5 Turn unto me, and be astonished, And put hand to mouth.
and they say to him, `Keep silent, lay thy hand on thy mouth, and go with us, and be to us for a father and for a priest: is it better thy being a priest to the house of one man, or thy being priest to a tribe and to a family in Israel?'
Princes have kept in words, And a hand they place on their mouth.
If thou hast been foolish in lifting up thyself, And if thou hast devised evil -- hand to mouth!
and they lift up their eyes from afar and have not discerned him, and they lift up their voice and weep, and rend each his robe, and sprinkle dust on their heads -- heavenward.
To my skin and to my flesh Cleaved hath my bone, And I deliver myself with the skin of my teeth. Pity me, pity me, ye my friends, For the hand of God hath stricken against me.
I have been dumb, I open not my mouth, Because Thou -- Thou hast done `it'.
See do nations, and they are ashamed of all their might, They lay a hand on the mouth, their ears are deaf.
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,