Job 33:19

b. THE SECOND MODE OF DIVINE VISITATION IS BY GRIEVOUS, DANGEROUS DISEASE. Affliction is in itself the voice of God to the soul: its design being to accomplish purposes in respect to which the first mode of visitation is insufficient. Elihu thus meets the murmurs of Job over affliction in the abstract, and his own in particular; and assures him that his longing for God to answer is already met by the chastenings of disease, Job 33:19-22.

19. He is chastened For the enlightened views of Eliphaz on the subject of afflictions, see Job 5:17-18. The difference between the two is, that Eliphaz fails to recognize their purifying and sanctifying influence on the heart. “He sees in them a fire that scorches and burns, not one that refines and clarifies, as the furnace refines silver.” WORDSWORTH. Comp. 1Pe 1:6 ; 1 Peter 4:19. The multitude of his bones Rather as in the Kethib, and with a conflict in his bones continually. Justin (xxiii, 2) says of the last sickness of Agathocles, that “a pestilential humour spreading through all his nerves and joints, he was tormented, as it were, by an intestine war among all his members.” With the ancient Hebrew, health meant “soundness,” “peace;” and the same word, shalom, was used for all three. On the contrary, disease entailed a disharmony, conflict, and strife in the whole being, here represented by the bones, the framework of man.