15 If I were wicked, woe unto me! and righteous, I will not lift up my head, being [so] full of shame, and beholding mine affliction; --
Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill [with him], because the desert of his hands shall be rendered unto him.
Whom, though I were righteous, [yet] would I not answer; I would make supplication to my judge.
Since thou knowest that I am not wicked, and that there is none that delivereth out of thy hand?
If I justified myself, mine own mouth would condemn me; were I perfect, he would prove me perverse. Were I perfect, [yet] would I not know my soul: I would despise my life.
But to those that are contentious, and are disobedient to the truth, but obey unrighteousness, [there shall be] wrath and indignation, tribulation and distress, on every soul of man that works evil, both of Jew first, and of Greek;
Thus *ye* also, when ye shall have done all things that have been ordered you, say, We are unprofitable bondmen; we have done what it was our duty to do.
Remember, O Jehovah, what is come upon us; consider, and see our reproach. Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens. We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows. Our water have we to drink for money, our wood cometh unto us for a price. Our pursuers are on our necks: we are weary, we have no rest. We have given the hand to Egypt, [and] to Asshur, to be satisfied with bread. Our fathers have sinned, [and] they are not; and we bear their iniquities. Bondmen rule over us: there is no deliverer out of their hand. We have to get our bread at the risk of our lives, because of the sword of the wilderness. Our skin gloweth like an oven, because of the burning heat of the famine. They have ravished the women in Zion, the maids in the cities of Judah. Princes were hanged up by their hand; the faces of elders were not honoured. The young men have borne the mill, and the youths have stumbled under the wood. The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their music. The joy of our heart hath ceased; our dance is turned into mourning. The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, for we have sinned! For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes have grown dim, Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate: foxes walk over it. Thou, Jehovah, dwellest for ever; thy throne is from generation to generation. Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, dost thou forsake us so long time? Turn thou us unto thee, Jehovah, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old. Or is it that thou hast utterly rejected us? Wouldest thou be exceeding wroth against us?
And Jehovah said, I have seen assuredly the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and their cry have I heard on account of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows.
Thou meetest him that rejoiceth to do righteousness, those that remember thee in thy ways: (behold, thou wast wroth, and we have sinned:) in those is perpetuity, and we shall be saved. And we are all become as an unclean [thing], and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have carried us away;
And I said, Woe unto me! for I am undone; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of hosts.
RESH. See mine affliction, and deliver me; for I have not forgotten thy law.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible » Commentary on Job 10
Commentary on Job 10 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 10
Job 10:1-22. Job's Reply to Bildad Continued.
1. leave my complaint upon myself—rather, "I will give loose to my complaint" (Job 7:11).
2. show me, &c.—Do not, by virtue of Thy mere sovereignty, treat me as guilty without showing me the reasons.
3. Job is unwilling to think God can have pleasure in using His power to "oppress" the weak, and to treat man, the work of His own hands, as of no value (Job 10:8; Ps 138:8).
shine upon—favor with prosperity (Ps 50:2).
4-6. Dost Thou see as feebly as man? that is, with the same uncharitable eye, as, for instance, Job's friends? Is Thy time as short? Impossible! Yet one might think, from the rapid succession of Thy strokes, that Thou hadst no time to spare in overwhelming me.
7. "Although Thou (the Omniscient) knowest," &c. (connected with Job 10:6), "Thou searchest after my sin."
and … that none that can deliver out of thine hand—Therefore Thou hast no need to deal with me with the rapid violence which man would use (see Job 10:6).
8. Made—with pains; implying a work of difficulty and art; applying to God language applicable only to man.
together round about—implying that the human body is a complete unity, the parts of which on all sides will bear the closest scrutiny.
9. clay—Job 10:10 proves that the reference here is, not so much to the perishable nature of the materials, as to their wonderful fashioning by the divine potter.
10. In the organization of the body from its rude commencements, the original liquid gradually assumes a more solid consistency, like milk curdling into cheese (Ps 139:15, 16). Science reveals that the chyle circulated by the lacteal vessels is the supply to every organ.
11. fenced—or "inlaid" (Ps 139:15); "curiously wrought" [Umbreit]. In the fœtus the skin appears first, then the flesh, then the harder parts.
12. visitation—Thy watchful Providence.
spirit—breath.
13. is with thee—was Thy purpose. All God's dealings with Job in his creation, preservation, and present afflictions were part of His secret counsel (Ps 139:16; Ac 15:18; Ec 3:11).
14, 15. Job is perplexed because God "marks" every sin of his with such ceaseless rigor. Whether "wicked" (godless and a hypocrite) or "righteous" (comparatively sincere), God condemns and punishes alike.
15. lift up my head—in conscious innocence (Ps 3:3).
see thou—rather, "and seeing I see (I too well see) mine affliction," (which seems to prove me guilty) [Umbreit].
16. increaseth—rather, "(if) I lift up (my head) Thou wouldest hunt me," &c. [Umbreit].
and again—as if a lion should not kill his prey at once, but come back and torture it again.
17. witnesses—His accumulated trials were like a succession of witnesses brought up in proof of his guilt, to wear out the accused.
changes and war—rather, "(thou settest in array) against me host after host" (literally, "changes and a host," that is, a succession of hosts); namely, his afflictions, and then reproach upon reproach from his friends.
20. But, since I was destined from my birth to these ills, at least give me a little breathing time during the few days left me (Job 9:34; 13:21; Ps 39:13).
22. The ideas of order and light, disorder and darkness, harmonize (Ge 1:2). Three Hebrew words are used for darkness; in Job 10:21 (1) the common word "darkness"; here (2) "a land of gloom" (from a Hebrew root, "to cover up"); (3) as "thick darkness" or blackness (from a root, expressing sunset). "Where the light thereof is like blackness." Its only sunshine is thick darkness. A bold figure of poetry. Job in a better frame has brighter thoughts of the unseen world. But his views at best wanted the definite clearness of the Christian's. Compare with his words here Re 21:23; 22:5; 2Ti 1:10.