Job 13:26

26 For Thou decreest bitter things against me, And causest me to possess the iniquities of my youth, 27 And puttest my feet in the stocks, And observest all my ways. Thou makest for thyself a circle round the soles of my feet, 28 Round one who moulders away as worm-eaten, As a garment that the moth gnaweth. He is conscious of having often prayed: "Remember not the sins of my youth, and my transgressions: according to Thy mercy remember Thou me," Psa 25:7; and still he can only regard his affliction as the inheritance (i.e., entailed upon him by sins not repented of) of the sins of his youth, since he has no sins of his mature years that would incur wrath, to reproach himself with. He does not know how to reconcile with the justice of God the fact that He again records against him sins, the forgiveness of which he implores soon after their commission, and decrees (כּתב, as Psa 149:9, and as used elsewhere in the book of Job with reference to the recording of judgment) for him on account of them such bitter punishment (מררות, amara, bitter calamities; comp. Deu 32:32, "bitter" grapes). And the two could not indeed be harmonized, if it really were thus. So long as a man remains an object of the divine mercy, his sins that have been once forgiven are no more the object of divine judgment. But Job can understand his affliction only as an additional punishment. The conflict of temptation through which he is passing has made God's loving-kindness obscure to him. He appears to himself to be like a prisoner whose feet are forced into the holes of a סד, i.e., the block or log of wood in which the feet of a criminal are fastened, and which he must shuffle about with him when he moves; perhaps connected with Arab. sadda, occludere, opplere (foramen), elsewhere מהפּכת (from the forc…

Job here comes to make application of what he had said in the foregoing chapter; and now we have him not in so good a temper as he was in then: for, I. He is very bold with his friends, comparing himself with them, notwithstanding the mortifications he was under (Job 13:1, Job 13:2). Condemning them for their falsehood, their forwardness to judge, their partiality and deceitfulness under colour of pleading God's cause (Job 13:4-8), and threatening them with the judgments of God for their so doing (Job 13:9-12), desiring them to be silent (Job 13:5, Job 13:13, Job 13:17), and turning from them to God (Job 13:3). II. He is very bold with his God. 1. In some expressions his faith is very bold, yet that is not more bold than welcome (Job 13:15, Job 13:16, Job 13:18) But, 2. In other expressions his passion is rather too bold in expostulations with God concerning the deplorable condition he was in (Job 13:14, Job 13:19, etc.), complaining of the confusion he was in (Job 13:20-22), and the loss he was at to find out the sin that provoked God thus to afflict him, and in short of the rigour of God's proceedings against him (Job 13:23-28).