Job 6:14

Second strophe The withholding of sympathy has been like the failure of a summer brook, Job 6:14-17.

14. The pity his condition calls for, they (his friends) have denied him.

To him, etc. Literally, To the despairing, from his friend, (is) pity. The pity of a friend is spontaneous. Its flow to such a despairing sufferer as Job is like a fountain, natural and unforced. Their sympathy has consisted of words and ceremony; hence they are not true friends. This prepares us for the coming portrayal of deceitful friendship.

Afflicted מס , literally, melted down, dissolved; a graphic description of the effect of sorrow on Job.

Pity Umbreit says of pity, hhesedh, (which may be rendered also kindness or love,) that it is the friendly and indulgent judgment of our fellow-men; the true love which is the spirit of Christianity; and it is put (Proverbs 3:3) on a par with truth. They together form the principal elements of moral perfection, and are recommended to our care as a double talisman of perfect virtue.

But he forsaketh Concerning the meaning of the preceding clause there is but little doubt; the confessedly great difficulty of the present clause turns for the most part on the rendering of the particle but ו . The old reading of the Targum, Vulgate, Luther, “He who withholds mercy from his neighbour, he forsakes the fear of the Almighty,” entirely ignores the particle, and is now, with the exception of Merx, quite given up. Some modern expositors, such as Schlottmann, Renan, Dillmann, and Zockler, read, “Even if he should have forsaken,” etc. The more satisfactory exposition is that of Delitzsch, Schnurrer, Hengstenberg, Wordsworth, Canon Cook, etc., “ Otherwise he forsaketh.” etc., that is, unless he receives pity from his friend a reading that is justified by the occasional use of the particle, as in Gesenius, Thesaurus, p. 397 . For want of human sympathy a man may fall away from his God. Nothing can more forcibly express the power of Christian love. It is conservative it may keep others from evil. A kind word, a sympathetic tear, a charitable deed, is a little thing, but an engine of might that any one may wield. Sympathy, oneness of feeling, is a magic power to lift the sorrowful and despairing up from the abyss. It is like the golden chain let down from heaven, as the ancients fabled. Through sympathy the resources of the one, supplement the weakness of another. The field of responsibility vastly enlarges, when we behold it embracing the little deeds of charitable love we might have done. If sorrow could enter heaven, it would be because we have done so little for Christ and his suffering ones on earth.