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Job Complains of his Weakness
v. 1. My breath is corrupt, or, "my spirit is violently disturbed"; his power of life was fast waning as his bodily organism was succumbing to the illness racking him. My days are extinct, the graves are ready for me; his life was like a lamp whose oil was about consumed, and so he saw nothing but the tomb before him.
v. 2. Are there not mockers with me? or, "truly, mockery surrounds me," namely, in the persons of these false friends. And doth not mine eye continue in their provocation? The eyes of Job were obliged to rest, to dwell, on their quarreling, on their contentions, a fact which increased his misery.
v. 3. Lay down now, Job pleads with God to furnish him a pledge, or security, to bind Himself as surety; put me in a surety with Thee, He Himself being bondsman for Job before the tribunal of divine justice. Who is he that will strike hands with me? or, "who else would guarantee or furnish me surety?" Both parties in a trial were obliged to pledge a sum or guarantee before court was opened, and it is with reference to this custom that Job asks God to go on his bond.
v. 4. For Thou hast hid their heart from understanding, his friends were so short-sighted and narrow-minded that they were prevented from seeing and acknowledging Job's innocence; therefore shalt Thou not exalt them, not let them prevail against Job, whom they were unjustly accusing. And the attitude of his friends forces another exclamation from his lips.
v. 5. He that speaketh flattery to his friends, even the eyes of his children shall fail, literally, "he who offers his friends for a prey," exposing them to unjust accusations, as did the three friends of Job, the eyes of his children will languish. The thought is that God certainly could not favor these false friends, since they had betrayed Job's friendship and thus had incurred judgment in which their children were bound to share.
v. 6. He hath made me also a byword of the people, God had set him as a proverb before the whole world, the name of Job suggested to the minds of men everywhere a great misery inflicted by the Lord; and aforetime I was as a tabret, one into whose face the passers-by could freely spit, the object of the most unqualified contempt.
v. 7. Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, the light of his eyes was expiring from weeping and grief, and all my members are as a shadow, wasted away like phantoms.
v. 8. Upright men shall be astonied at this, they are astonished and horrified that such a fate can strike the righteous, and the innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite, roused up in anger against the ungodly, his sense of justice being outraged by the prosperity of the wicked.
v. 9. The righteous also shall hold on his way, that is, in spite of such happenings the truly pious person will cling to his righteousness, and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger, increase in inward, spiritual strength. This is one of the passages which show the purpose of the book, lighting up its darkness like a flash of encouraging brightness.
v. 10. But as for you all, Job here addressing himself once more to his false friends, do ye return and come now, he challenged them to come forward with some real wisdom; for I cannot find one wise man among you, their hearts remained closed to the right understanding of Job's condition, they were still deceiving themselves concerning the actual state of the case before them. Thus false friends everywhere, if once they have rendered judgment, are most unwilling to retract their false statements, preferring, rather, to have their victim suffer unjustly.