View Job 17 in the note window.
Job still bemoans himself, ver. 1 - 7.
Encourages good men to hold on their way, ver. 8, 9.
Declares he looks for no ease but in the grave, ver. 10 - 16.
Job in this chapter suddenly passes from one thing to another
as is usual for men in much trouble.
1: The graves - He speaks of the sepulchres of his fathers, to
which he must be gathered. The graves where they are laid, are ready
for me also. Whatever is unready, the grave is ready for us: it is a
bed soon made. And if the grave be ready for us, it concerns us, to
be ready for the grave.
2: Are not - Do not my friends, instead of comforting, mock me?
Thus he returns to what he had said, (Job 16:20), and intimates the
justice of his following appeal.
3: Surety - These words contain, an humble desire to God that he
would be his surety, or appoint him a surety who should maintain his
righteous cause against his opposers. Strike hands - Be surety to me;
whereof that was the usual gesture.
4: Hid - Thou hast blinded the minds of my friends: therefore I
desire a more wise and able judge. Therefore - Thou wilt not give them
the victory over me in this contest, but wilt make them ashamed of their
confidence.
7: As a shadow - I am grown so poor and thin, that I am not to be
called a man, but the shadow of a man.
8: Astonied - At the depth and mysteriousness of God's judgments,
which fall on innocent men, while the worst of men prosper.
Yet - Notwithstanding all these sufferings of good men, and the
astonishment which they cause, he shall the more zealously oppose
those hypocrites, who make these strange providences of God an
objection to religion.
10: Come - And renew the debate, as I see you are resolved to do.
11: My days - The days of my life. I am a dying man, and therefore
the hopes you give me of the bettering of my condition, are vain.
Purposes - Which I had in my prosperous days, concerning myself and
children.
12: They - My thoughts so incessantly pursue and disturb me,
that I can no more sleep in the night, than in the day.
The light - The day - light, which often gives some comfort to men in
misery, seems to be gone as soon as it is begun. Darkness - Because of
my grievous pains and torments which follow me by day as well as by night.
13: Wait - For deliverance, I should be disappointed; for I am upon
the borders of the grave, I expect no rest but in the dark grave, for
which therefore I prepare myself. I endeavour to make it easy, by keeping
my conscience pure, by seeing Christ lying in this bed, (so turning it
into a bed of spices) and by looking beyond it to the resurrection.
14: Corruption - Heb. to the pit of corruption, the grave.
Father - I am near a - kin to thee, and thou wilt receive and keep
me in thy house, as parents do their children.
15: Hope - The happiness you would have me expect.
16: They - My hopes, of which he spake in the singular number,
ver.(15), which he here changes into the plural, as is usual in these
poetical books. Bars - Into the innermost parts of the pit: my hopes
are dying, and will be buried in my grave. We must shortly be in the
dust, under the bars of the pit, held fast there, 'till the general
resurrection. All good men, if they cannot agree now will there rest
together. Let the foresight of this cool the heat of all contenders,
and moderate the disputers of this world.
