Job 7:12

[Am] I a sea, or a whale,.... Like the restless sea, to which very wicked, profligate, and abandoned sinners are compared, that are continually casting up the mire and dirt of sin and wickedness; am I such an one?

Am I a sea, or a whale, that thou settest a watch over me? Why dost thou deny me the comfort of care-assuaging sleep? Why scarest thou me with frightful dreams?

Am I so great, and powerful, and dangerous a creature, that thou needest to use extraordinary power and violence to rule and subdue me? Am I as fierce and unruly as the sea, which, if thou didst not set a watch over it, and bounds to it, would overwhelm the earth, and destroy mankind upon it? Or am I a vast and ungovernable sea monster, which, if thou didst not restrain it by thy powerful providence, would overturn ships, and destroy men in them, and devour all the lesser fishes? Have I behaved myself towards thee, or towards men, with such rage and violence, as to need such chains to be put upon me? Or is my strength so great as that of the sea, which can endure so many and long storms one after another, and yet can subsist under them and after them? or of a whale, that can laugh at darts and spears? as is said, . No, Lord, thou knowest that I am but a poor weak creature, which thou canst crush with the least touch of thy finger, without these violent and unsupportable pains and miseries; and that I have not been so fierce and boisterous in my carriage as to need or deserve these extraordinary calamities. That thou settest a watch over me; that thou shouldst guard and restrain me with such heavy and unexampled miseries, lest I should break into rebellion against thee, or into cruelty towards men.

Job 7:12 [Am] I a sea, or a whale, that thou settest a watch over me?Ver. 12. Am I a sea, or a whale] Can I bear all troubles, as the sea receives all waters, and the whale bears all tempests? This (as is well observed) was too bold a speech to God from a creature, for when his hand is on our backs our hands should be upon our mouths; as Psalms 39:9, "I was dumb," or (as others read it) I should have been dumb … "because thou didst it." But it is a fair step to perfection and victory when one can kiss God’ s rod and say, as Psalms 44:17, All this is come upon us, yet have we not forgotten thee, nor declined from thy way. Job was not without his impatience; but being he was right for the main, and at length bewailed them, God looked not upon him as he doth upon those refractories, who to their impatience add impenitence; and to their passive disobedience, active. That thou settest a watch over me?] That thou surroundest me with sorrows, and wilt not suffer me to die? Here Job should have set a better watch over his lips, Psalms 39:1; Psalms 141:3, than thus boisterously to have blustered against God (who is ανυπευθυνος, not to be called to an account for his proceedings) like the raging sea or unruly whirlpool. He should have considered that the best men have somewhat of the sea in them, that must be bounded; and somewhat of the whale, that must be watched and kept under; and that God never lays more upon a man than there is need, though he may think otherwise.

(12) Am I a sea, or a whale . . .?—This very hard verse it seems most reasonable to explain, if we can, from Scripture itself: e.g., in Jeremiah 5:22 we read, “Fear ye not me? saith the Lord: will ye not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea?" The writer was probably familiar with Egypt when the Nile, which is still called the sea, was carefully watched and guarded by dykes that its overflow might not destroy the land. So Job exclaims, “Am I like the sea, or one of its monsters—like that Leviathan which Thou hast made to take his pastime therein, that Thou keepest guard over me and makest me thy prisoner continually, shutting me up on every side so fast in prison that I cannot get free?”

Verse 12. Am I a sea, or a whale] "Am I condemned as the Egyptians were who were drowned in the Red Sea? or am I as Pharaoh, who was drowned in it in his sins, that thou settest a keeper over me?" Targum. Am I as dangerous as the sea, that I should be encompassed about with barriers, lest I should hurt mankind? Am I like an ungovernable wild beast or dragon, that I must be put under locks and bars? I think our own version less exceptionable than any other hitherto given of this verse. The meaning is sufficiently plain. Job was hedged about and shut in with insuperable difficulties of various kinds; he was entangled as a wild beast in a net; the more he struggled, the more he lost his strength, and the less probability there was of his being extricated from his present situation. The sea is shut in with barriers, over which it cannot pass; for God has "placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it: and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it," Jeremiah 5:22. "For thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth;" Psalms 104:9. "Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it, and brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors; and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed;" Job 38:8. Here then is Job's allusion: the bounds, doors, garment, swaddling bands, decreed place, and bars, are the watchers or keepers which God has set to prevent the sea from overflowing the earth; so Job's afflictions and distresses were the bounds and bars which God had apparently set to prevent him from injuring his fellow creatures. At least Job, in his complaint, so takes it. Am I like the sea, which thou hast imprisoned within bounds, ready to overwhelm and destroy the country? or am I like a dragon, which must be cooped up in the same way, that it may not have the power to kill and destroy? Surely in my prosperity I gave no evidence of such a disposition; therefore should not be treated as a man dangerous to society. In this Job shows that he will not refrain his mouth.

12. First, he asks with bitter irony if he is the sea or the monster of the sea, that he must be watched and subdued with plagues lest he prove dangerous to the universe? The proud waves of the sea must be confined and a bound which they cannot pass set to them (ch. Job 38:8 seq.; Jeremiah 5:22); has he a wild, untameable nature like this? The monster of the sea here is no real creature such as the crocodile, “sea” being used in the sense of the river. The connexion shews that the reference is to the half poetical, half mythological conception of the raging sea itself as a furious monster, for it is God that sets a watch over it. Studer boldly renders, “am I the sea, or the sea serpent?” His sea serpent, however, is not that of the modern mariner and the mythology of our own day, but that of a more ancient mythology. The serpent of the sea—which was but the wild stormy sea itself—wound himself around the land and threatened to swallow it up, as the serpent of the sky swallowed up the heavenly luminaries (ch. Job 26:12, see on Job 3:8). God sets a watch upon the one, as His hand pierces the other, lest the fixed order of the world be disturbed and land and sea or light and darkness be confused. Job enquires if he must be watched and plagued like this monster lest he throw the world into disorder?

Am I a sea? - That is, “am I like a raging and tumultuous sea, that it is necessary to restrain and confine me?

12. Am I a sea — God sets bounds to the sea, and may thus be said to watch over it. The sea was fancied by the Hebrew poet to be in a state of rebellion, and as calling for divine restraint Jeremiah 31:35, etc.