Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 23:3
Oh that I knew where I might find him! [that] I might come [even] to his seat!
3. his seat ] i. e. His judgment-seat, or tribunal.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
3 7. Job ardently desires that he could come to God’s judgment-seat to plead his cause before Him; and that God would give heed to him and answer him. Then assuredly his innocence would be established.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Oh that I knew where I might find him! – Where I might find God. He had often expressed a wish to bring his cause directly before God, and to be permitted to plead his cause there; see Job 13:3, note; Job 13:20, notes. But this he had not yet been able to do. The argument had been with his three friends, and he saw that there was no use in attempting further to convince them. If he could get the cause before God, and be allowed go plead it there, he felt assured that justice would be done him. But he had not been able to do this. God had not come forth in any visible and public manner as he wished, so that the cause could be fairly tried before such a tribunal, and he was in darkness. The language used here will express the condition of a pious man in the times of spiritual darkness. Hc cannot find God. He has no near access as he once had to him. In such a state he anxiously seeks to find God, but he cannot. There is no light and no comfort to his soul. This language may further describe the state of one who is conscious of uprightness, and who is exposed to the suspicion or the unkind remarks of the world. His character is attacked; his motives are impugned; his designs are suspected, and no one is disposed to do him justice. In such a state, he feels that God alone will do him justice. He knows the sincerity of his heart, and he can safely commit his cause to him. It is always the privilege of the calumniated and the slandered to make an appeal to the divine tribunal, and to feel that whatever injustice our fellow-men may be disposed to do us, there is One who will never do a wrong.
That I might come even to his seat – To his throne, or tribunal. Job wished to carry the cause directly before him. Probably he desired some manifestation of God – such as he was afterward favored with – when God would declare his judgment on the whole matter of the controversy.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 3. O that I knew where I might find him!] This and the following verse may be read thus: “Who will give me the knowledge of God, that I may find him out? I would come to his establishment; (the place or way in which he has promised to communicate himself;) I would exhibit, in detail, my judgment (the cause I wish to be tried) before his face; and my mouth would I fill with convincing or decisive arguments;” arguments drawn from his common method of saving sinners, which I should prove applied fully to my case. Hence the confidence with which he speaks, Job 23:6.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Where I might find him, to wit, God, as his friends well knew, and the thing itself showeth. Thou biddest me acquaint myself with him, Job 22:21. I desire nothing more than his acquaintance and presence; but, alas, he hides his face from me that I cannot see him, nor come near him.
To his seat, i.e. to his throne or judgment-seat, to plead my cause before him, as it here follows, Job 22:4, not upon terms of strict justice, but upon those terms of grace and mercy upon which God is pleased to deal with his sinful creatures: see before, Job 9:34,35; 16:21; 17:3. And this my confidence may be some evidence that I am not such a gross hypocrite as you imagine me to be.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
3. The same wish as in Job13:3 (compare Heb10:19-22).
SeatThe idea in theHebrew is a well-prepared throne (Ps9:7).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
O that I knew where I might find him,…. That is, God, who is understood, though not expressed, a relative without an antecedent, as in Ps 87:1; Jarchi supplies, and interprets it, “my Judge”, from Job 23:7; and certain it is Job did desire to find God as a judge sitting on his throne, doing right, that he might have justice done to him: indeed he might be under the hidings of God’s face, which added to his affliction, and made it the heavier; in which case, the people of God are at a loss to know where he is, and “how” to find him, as Mr. Broughton renders the words here; they know that he is everywhere, and fills heaven and earth with his presence; that their God is in the heavens, his throne is there, yea, the heaven is his throne; that he is in his church, and among his people, where they are gathered together in his name, to wait upon him, and to worship him; and that he is to be found in Christ, as a God gracious and merciful; all which Job knew, but might, as they in such circumstances are, be at a loss how to come at sensible communion with him; for, when he hides his face, who can behold him? yet they cannot content themselves without seeking after him, and making use of all means of finding him, as Job did, Job 23:8; see So 3:1;
[that] I might come [even] to his seat; either his mercy seat, from whence he communes with his people, the throne of his grace, where he sits as the God of grace, dispensing his grace to his people, to help them in time of need; the way to which is Christ, and in which all believers may come to it with boldness, in his name, through his blood, righteousness, and sacrifice; they may come up even to it, in the exercise of faith and hope, though the distance is great, as between heaven and earth, yet by faith they can come into the holiest of all, and by hope enter within the vail; and though the difficulties and discouragements are many, arising from their sins and transgressions: or else his judgment seat, at which no man can appear and stand, without a righteousness, or without a better than his own, by which none can be justified in the sight of God; who, if strict to mark iniquity, the best of men cannot stand before him, at his bar of justice; indeed, in the righteousness of Christ, a believer may come up to the judgment seat of God, and to him as Judge of all, and not be afraid, but stand before him with confidence, since that is sufficient to answer for him, and fully acquit him: but Job here seems to have a peculiar respect to his case, in controversy between him and his friends, and is so fully assured of the justness of his cause, and relying on his innocence, he wishes for nothing more than that he could find God sitting on a throne of justice, before whom his cause might be brought and heard, not doubting in the least but that he should be acquitted; so far was he from hiding himself from God, or pleasing himself with the thoughts that God was in the height of heaven, and knew nothing of him and his conduct, and could not judge through the dark clouds, which were a covering to him, that he could not see him; that he was not afraid to appear before him, and come up even to his seat, if he knew but where and how he could; see Job 22:12.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(3) Oh that I knew where I might find him.The piteous complaint of a man who feels that God is with him for chastisement, but not for healing.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
