Albert Barnes Commentary Job 31:38

"If my land crieth out against me, And the furrows thereof weep together;" — Job 31:38 (ASV)

If my land cry against me - This is a new specification of an offence, and an imprecation of an appropriate punishment if he had been guilty of it. Many have supposed that these closing verses have been transferred from their appropriate place by an error of transcribers, and that they should have been inserted between Job 31:23-24, or in some previous part of the chapter. It is certain that Job 31:35-37 would make an appropriate and impressive close of the chapter, being a solemn appeal to God in reference to all the specifications, or to the general tenor of his life; but there is no authority from the manuscripts to make any change in the present arrangement. All the ancient versions insert the verses in the place which they now occupy, and in this all versions agree, except, according to Kennicott, the Teutonic version, where they are inserted after Job 31:25. All the manuscripts also concur in the present arrangement.

Schultens supposes that there is manifest relevance and propriety in the present arrangement. The former specification, he says, related mainly to his private life, this to his more public conduct; and the design is to vindicate himself from the charge of injustice and crime in both respects, closing appropriately with the latter. Rosenmuller remarks that in a composition from an age and country as remote as this, we are not to look for or demand the observance of the same regularity that is required by modern canons of criticism. At all events, there is no authority for changing the present arrangement of the text. The meaning of the phrase if my land cry out against me is that in the cultivation of his land he had not been guilty of injustice.

He had not employed those to till it who had been compelled to do so, nor had he imposed unreasonable burdens on them, nor had he defrauded them of their wages. The land had not had occasion to cry out against him to God because fraud or injustice had been done to anyone in its cultivation; compare Genesis 4:10; Habakkuk 2:11.

Or that the furrows likewise thereof complain - The margin reads, weep. The Hebrew is, If the furrows weep together, or in like manner weep. This is a beautiful image. The very furrows in the field are personified as weeping on account of injustice which would be done to them, and of the burdens which would be laid upon them, if they were compelled to contribute to oppression and fraud.