Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 17:4
For thou hast hid their heart from understanding: therefore shalt thou not exalt [them].
4. This verse answers the question in Job 17:3, Who (else) will strike hands with me? None else will, for the hearts of the three friends and all others have been blinded, and can take no true view of the sufferer’s cause.
exalt them ] i. e. give them the upper hand or victory; cf. Job 42:7-8. To give the friends the upper hand would be to give an issue to Job’s cause such as answered their expectations. The connexion may be: give a pledge now, none else will, for thou hast blinded them, and having blinded them thou wilt not give an issue that meets their expectations.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
4 9. These verses support the petition in Job 17:3. If God will not undertake for Job none else will, for the hearts of his friends have been blinded. This thought of the perverse obstinacy and cruelty of his friends leads Job again to a gloomy survey of his whole condition (cf. Job 16:22 to Job 17:2). He is become a public contempt to mankind and brought to the lowest ebb of mortal weakness and humiliation ( Job 17:6-7). Such moral perversions on the earth astonish the righteous and rouse them to indignation against the wicked in their prosperity ( Job 17:8). Yet they will not permit themselves to be misled by such things to err from the paths of rectitude. Full of moral terror as these perversions are the righteous will in spite of them cleave to his righteousness. He will feel that he is in possession of the only true good, and even because of them and though he sees the world under the rule of God given over to wrong, he will wax stronger and stronger in well doing ( Job 17:9) an astonishing passage.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
For thou hast hid their heart from understanding – That is, the heart of his professed friends. Job says that they were blind and perverse, and indisposed to render him justice; and he therefore pleads that he may carry his cause directly before God. He attributes their want of understanding to the agency of God in accordance with the doctrine which prevailed in early times, and which is so often expressed in the Scriptures, that God is the source of light and truth, and that when people are blinded it is in accordance with his wise purposes; see Isa 6:9-10. It is because they were thus blind and perverse, that he asks the privilege of carrying the cause at once up to God – and who could blame him for such a desire?
Therefore thou shalt not exalt them – By the honor of deciding a case like this, or by the reputation of wisdom. The name of sage or wise man was among the most valued in those times; but Job says that that would not be awarded to his friends. God would not exalt or honor people thus devoid of wisdom.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 4. For thou hast hid their heart] This address is to God; and here he is represented as doing that which in the course of his providence he only permits to be done.
Shalt thou not exalt them.] This was exactly fulfilled: not one of Job’s friends was exalted; on the contrary, God condemned the whole; and they were not received into the Divine favour till Job sacrificed, and made intercession for them.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Thou hast blinded the minds of my friends, that they can not see those truths which are most plain and evident to all men of sense and experience; therefore I desire a more wise and able judge.
Therefore shalt thou not exalt them, i.e. thou wilt not give them the victory over me in this contest, but wilt give sentence for me, and discharge them, and make them ashamed of their confidence in affirming falsehoods of thee, and punish them severely for their miscarriage. It is a usual figure, whereby much more is understood than is expressed.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
4. their heartThe intellectof his friends.
shalt . . . exaltRatherimperative, “exalt them not”; allow them not to conquer[UMBREIT], (Isa 6:9;Isa 6:10).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For thou hast hid their heart from understanding,…. That is, the hearts of his friends, and therefore they were unfit to undertake his cause, or be sureties for him, or be judges in it. It is the same thing as to hide understanding from their hearts, which God sometimes does in a natural sense; when men like not the knowledge of him, as attainable by the light of nature, he gives them up to reprobate minds, minds void of knowledge and judgment in things natural; and sometimes, in a spiritual sense, he hides men’s hearts from the knowledge of things divine and evangelical, and even this he does from the wise and prudent of this world; yea, sometimes he hides the knowledge of his providential dealings with men from his own people, as he did from Asaph, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, and others; and, as it seems, from Job’s friends, who therefore mistook his case, and were very unfit and insufficient to determine it:
therefore shalt thou not exalt [them]; to such honour and dignity, to be umpires, arbitrators, or judges in the case of Job; this God had reserved for another, Elihu, or rather himself, who decided the controversy between Job and his friends, and declared in his favour, and that they had not spoken the thing that was right of him, as his servant Job had done, Job 42:7;
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(4) Their heart.i.e., the heart of his friends.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
4. For None but God can “undertake” for him! His purblind friends certainly cannot.
Not exalt them above me. Thou wilt not let them prevail.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
(4) For thou hast hid their heart from understanding: therefore shalt thou not exalt them. (5) He that speaketh flattery to his friends, even the eyes of his children shall fail. (6) He hath made me also a byword of the people; and aforetime I was as a tabret. (7) Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow. (8) Upright men shall be astonied at this, and the innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite. (9) The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger. (10) But as for you all, do ye return, and come now: for I cannot find one wise man among you.
We shall do well in these calamities of Job, to look beyond the man of Uz, and contemplate him whose sufferings were unequalled. When CHRIST as the surety of his people, bore all the billows of wrath due to the sinner, it was no small aggravation of his calamity, that he endured also the contradiction of sinners against himself. He was reproached as a false prophet, as a sabbath breaker, a deceiver, nay, as in league with the devils, casting out evil spirits, by Beelzebub the prince of them. He was not only scourged, and his sacred head crowned with thorns; but laughed at in the midst of his agonies, and tauntingly required to come down from the cross. Precious JESUS! how do all sorrows sink to nothing in the view of thine? Never was there any like unto that sorrow wherewith the LORD afflicted the sinner’s surety in the day of his fierce anger! Lam 1:12 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Job 17:4 For thou hast hid their heart from understanding: therefore shalt thou not exalt [them].
Ver. 4. Thou hast hid their heart from understanding ] That is, thou hast hidden understanding from their heart, thou hast left them in the dark, destitute of a right judgment, while they condemn me to be a wicked person, because I am grievously afflicted; and thence it is that I do so confidently appeal to thee in Jesus Christ, since my friends are so far mistaken in this controversy. If God give not both light and sight, if he vouchsafe not to irradiate both organ and object, the best will be bemisted. Every good gift and perfect cometh from above, even from the Father of lights, Jas 1:17 . It was he that made Reverend Doctor Sibbs (as one saith of him) spiritually rational and rationally spiritual; one that seemed to see the insides of nature and grace, and the world and heaven, by those perfect anatomies he had made of them all.
Therefore shalt thou not exalt them
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
2Sa 15:31, 2Sa 17:14, 2Ch 25:16, Isa 19:14, Mat 11:25, Mat 13:11, Rom 11:8, 1Co 1:20
Reciprocal: Job 12:2 – ye are the people Job 12:20 – taketh Job 12:24 – He taketh Job 17:10 – for I Job 18:3 – Wherefore Job 39:17 – General
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Job 17:4. Thou hast hid their heart from understanding Rather, thou hast hid understanding from their heart. The minds of my friends are so blinded, that they cannot see those truths which are most plain and evident to all men of sense and experience. Hence, I desire a more wise and able judge. Therefore shalt thou not exalt them Thou wilt not give them the victory over me in this contest, but wilt give sentence for me, and make them ashamed of their confidence in affirming falsehoods of thee, and wilt punish them severely for their misconduct.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
17:4 For thou hast hid their heart from {e} understanding: therefore shalt thou not exalt [them].
(e) That these my afflictions are your just judgments, though man does not know the reason.