Charles Ellicott Commentary Job 23:16

"For God hath made my heart faint, And the Almighty hath terrified me;" — Job 23:16 (ASV)

For God maketh my heart soft. —That is, “He has made it full of apprehension and fear, and the Almighty has troubled me in these two respects: that He did not cut me off before the darkness, so that I had never been born, or that He did not hide darkness from my eyes after giving me life.” (Job 3:20, and so on.) We may understand this of the physical suffering to which he was subjected, or of the mental distress and perplexity under which he labored.