Job 19:21

21 Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends, For the hand of Eloah hath touched me. 22 Wherefore do ye persecute me as God, And are never satisfied with my flesh? 23 Oh that my words were but written, That they were recorded in a book, 24 With an iron pen, filled in with lead, Graven in the rock for ever! 25 And I know: my Redeemer liveth, And as the last One will He arise from the dust. In Job 19:21 Job takes up a strain we have not heard previously. His natural strength becomes more and more feeble, and his voice weaker and weaker. It is a feeling of sadness that prevails in the preceding description of suffering, and now even stamps the address to the friends with a tone of importunate entreaty which shall, if possible, affect their heart. They are indeed his friends, as the emphatic רעי אתּם affirms; impelled towards him by sympathy they are come, and at least stand by him while all other men flee from him. They are therefore to grant him favour (חנן, prop. to incline to) in the place of right; it is enough that the hand of Eloah has touched him (in connection with this, one is reminded that leprosy is called נגע, and is pre-eminently accounted as plaga divina; wherefore the suffering Messiah also bears the significant name חוּרא דבי רבּי, "the leprous one from the school of Rabbi," in the Talmud, after Isa 53:4, Isa 53:8), they are not to make the divine decree heavier to him by their uncharitableness. Wherefore do ye persecute me - he asks them in Job 19:22 - like as God (כּמו־אל, according to Saad. and Ralbag = כמו־אלּה, which would be very tame); by which he means not merely that they add their persecution to God's, but that they take upon themselves God's work, that they usurp to themselves a judicial divine authority, they act towards him as if th…

This chapter is Job's answer to Bildad's discourse in the foregoing chapter. Though his spirit was grieved and much heated, and Bildad was very peevish, yet he gave him leave to say all he designed to say, and did not break in upon him in the midst of his argument; but, when he had done, he gave him a fair answer, in which, I. He complains of unkind usage. And very unkindly he takes it. 1. That his comforters added to his affliction (Job 19:2-7). 2. That his God was the author of his affliction (Job 19:8-12). 3. That his relations and friends were strange to him, and shy of him, in his affliction (Job 19:20-22). II. He comforts himself with the believing hopes of happiness in the other world, though he had so little comfort in this, making a very solemn confession of his faith, with a desire that it might be recorded as an evidence of his sincerity (Job 19:23-27). III. He concludes with a caution to his friends not to persist in their hard censures of him (Job 19:28, Job 19:29) If the remonstrance Job here makes of his grievances may serve sometimes to justify our complaints, yet his cheerful views of the future state, at the same time, may shame us Christians, and may serve to silence our complaints, or at least to balance them.

19:21 The hand of God had struck Job through the permission he gave to Satan (1:11; 2:5).