Job 13:23

How many [are] mine iniquities and sins?] Whether of ignorance or presumption, through mistake or wilfulness, voluntary or involuntary, sins of omission or commission, secret or open, or of heart,

How many are mine iniquities and sins? make me to know my transgression and my sin. The catalogue of my sins ought to be great, to judge from the severity with which God ever anew crushes one already bowed down.

That I am a sinner I confess; but that I am guilty of so many or such heinous crimes as my friends suppose I utterly deny; and if it be so, do thou, O Lord, discover it to my shame. Make me to know my transgression and my sin, if peradventure my heart deceive me therein; for I am not conscious to myself of any enormous crime.

Job 13:23 How many [are] mine iniquities and sins? make me to know my transgression and my sin.Ver. 23. How many are mine iniquities and sins?] How many? too many to be reckoned: sin imputed to thee, sins inherent in thee, sins issuing from thee; commissions, omissions, failings in the manner of performance (for a good work may be marred in the doing, as many a garment is in the making, and many a tale in the telling); thy life is fuller of sins than the firmament is of stars or the furnace of sparks, besides thy birthblot and inward evils which might justly cause thy destruction, as a man may die of inward bleeding. When the house is well swept, and all rooms seem very clean, if the sun do but shine into it through the windows, the beams thereof discover an infinite number of motes in all places; so will it be with the best, if narrowly examined. Lesser sins, secret faults, are of daily, and almost hourly, incursion; yet we must be cleansed from them, Psalms 19:12, or else vae hominum vitro quantumvis laudabili, saith one, Woe to the life of men, though praiseworthy, as the world judgeth. A pardon there is of course for such sins, and they do not usually distract and plunge the conscience; but yet that pardon must be sued out, and these sins must be disliked and bewailed. Make me to know my transgression and my sin] That particular sin that thou chiefly strikest at for every affliction hath a voice in it, Micah 6:9, and saith to the sufferer, as those mariners did to Jonah, Jonah 1:8, What evil hast thou committed, or admitted? what good hast thou omitted, or intermitted? Up and search. Israel hath sinned: why liest thou upon thy face? as the Lord once said to Joshua, Joshua 7:10-11 : something surely there is amiss that God would have amended; it is, therefore, meet to be said unto him, "Make me to know my transgression and my sin," yea, the iniquity of my sin, the filthiness of my lewdness, all my transgressions in all my sins, as the phrase is, Leviticus 16:21, that is, how many transgressions are wrapped up in my several sins and their circumstances. This either Job meant here, or else he was afterwards by Elihu tutored to it, Job 34:31-32, "Surely it is meet to be said unto God, I have borne chastisement, I will not offend any more: That which I see not teach thou me: if I have done iniquity, I will do no more."

(23) How many are mine iniquities?—We must be careful to note that alongside with Job’s claim to be righteous there is ever as deep a confession of personal sin, thus showing that the only way in which we can understand his declarations is in the light of His teaching who convicts of sin before He convinces of righteousness.

Verse 23. How many are mine iniquities] Job being permitted to begin first, enters immediately upon the subject; and as it was a fact that he was grievously afflicted, and this his friends asserted was in consequence of grievous iniquities, he first desires to have them specified. What are the specific charges in this indictment? To say I must be a sinner to be thus afflicted, is saying nothing; tell me what are the sins, and show me the proofs.

23. Job begins his plea with the demand to know the number of his sins—how many iniquities and sins have I?—and in general to be made aware of them. He means what great sins he is guilty of, sins that account for his present afflictions. He does not deny sinfulness, even sins of his youth (Job 13:26); what he denies is special sins of such magnitude as to account for his calamities. Job and his friends both agree in the theory that great afflictions are evidence that God holds those whom He afflicts guilty of great offences. The friends believe that Job is guilty of such offences; he knows he is not, and he here demands to know what the sins are of which God holds him guilty.

How many are mine iniquities and sins? - Job takes the place of the plaintiff or accuser. He opens the cause. He appeals to God to state the catalogue of his crimes, or to bring forward his charges of guilt against him.

23. He now commences his most pathetic appeal to God, which is continued through the next chapter. He begins to “reason with God,” as he had expressed his desire to do in Job 13:3.