20 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?
He has bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.
Your righteousness is like the mountains of God. Your judgments are like a great deep. Yahweh, you preserve man and animal.
Yahweh God of hosts, How long will you be angry against the prayer of your people?
For you will make them turn their back, When you aim drawn bows at their face.
He sings before men, and says, 'I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, And it didn't profit me.
'I am clean, without disobedience. I am innocent, neither is there iniquity in me:
You are Yahweh, even you alone; you have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all things that are thereon, the seas and all that is in them, and you preserve them all; and the host of heaven worships you.
I was at ease, and he broke me apart. Yes, he has taken me by the neck, and dashed me to pieces. He has also set me up for his target. His archers surround me. He splits my kidneys apart, and does not spare. He pours out my gall on the ground. He breaks me with breach on breach. He runs on me like a giant.
For you write bitter things against me, And make me inherit the iniquities of my youth:
I shall be condemned; Why then do I labor in vain? If I wash myself with snow, And cleanse my hands with lye, Yet you will plunge me in the ditch. My own clothes shall abhor me.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Job 7
Commentary on Job 7 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 7
Job, in this chapter, goes on to express the bitter sense he had of his calamities and to justify himself in his desire of death.
Job 7:1-6
Job is here excusing what he could not justify, even his inordinate desire of death. Why should he not wish for the termination of life, which would be the termination of his miseries? To enforce this reason he argues,
Job 7:7-16
Job, observing perhaps that his friends, though they would not interrupt him in his discourse, yet began to grow weary, and not to heed much what he said, here turns to God, and speaks to him. If men will not hear us, God will; if men cannot help us, he can; for his arm is not shortened, neither is his ear heavy. Yet we must not go to school to Job here to learn how to speak to God; for, it must be confessed, there is a great mixture of passion and corruption in what he here says. But, if God be not extreme to mark what his people say amiss, let us also make the best of it. Job is here begging of God either to ease him or to end him. He here represents himself to God,
Job 7:17-21
Job here reasons with God,