Job 34:31

Conclusion THE FOLLY OF JOB’S ACCUSATIONS OF GOD IS EVIDENT, AND, IF UNREPENTED OF, SHOULD LEAD TO CONTINUED CHASTISEMENT. 31-37.

If a human being be called to suffer the will of a wise, impartial, and loving God, instead of summoning God to judgment, or dictating Utopian schemes for the world’s government, he should rather confess his errors and sins, and seek enlightenment in regard to the hidden evil of his soul the fruitful source of all his woes, Job 34:31-37.

31. Surely… not offend any more Schultens enumerates fifteen different explanations of this verse, and compares it to a rock around which arise great waves of opinions. Surely it is meet, etc . For does one say, indeed, unto God, (Zockler, Hitzig,) giving to ה the sense of an interrogative. Gesenius agrees with the authorized version.

I have borne נשׂאתי . Hirtzel, Welte, Zockler, Dillmann, supply “the yoke of punishment;” and Hitzig “the yoke of obedience.” Delitzsch and Hahn read “I have been proud.”

I will not offend לא אחבל . The clause is terse, and may mean, “I will not do evil,” (thus Delitzsch, Gesenius.) Hirtzel and Hitzig read, “I will not cast it off,” that is, the yoke of punishment.

Eichhorn, Ewald, and Umbreit give the expression an air of defiance that the man declares himself called to expiate what he has not committed. Such a sense ill accords with the remainder of the declaration, which certainly is that of a docile penitent. Hengstenberg’s reading is substantially the same as that of Ewald. Zockler’s, “Does any one say, indeed, to God, I expiate without doing wrong?” etc., is less exceptionable than that of Eichhorn, etc., but it is open to similar objections, not the least of which is that it is equivocal and feeble. This “compendious moral confession” must be a harmonious whole, (Delitzsch,) and may best be read. Surely to God it should be said, I have borne it, (punishment,) I will not be perverse; which agrees with Conant. The Arabs have a proverb that “every one who offends becomes a security,” that is, is bound over to punishment.