Job 36:16 - Exposition

Even so would he have removed thee out of the strait into a broad pine, where there is no straitness; and that which should be set on thy table should be full of fatness . Another quite different interpretation has been proposed by Ewald, and adopted by Dillmann and Canon Cook, who suppose Elihu to speak, not of what would have happened to Job under certain circumstances, but of what had actually happened to him, and render, "Thee moreover hath thy unbounded prosperity seduced from listening to the voice of affliction, and the ease of thy table which was full of fatness." But the rendering of the Authorized Version, which is substantially that of Schultens and Rosenmuller, is still upheld by many scholars, and has been retained by our Revisers. If we adopt it, we must understand Elihu as assuring Job that he too would have been delivered and restored to his prosperity, if he had accepted his afflictions in a proper spirits and learnt the lesson they were intended to teach him (see verses 9, 10).