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Job_11:13 If thou prepare thine heart, and stretch out thine hands toward him;
Ver. 13. If thou prepare thine heart] viz. To meet God, Amo_4:12, humbly submitting to his justice, and heartily imploring his mercy. The sum of what Zophar saith in the following verses is this: If thou truly repent, thou shall prosper; as if not, thou shall perish. This he might have said more fitly to most of us, who are deeply guilty, saith Lavater, than to Job, who was nothing so sinful as we are, and yet much more penitent. But Zophar calls upon him to quarrel with his faults, and not with his friends, and to break off his sins by repentance, without which, if he should have peace, it would be but like those short interims between the Egyptian plagues.
And stretch out thine hands toward him] Heb. And spread thy palms to him: so in prayer for pardon of sin and power against sin; for this stretching out, or spreading of the hands, is a prayer gesture, wherein God’s people come forma pauperis, holding out the hand to receive mercy, as beggars do an alms; or as men beg quarter for their lives with hands held up; or, lastly, as he that is fallen into a ditch, or deep pit, and cannot get out, lifteth up his hands, and crieth out for help. See Exo_17:11-12 Lev_9:22 1Ki_8:22 Psa_141:2. It appeareth that the ancients prayed not with their hands joined together or a little way lifted up, but with their arms stretched abroad, and the palms of their hands turned up towards heaven.