Job 19:22
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Why do you persecute me as God does? Will you never get enough of my flesh?
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
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.
Open source ↗19:22 persecute (literally pursue): Job complained that God had tracked him like a hunter (10:16) or a warrior (16:13).
Open source ↗Original language
The Hebrew and Greek words behind this passage, with Strong's numbers — from openscriptures (CC BY-SA).
Cross-references
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For they persecute the one You struck and recount the pain of those You wounded.
Would You frighten a windblown leaf? Would You chase after dry chaff?
You eat the flesh of my people after stripping off their skin and breaking their bones. You chop them up like flesh for the cooking pot, like meat in a cauldron.”
I will place it in the hands of your tormentors, who told you: ‘Lie down, so we can walk over you,’ so that you made your back like the ground, like a street to be traversed.”
if the men of my house have not said, ‘Who is there who has not had his fill?’—
But stretch out Your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse You to Your face.”
Should I hold my head high, You would hunt me like a lion, and again display Your power against me.
God has delivered me to unjust men; He has thrown me to the clutches of the wicked.