Job 7:20

20. I have sinned “If I have sinned, what shall I be able to do,” etc. Septuagint. Many regard it as hypothetical, thus: Have I sinned? what do I unto thee, (in what way can it affect thee,) thou observer ( נצד ) of men? as if he referred to the sin to which Eliphaz seems to allude. Compare Job 35:6. The English version is a literal rendering of the original. The context, however, demands a conditional reading: Be it that I have sinned, what reparation or satisfaction can I make unto thee? “If I have deserved thy wrath, it is useless for thee to pour it forth on me.” Hitzig. There is no question in Job’s mind as to his having been a sinner. The question at issue is one of specific sin. Sin belongs to man as man. The cry of the world is a twofold one: “I have sinned,” and, “What shall I do unto thee?” The thought of sin involves the thought of God, as darkness that of light, and death that of life. “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned.” Psalms 51:4. The Semitic mind was keenly alive to the nature of sin. Its varied ritual unceasingly pictured in characters of blood the enormity of moral guilt. “There is no philosophy from which the moral element is more entirely absent than the Hindu. Yet the confession of human sin finds acknowledgment even there. MULLEN’S Relig. Aspects of Hindu Philos., p. 224 . The older hymns of the Vedas clearly recognised sin as an evil to be deprecated. “Deliver me from sin, as from a rope; let us obtain thy path of righteousness.… Varuna, take all fear away from me; be kind to me, O just king! Take away my sin… for afar from thee I am not the master even of a twinkling of the eye.” Rig Veda, 2:28, 5: see also 2:29. 1. A mark against thee Job regards himself as a mark, מפגע , a butt or target for God, ( לךְ , for thee, not against thee,) against which the arrows of the Almighty were directed. Job 6:4. A burden to myself The Septuagint version renders, A burden to thee. The Masorites place this among the eighteen passages which they say were altered by transcribers. But the text agrees with the other Versions, and with most of the MSS. that have come down to us. The heaviest burden which sinful man is called to bear is himself.