Job 10:7-13

Verse 7

Thou knowest that I am not wicked - While thou hast this knowledge of me and my conduct, why appear to be sifting me as if in order to find out sin; and though none can be found, treating me as though I were a transgressor? Verse 8

Thine hands have made me - Thou art well acquainted with human nature, for thou art its author.

And fashioned me together round about - All my powers and faculties have been planned and executed by thyself. It is thou who hast refined the materials out of which I have been formed, and modified them into that excellent symmetry and order in which they are now found; so that the union and harmony of the different parts, (יחד yachad), and their arrangement and completion, (סביב sabib), proclaim equally thy wisdom, skill, power, and goodness.

Yet thou dost destroy me - ותבלעני vatteballeeni, "and thou wilt swallow me up." Men generally care for and prize those works on which they have spent most time, skill, and pains: but, although thou hast formed me with such incredible skill and labor, yet thou art about to destroy me! How dreadful an evil must sin be, when, on its account, God has pronounced the sentence of death on all mankind; and that body, so curiously and skilfully formed, must be decomposed, and reduced to dust! Verse 9

Thou hast made me as the clay - Thou hast fashioned me, according to thy own mind, out of a mass of clay: after so much skill and pains expended, men might naturally suppose they were to have a permanent being; but thou hast decreed to turn them into dust! Verse 10

Hast thou not poured me out as milk - After all that some learned men have said on this subject, in order to confine the images here to simple nutrition, I am satisfied that generation is the true notion. Respicit ad fetus in matris utero primam formationem, quum in embryonem ex utriusque parentis semine coalescit - Ex semine liquido, lac quodammodo referente, me formasti - In interpretando, inquit Hieronymus, omnino his accedo qui de genitali semine accipiunt, quod ipsa tanquam natura emulget, ac dein concrescere in utero ad coalescere jubet. I make no apology for leaving this untranslated. The different expressions in this and the following verse are very appropriate: the pouring out like milk-coagulating, clothing with skin and flesh, fencing with bones and sinews, are well imagined, and delicately, and at the same time forcibly, expressed. If I believed that Job referred to nutrition, which I do not, I might speak of the chyle, the chylopoietic organs, the lacteal vessels, and the generation of all the solids and fluids from this substance, which itself is derived from the food taken into the stomach. But this process, properly speaking, does not take place till the human being is brought into the world, it being previously nourished by the mother by means of the funis umbilicus, without that action of the stomach by which the chyle is prepared. Verse 12

Thou hast granted me life and favorer - Thou hast brought me from my mother's womb; given me an actual existence among men; by thy favor or mercy thou hast provided me with the means of life; and thy visitation - thy continual providential care, has preserved me in life - has given me the air I breathe, and furnished me with those powers which enable me to respire it as an agent and preserver of life. It is by God's continued visitation or influence that the life of any man is preserved; in him we live, move, and have our being. Verse 13

And these things hast thou hid in thine heart - Thou hast had many gracious purposes concerning me which thou hast not made known; but thy visitations and mercy are sufficient proofs of kindness towards me; though for purposes unknown to me thou hast sorely afflicted me, and continuest to treat me as an enemy.