Job 19:11 - Exposition

He hath also kindled his wrath against me . It is not what has happened to him in the way of affliction and calamity that so much oppresses and crushes the patriarch, as the cause to which he, not unnaturally, ascribes his afflictions, vie. the wrath of God. Participating in the general creed of his time, he believes his sufferings to come direct from God, and to be proofs of God's severe anger against him. He is not, however, prepared on this account to renounce God. "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him" ( Job 13:15 ) is still his inward sustaining thought and guiding principle. And he counteth me unto him as one of his enemies . Job felt himself treated as an enemy of God, and supposed that God must consider him such. He either had no glimpse of the cheering truth, "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth" ( Hebrews 12:6 ), or he could not imagine that such woes as his were mere chastenings.