The speech - By taking away or restraining the gift of utterance from them. Or, by taking away their understanding which should direct their speech. Trusty - Of those wise and experienced counsellors, that were trusted by the greatest princes.
Darkness - The most secret counsels of princes, which are contrived and carried on in the dark.
Nations - What hitherto he said of princes, he now applies to nations, whom God does either increase or diminish as he pleases.
Grope - Thus are the revolutions of kingdoms brought about by an overruling providence. Heaven and earth are shaken: but the Lord remaineth a king forever.
Lo - All this which either you or I have discoursed concerning the infinite power and wisdom of God. I know, both by seeing it, by my own observation and experience, and by hearing it from my ancestors.
Surely - I had rather debate the matter with God than with you. I am not afraid of presenting my person and cause before him, who is a witness of my integrity.
Accept - Not judging according to the right of the cause, but the quality or the person.
Remembrance - Mouldering and coming to nothing. And the consideration of our mortality should make us afraid of offending God. Your mementos are like unto ashes, contemptible and unprofitable.
Wherefore - And this may be a reason of his desire of liberty of speech, because he could hold his tongue no longer, but must needs tear himself to pieces, if he had not some vent for his grief. The phrase having his life in his hand, denotes a condition extremely dangerous.
Hear - He now comes more closely to his business, the foregoing verses being mostly in way of preface.
Behold - I have seriously considered the state of my case, and am ready to plead my cause.
The ghost - My grief would break my heart, if I should not give it vent.
Withdraw - Suspend my torments during the time of my pleading with thee, that my mind may be at liberty. Do not present thyself to me in terrible majesty, neither deal with me in rigorous justice.
Then - This proposal savoured of self - confidence, and of irreverence towards God; for which, and the like speeches, he is reproved by God, chap.38:2,3 40:2.
My sin - That I am a sinner, I confess; but not that I am guilty of such crimes as my friends suppose, if it be so, do thou, O Lord, discover it.
Leaf - One that can no more resist thy power, than a leaf, or a little dry straw can resist the wind or fire.
Writest - Thou appointest or inflictest. A metaphor from princes or judges, who anciently used to write their sentences.
He - He speaks of himself in the third person, as is usual in this and other sacred books. So the sense is, he, this poor frail creature, this body of mine; which possibly he pointed at with his finger, consumeth or pineth away.
Man - A weak creature, and withal corrupt and sinful, and of that sex by which sin and all other calamity was brought into the world.
Flower - The flower is fading, and all its beauty soon withers and is gone. The shadow is fleeting, and its very being will soon be lost in the shadows of night. Of neither do we make any account, in neither do we put any confidence.
Not one - No man. This is the prerogative of thy grace, which therefore I humbly implore.
Determined - Limited to a certain period. With thee - In thy power and disposal. Thou hast appointed a certain end of his days, beyond which he cannot prolong his life.
Turn - Withdraw thine afflicting hand from him, that he may have some present ease. 'Till - He come to the period of his life, which thou hast allotted to him, as a man appoints a set time to an hired servant.
Die - To outward appearance.
Scent - By means of water. Scent or smell, is figuratively ascribed to a tree.
Man - Two words are here used for man. Geber, a mighty man, tho' mighty, dies. Adam, a man of earth, returns to it. Before death, he is dying daily, continually wasting away. In death, he giveth up the ghost, the spirit returns to God that gave it. After death, where is he? Not where he was: his place knows him no more. But is he nowhere? Yes, he is gone to the world of spirits, gone into eternity, gone, never to return to this world!
As - So it is with man. Or thus, as when the waters fail from the sea, when the sea forsakes the place into which it used to flow, the river which was fed by it, decayeth and drieth up without all hopes of recovery.
Lieth - In his bed, the grave. 'Till - Until the time of the general resurrection, when these visible heavens shall pass away.
The grave - The grave is not only a resting - place, but an hiding - place to the children of God. He hides them in the grave, as we hide our treasure in a place of secrecy and safety. Hide me there, not only from the storms of this life, but for the glory of a better. Until thy wrath be past - As long as our bodies lie in the grave, there are some fruits of God's wrath against sin: until the set time comes, for their being remembered, as Noah was remembered in the ark, Gen 8:1. Our bodies shall not be forgotten in the grave, there is a time set for their being enquired after.
Shall he live? - He shall not in this world. Therefore I will patiently wait 'till that change comes, which will put a period to my calamities.
Answer thee - Thou shalt call my soul to thyself: and I will chearfully answer, Here I am: knowing thou wilt have a desire to the work of thy hands - A love for the soul which thou hast made, and new - made by thy grace.
Numbereth - Thou makest a strict enquiry into all my actions.
Sealed - As writings or other choice things, that they may all be brought forth upon occasion, and not one of them forgotten. Thou keepest all my sins in thy memory. But herein Job speaks rashly.
And - As when a great mountain falls, by an earthquake or inundation, it moulders away like a fading leaf, (as the Hebrew word signifies) and as the rock, when by the violence of winds or earthquakes it is removed out of its place, and thrown down, is never re - advanced: and as the waters by continual droppings, wear away the stones, so that they can never be made whole again: and as thou wastest away, by a great and violent inundation, the things which grow out of the dust of the earth, herbs, and fruits, and plants, which once washed away are irrecoverably lost; in like manner, thou destroyest the hope of man: when man dies, all hope of his living again in this world is lost.
Prevailest - When once thou takest away this life, it is gone forever. Sendest - To his long home.
Knoweth not - Either is ignorant of all such events: or, is not concerned or affected with them. A dead or dying man minds not these things.
Fill - Satisfy his mind and conscience. East wind - With discourses not only unprofitable, but also pernicious both to himself and others; as the east - wind was in those parts.
Castest off - Heb. thou makes void fear; the fear of God, piety and religion, by thy unworthy speeches of God, and by those false and pernicious principles, that God makes no difference between good and bad in the course of his providence, but equally prospers or afflicts both: thou dost that which tends to the subversion of the fear and worship of God. Restrainest prayer - Thou dost by thy words and principles, as far as in thee lies, banish prayer out of the world, by making it useless and unprofitable to men.
Uttereth - Thy words discover the naughtiness of thy heart. Crafty - Thou speakest wickedly, and craftily: thou coverest thy impious principles with fair pretences of piety.
Are - Are those comforts, which we have propounded to thee on condition of thy repentance, small and contemptible in thine eyes? Secret - Hast thou any secret and peculiar way of comfort which is unknown to us, and to all other men?
Why - Why dost thou suffer thyself to be transported by the pride of thine heart, to use such unworthy expressions? Wink - Why dost thou look with such an angry, supercilious, and disdainful look?
Against God - Eliphaz here does in effect give the cause on Satan's side, and affirms that Job had done as he said he would, Curse God to his face.
Saints - In his angels, chap.4:18, who are called his saints or holy ones, Deut 33:2 Psal 103:20. Who though they were created holy, yet many of them fell. Heavens - The angels that dwell in heaven; heaven being put for its inhabitants. None of these are pure, simply and perfectly, and comparatively to God. The angels are pure from corruption, but not from imperfection.
Who - Who besides his natural proneness to sin, has contracted habits of sinning; and sins as freely, as greedily and delightfully, as men, especially in those hot countries, drink up water.
I - I will prove what I have affirmed, that such strokes as thine are peculiar to hypocrites. Seen - I speak not by hear - say, but from my own experience.