Albert Barnes Commentary Job 7:19

"How long wilt thou not look away from me, Nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle?" — Job 7:19 (ASV)

How long will you not depart? - How long is this to continue? The same word occurs in (Job 14:6). The word rendered “depart,” שׁעה shâ‛âh, means to look, to look around, and then to look away from anyone or anything. The idea here is that God had fixed His eyes on Job, and Job asks with anxiety how long this was to continue, and when God would turn His eyes away (compare the notes at Job 7:8). Schultens supposes that the metaphor here is taken from combatants, who never take their eyes off their antagonists.

Till I swallow down my spittle - This means for the shortest time. However, there has been considerable variety in the explanation of this phrase. Herder renders it, “Until I draw my breath.” Noyes translates it, “Until I have time to breathe”; but he acknowledges that he has substituted this for the proverb that occurs in the original. The Hebrew is literally rendered in the common version, and the proverb is retained in Arabia to this day. The meaning is: Give me a little respite; allow me a little time; as we would say, “Let me breathe.”

“This,” says Burder, “is a proverb among the Arabians to this day, by which they understand, ‘Give me leave to rest after my fatigue.’ This is the favor Job complains is not granted to him. There are two instances that illustrate this passage (quoted by Schultens) in Harris’s Narratives entitled The Assembly. One is of a person who, when eagerly pressed to give an account of his travels, answered with impatience, ‘Let me swallow down my spittle, for my journey has fatigued me.’ The other instance is of a quick return made to a person who used the proverb. ‘Allow me,’ said the person importuned, ‘to swallow down my spittle’; to which the friend replied, ‘You may, if you please, swallow down even the Tigris and the Euphrates’; that is, you may take what time you please.”

The expression is proverbial and corresponds to ours when we say, “in the twinkling of an eye,” or, “until I can catch my breath”—that is, in the briefest interval. Job addresses this language to God. There is much impatience in it, and much that a pious person should not employ. However, we are to remember that Job was beset with special trials and that he did not have the views of the divine existence and perfections, the promises, and the high hopes that we as Christians have under the fuller light of revelation. Before harshly condemning him, we should put ourselves in his situation and ask ourselves how we would likely think, feel, and speak if we were in the same circumstances.