John Gill Commentary Job 27

Moreover Job continued his parable
Having finished his discourse concerning the worlds and ways of God, and the display of his majesty, power, and glory, in them, he pauses awhile, waiting for Zophar, whose turn was next to rise up, and make a reply to him; but neither he, nor any of his friends, reassumed the debate, but kept a profound silence, and chose not to carry on the dispute any further with him; either concluding him to be an obstinate man, not open to conviction, and on whom no impressions could be made, and that it was all lost time and labour to use any argument with him; or else being convicted in their minds that he was in the right, and they in the wrong, though they did not choose to own it; and especially being surprised with what he had last said concerning God and his works, whereby they perceived he had great knowledge of divine things, and could not be the man they had suspected him to be from his afflictions.

however, though they are silent, Job was not, "he added to take or lift up his parable" ^F1 , as the words may be rendered; or his oration, as Mr. Broughton, his discourse; which, because it consisted of choice and principal things, which command regard and attention, of wise, grave, serious, and sententious sayings, and some of them such as not easy to be understood, being delivered in similes and figurative expressions, as particularly in the following chapter, it is called his parable; what are called parables being proverbial phrases, dark sayings, allegorical or metaphorical expressions, and the like;

and which way of speaking Job is here said to take, "and lift up", which is an eastern phraseology, as appears from Balaam's use of it, (Numbers 23:7) (Numbers 24:3Numbers 24:15) ; and may signify, that he delivered the following oration with great freedom, boldness, and confidence, and with a high tone and loud voice; to all which he might be induced by observing, through the silence of his friends, that he has got the advantage of them, and has carried his point, and has brought them to conviction or confusion, or however to silence, which gave him heart and spirit to proceed on with his oration, which he added to his former discourse:

and said ;
as follows.

FOOTNOTES:

• F1: (wlvm tav Powyw) "et addidit assumere suam parabolam", Pagninus, Montanus.

[As] God liveth Which is an oath, as Jarchi observes, and is a form of one frequently used, see (2 Samuel 2:27) (4:9) ; and is used by God himself, who, because he can swear by no greater, swears by himself, and by his life, which ever continues, as in (Ezekiel 18:3) ; and many other places; and so the Angel of the Lord, even the uncreated Angel, (Daniel 12:7) (Revelation 10:6) ;

And so should men, when they swear at all, it should be in this manner, see (Jeremiah 4:2) ; though this ought not to be but in cases of moment and importance, for the confirmation of the truth, and to put an end to strife, when it cannot be done any other way than by an appeal to God; as was the present case with Job, it being about hypocrisy, and want of integrity his friends charged him with; and such a case can only be determined truly and fully by God, who is here described as the living God, by whom men swear, in opposition to the idols of the Gentiles, which are of gold, silver, wood, and stone, and without life and breath, or to their deified heroes, who were dead men; but the true God is the living God, has life in and of himself, and is the fountain of life to others, the author and giver of life, natural, spiritual, and eternal, and who himself lives for ever and ever; and as such is the object of faith and confidence, of fear and reverence, of love and affection; all which swearing by him supposes and implies;

it is a saying of R. Joshuah, as Jarchi on the place relates it, ``that Job from love served God, for no man swears by the life of a king but who loves the king;'' the object swore by is further described,

[who] has taken away my judgment ;
not the judgment of his mind, or his sense of judging things, which remained with him quick and strong, notwithstanding his afflictions; nor correction with judgment, which continued with him; but, as the Targum paraphrases it, ``he has taken away the rule of my judgment;'' that is, among men, his substance, wealth, and riches, his former affluence and prosperity, which while he enjoyed, he was reckoned a good man; but now all this being taken away by the hand of God as it was, he was censured as a wicked man, and even by his friends; or rather it is a complaint, that God had neglected the judgment of him, like that of the church in (Isaiah 40:27) ; that he did not stir up himself to his judgment, even to his cause; did not vindicate him, though he appealed to him; did not admit him to his judgment seat, nor give his cause a hearing, and decide it, though he had most earnestly desired it; nor did he let him know the reason of his thus dealing and contending with him; yea, he afflicted him severely, though righteous and innocent, in which Job obliquely reflects upon the dealings of God with him; though he does not charge him with injustice, or break out into blasphemy of him; yet this seems to be one of those speeches which God disapproved of, and is taken notice of by Elihu with a censure, (Job 34:5) ;

