4 As for me, is my complaint to man? Why shouldn't I be impatient?
Moses spoke so to the children of Israel, but they didn't listen to Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage.
Don't count your handmaid for a wicked woman; for out of the abundance of my complaint and my provocation have I spoken hitherto.
What is my strength, that I should wait? What is my end, that I should be patient?
"Therefore I will not keep silent. I will speak in the anguish of my spirit. I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. Am I a sea, or a sea-monster, That you put a guard over me? When I say, 'My bed shall comfort me, My couch shall ease my complaint;' Then you scar me with dreams, And terrify me through visions: So that my soul chooses strangling, Death rather than my bones. I loathe my life. I don't want to live forever. Leave me alone; for my days are but a breath. What is man, that you should magnify him, That you should set your mind on him, That you should visit him every morning, And test him every moment? How long will you not look away from me, Nor leave me alone until I swallow down my spittle? If I have sinned, what do I do to you, you watcher of men? Why have you set me as a mark for you, So that I am a burden to myself? Why do you not pardon my disobedience, and take away my iniquity? For now shall I lie down in the dust. You will seek me diligently, but I shall not be."
> My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning? My God, I cry in the daytime, but you don't answer; In the night season, and am not silent. But you are holy, You who inhabit the praises of Israel.
Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him, The saving help of my countenance, and my God.
I remember God, and I groan. I complain, and my spirit is overwhelmed. Selah. You hold my eyelids open. I am so troubled that I can't speak. I have considered the days of old, The years of ancient times. I remember my song in the night. I consider in my own heart; My spirit diligently inquires: "Will the Lord reject us forever? Will he be favorable no more? Has his loving kindness vanished forever? Does his promise fail for generations? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he, in anger, withheld his compassion?" Selah.
I pour out my complaint before him. I tell him my troubles. When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, You knew my path. In the way in which I walk, They have hidden a snare for me.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Job 21
Commentary on Job 21 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 21
This is Job's reply to Zophar's discourse, in which he complains less of his own miseries than he had done in his former discourses (finding that his friends were not moved by his complaints to pity him in the least), and comes closer to the general question that was in dispute between him and them, Whether outward prosperity, and the continuance of it, were a mark of the true church and the true members of it, so that the ruin of a man's prosperity is sufficient to prove him a hypocrite, though no other evidence appear against him: this they asserted, but Job denied.
Job 21:1-6
Job here recommends himself, both his case and his discourse, both what he suffered and what he said, to the compassionate consideration of his friends.
Job 21:7-16
All Job's three friends, in their last discourses, had been very copious in describing the miserable condition of a wicked man in this world. "It is true,' says Job, "remarkable judgments are sometimes brought upon notorious sinners, but not always; for we have many instances of the great and long prosperity of those that are openly and avowedly wicked; though they are hardened in their wickedness by their prosperity, yet they are still suffered to prosper.'
Job 21:17-26
Job had largely described the prosperity of wicked people; now, in these verses,
Job 21:27-34
In these verses,