaints to pity him in the least), and comes closer to the general question that was in dispute between him and them, Whether outward prosperity, and the continuance of it, were a mark of the true church and the true members of it, so that the ruin of a man's prosperity is sufficient to prove him a hypocrite, though no other evidence appear against him: this they asserted, but Job denied.
Job 21:1-6
Job here recommends himself, both his case and his discourse, both what he suffered and what he said, to the compassionate consideration of his friends.
Job 21:7-16
All Job's three friends, in their last discourses, had been very copious in describing the miserable condition of a wicked man in this world. "It is true,' says Job, "remarkable judgments are sometimes brought upon notorious sinners, but not always; for we have many instances of the great and long prosperity of those that are openly and avowedly wicked; though they are hardened in their wickedness by their prosperity, yet they are still suffered to prosper.'
Job 21:17-26
Job had largely described the prosperity of wicked people; now, in these verses,
Job 21:27-34
In these verses,