and the Almighty, [who] has vexed my soul ;
with whom nothing is impossible, and who could easily have relieved him from his distresses; and who was "Shaddai", the all-sufficient Being, who could have supplied him with all things temporal and spiritual he wanted; yet instead of this "has vexed [his] soul" with adversity, with afflictions very grievous to him, his hand touching and pressing him sore: or, "has made my soul bitter" ^F2 ; dealt bitterly with him, as the Almighty did with Naomi, (Ruth 1:20Ruth 1:21) . Afflictions are bitter things, they are like the waters of Marah, they are wormwood and gall, they cause bitter distress and sorrow, and make a man go and speak in the bitterness of his soul; and these are of God, to whom job ascribes his, and not to chance and fortune; they were bitter things God appointed for him and wrote against him.

FOOTNOTES:

• F2: (yvpn rmh) "affecit amaritudine animam meam", Pagninus, Montanus, Mercerus, Michaelis; so Sept.

All the while my breath [is] in me
So long the oath of God would be upon him, or he bound himself under it: and the spirit of God [is] in my nostrils ;
which signifies the same thing.

The breath of a man is his spirit, and this is of God, the Father of spirits; he first breathed into man the breath of life, and he became a living soul or spirit, (Genesis 2:7); it is he that gives life and breath to every man, (Acts 17:25), and continues it as long as he pleases, which is a very precarious thing; for it is in his nostrils, where it is drawn to and fro and soon and easily stopped; nor will it always continue, it will some time not be, it will go forth, and then man dies, and returns to the earth, (Ecclesiastes 12:7);

but as long as there is breath there is life; so that to say this is the same as to say, as long as I live, or have a being, (Psalms 104:33) (116:2); and while that continued, Job looked upon himself under the oath he had taken by the living God.

My lips shall not speak wickedness This is the thing he swears to, this the matter of his oath, not only that he would not speak a wicked word not anything corrupt, unsavoury, unchaste, profane, and idle nor speak evil of his neighbours and friends or of any man;

but that he would not speak wickedly of himself, as he must do, if he owned himself to be a wicked man and an hypocrite as his friends charged him, and they would have had him confessed; but he swears he would not utter such wickedness as long as he had any breath in him:

nor my tongue utter deceit ; which respects the same thing; not merely any fallacy or lie, or what might impose upon and deceive another, which yet he was careful of;

but such deceit and falsehood as would be a belying himself, which would be the case should he say that he was devoid of integrity and sincerity.

God forbid that I should justify you
Not but that he counted them righteous and good men God-ward; he did not take upon him to judge their state, and to justify or condemn them with respect to their everlasting condition; but he could not justify them in their censures of him, and say they did a right thing in charging him with wickedness and hypocrisy; nor could he justify them in all their sentiments and doctrines which they had delivered concerning the punishment of the wicked in this life, and the happiness that attends all good men; and that a man by his outward circumstances may be known to be either a good man or a bad man; such things as these he could not say were right;

for so to do would be to call evil good, and good evil; and therefore he expresses his utmost abhorrence and detestation of showing his approbation of such conduct as theirs towards him, and of such unbecoming sentiments of God, and of his dealings, they had entertained; and to join in with which would be a profanation and a pollution, as the word used by him signifies; he could not do it without defiling his conscience, and profaning truth:

until I die one will not remove my integrity from me ;
Job was an upright man both in heart and life, through the grace of God bestowed on him; and he continued in his integrity, notwithstanding the temptations of Satan, and his attacks upon him, and the solicitations of his wife; and he determined through the grace of God to persist therein to the end of his life; though what he chiefly means here is, that he would not part with his character as an upright man, which he had always had, and God himself had bore testimony to; he would never give up this till he gave up the ghost; he would never suffer his integrity to be removed from him, nor remove it from himself by denying that it belonged to him, which his friends bore hard upon him to do.

So Jarchi paraphrases it,``I will not confess (or agree) to your saying, that I am not upright;'' the phrase, "till I die", seems rather to belong to the first clause, though it is true of both, and may be repeated in this.