Job 36

Job 36:1

Hid - Thou hast blinded the minds of my friends: therefore I desire a more wise and able judge. Therefore - Thou wilt not give them the victory over me in this contest, but wilt make them ashamed of their confidence.

Job 36:4

As a shadow - I am grown so poor and thin, that I am not to be called a man, but the shadow of a man.

Job 36:5

Astonied - At the depth and mysteriousness of God’s judgments, which fall on innocent men, while the worst of men prosper. Yet - Notwithstanding all these sufferings of good men, and the astonishment which they cause, he shall the more zealously oppose those hypocrites, who make these strange providences of God an objection to religion.

Job 36:7

Come - And renew the debate, as I see you are resolved to do.

Job 36:8

My days - The days of my life. I am a dying man, and therefore the hopes you give me of the bettering of my condition, are vain. Purposes - Which I had in my prosperous days, concerning myself and children.

Job 36:9

They - My thoughts so incessantly pursue and disturb me, that I can no more sleep in the night, than in the day. The light - The day - light, which often gives some comfort to men in misery, seems to be gone as soon as it is begun. Darkness - Because of my grievous pains and torments which follow me by day as well as by night.

Job 36:10

Wait - For deliverance, I should be disappointed; for I am upon the borders of the grave, I expect no rest but in the dark grave, for which therefore I prepare myself. I endeavour to make it easy, by keeping my conscience pure, by seeing Christ lying in this bed, (so turning it into a bed of spices) and by looking beyond it to the resurrection.

Job 36:11

Corruption - Heb. to the pit of corruption, the grave. Father - I am near a - kin to thee, and thou wilt receive and keep me in thy house, as parents do their children.

Job 36:12

Hope - The happiness you would have me expect.

Job 36:13

They - My hopes, of which he spake in the singular number, ver.15, which he here changes into the plural, as is usual in these poetical books. Bars - Into the innermost parts of the pit: my hopes are dying, and will be buried in my grave. We must shortly be in the dust, under the bars of the pit, held fast there, ’till the general resurrection. All good men, if they cannot agree now will there rest together. Let the foresight of this cool the heat of all contenders, and moderate the disputers of this world.

Job 36:15

They - My hopes, of which he spake in the singular number, ver.15, which he here changes into the plural, as is usual in these poetical books. Bars - Into the innermost parts of the pit: my hopes are dying, and will be buried in my grave. We must shortly be in the dust, under the bars of the pit, held fast there, ’till the general resurrection. All good men, if they cannot agree now will there rest together. Let the foresight of this cool the heat of all contenders, and moderate the disputers of this world.

Job 36:16

Ye - Thou, O Job; of whom he speaks here, as also ver.3, in the plural number, as was a common idiotism of the Eastern language, to speak thus of one person, especially where he was one of eminency. Mark - Consider the matter better.

Job 36:17

Beasts - Ignorant, and stupid men, chap.17:4,10.

Job 36:18

He - Job. Thou art thy own tormentor. Forsaken - Shall God give over the government of the earth for thy sake, to prevent thy complaints and clamours? Shall the counsels of God, which are more immoveable than rocks, and the whole course of his providence be altered to comply with thy humours?

Job 36:21

Steps - His strong steps, by a vulgar Hebraism: his attempts and actions; such of them as seem to be contrived with greatest strength of understanding, and carried on with greatest resolution. Straitened - Shall be hindered and entangled. He shall be cast into difficulties and perplexities, so that he shall not be able to proceed, and to accomplish his enterprizes.

Job 36:22

Feet - By his own designs and actions.

Job 36:27

First - born - A terrible kind of death. The first - born was the chief of his brethren, and therefore this title is given to things eminent in their kind.

Job 36:28

Confidence - All the matter of his confidence, his riches, and children. Terrors - To death, which even Aristotle called, The most terrible of all terribles. And this it will do, either because it will expose him to his enemies, who will kill him; or because the sense of his disappointments, and losses, and dangers, will break his heart.

Job 36:29

It - Destruction, expressed ver.12, shall fix its abode with him. Because - Because it is none of his own, being got from others by deceit or violence. Brimstone - It shall be utterly destroyed, as it were, by fire and brimstone. He seems to allude both to the destruction of Sodom, which happened not long before these times, and to the judgment which befel Job, chap.1:16.

Job 36:32

Darkness - From a prosperous life to disgrace and misery, and to the grave, the land of darkness.