Job 12:4
4. The unfounded accusations of Job's friends were a "mockery" of him. He alludes to Zophar's word, "mockest" (Job 11:3).
neighbour, who calleth, &c.—rather, "I who call upon God that he may answer me favorably" [UMBREIT].Job 16:10
10. gaped—not in order to devour, but to mock him. To fill his cup of misery, the mockery of his friends (Job 16:10) is added to the hostile treatment from God (Job 16:9).
smitten . . . cheek—figurative for contemptuous abuse (La 3:30; Mt 5:39). gathered themselves—"conspired unanimously" [SCHUTTENS].Job 16:20
20. Hebrew, "are my scorners"; more forcibly, "my mockers—my friends!" A heart-cutting paradox [UMBREIT]. God alone remains to whom he can look for attestation of his innocence; plaintively with tearful eye, he supplicates for this.
Job 17:2
2. UMBREIT, more emphatically, "had I only not to endure mockery, in the midst of their contentions I (mine eye) would remain quiet."
eye continue—Hebrew, "tarry all night"; a figure taken from sleep at night, to express undisturbed rest; opposed to (Job 16:20), when the eye of Job is represented as pouring out tears to God without rest.Job 17:6
6. He—God. The poet reverentially suppresses the name of God when speaking of calamities inflicted.
by-word— (De 28:37; Ps 69:11). My awful punishment makes my name execrated everywhere, as if I must have been superlatively bad to have earned it. aforetime . . . tabret—as David was honored (1Sa 18:6). Rather from a different Hebrew root, "I am treated to my face as an object of disgust," literally, "an object to be spit upon in the face" (Nu 12:14). So Raca means (Mt 5:22) [UMBREIT].Job 19:22
22. as God—has persecuted me. Prefiguring Jesus Christ (Ps 69:26). That God afflicts is no reason that man is to add to a sufferer's affliction (Zec 1:15).
satisfied with my flesh—It is not enough that God afflicts my flesh literally (Job 19:20), but you must "eat my flesh" metaphorically (Ps 27:2); that is, utter the worst calumnies, as the phrase often means in Arabic.