3. Seat Tekounah. Its root signifies to prepare. The Scriptures represent God as seated when administering judgment. The seat or throne where God hearkens to man is one specially prepared, and is, therefore, a throne of grace. From the false verdict of his friends Job again makes his appeal to God. The Divine Being, who might easily hear his plea and adjudicate his cause, withdraws himself. For reasons known only to God, Job, like his Saviour, is left to drink the cup alone.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Man Desiring God
Job 23:3
God comes only into the heart that wants him. Every man keeps the key of the door of his own heart, but God will not wrench that key from his hand. The Almighty has great power, but he never uses it to break down the will of man, and say, “You shall love me, in spite of your own will and prejudice.” All that God though he be clothed with omnipotence and have at his girdle the keys of all worlds says is, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and will open the door, I will come in to him.” God does not force his way into the human heart, saying, “I have made the heart and I will reign in it, and subdue your will to mine, so that you shall have me as God, whether you will or not.” He is God in the heavens above and in the earth beneath, and he gives to none the glory of his name; yet it is in the power of the obscurest man that breathes to shut God out of his heart and to say, “I will not have the Holy One to reign over me.”
Everything depends upon the tone and purpose of the heart. Do we really, with the whole heart, desire to find God, and give ourselves wholly into his hands? That is our starting point. If any man, really and truly, with all the desire of the soul, longs to find God, there is no reason why he should not be found. How is it with our hearts? Do they go out but partially after God? Then they will see little or nothing of him. Do they go out with all the stress of their affection, all the passion of their love, do they make this their one object and all-consuming purpose? Then God will be found of them; and man and his Maker shall see one another, as it were, face to face, and new life shall begin in the human soul. But except a man desire with his whole heart and strength to find God, no promise is given in the living word that God will be found. It is possible to desire God under the impulse of merely selfish fear, but such desire after God seldom ends in any good. It is true that fear is an element in every useful ministry. We would not, for one moment, undervalue the importance of fear in certain conditions of the human mind. At the same time, it is distinctly taught in the Holy Book that men may, at certain times, under the influence of fear, seek God, and God will turn his back upon them, will shut his ears when they cry, and will not listen to the voice of their appeal. Nothing can be more distinctly revealed than this awful doctrine, that God comes to men within certain seasons and opportunities, that he lays down given conditions of approach, that he even fixes times and periods, and that the day will come when he will say, “I will send a famine upon the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.” When men are in great physical pain, when pestilence is in the air, killing its thousands week by week, when wheat-fields are turned into graveyards, when God’s judgments are abroad in the earth, there be many who turn their ashen faces to the heavens! What if God will not hear their cowardly prayer? When God lifts his sword, there be many that say, “We would flee from this judgment.” And when he comes in the last, grand, terrible development of his personality, many will cry unto the rocks, and unto the hills to hide them from his face; but the rocks and the hills will hear them not, for they will be deaf at the bidding of God! We wish to make this dark side of the question very plain indeed; because there are persons who imagine, that they may put off the greatest considerations of life until times of sickness, and times of withdrawment from business, and times of plague, and seasons that seem to appeal more pathetically than others to their religious nature. God has distinctly said, “Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at naught all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind: Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer.” Let no man rest under the impression that he can call upon God at any time and under any circumstances, for there is a black mark at a certain part of your life; up to that you may seek God and find him, beyond it you may cry, and hear nothing but the echo of your own voice! How then does it stand with us in this matter of desire? Is our desire after God living, loving, intense, complete? That desire itself is prayer; and the very experience of that longing brings heaven into the soul!
Let us now turn from this sombre part of the subject. Yet if I had not declared this, some soul might have spoken to me some day, bitterly and keenly. If I had allowed any man to escape until I had told him this, with piercing accents, might he not by-and-by have turned round upon me and said, “You did not tell me about times and seasons; you left me under the impression that I could put this thing off until the latest hour of my life, and just when I was drawing up my feet to die, I might pray, and I should be taken into heaven”? No man can charge the preacher thus. There is a period, there is a day of mercy; and “the sun of mercy once set, shall rise no more!” Whatsoever, therefore, our hand findeth to do, let us do it with our might. We must work while it is called day, for the night cometh when no man can work. We speak these words with the solemnity of the heart, and the pathos of a man who is trembling upon the brink of eternity himself; and if any man take them in a flippant spirit, the iniquity be upon his own head, the wickedness he perpetrates shall come down upon his own heart!
This desire on our part is in answer to the desire of God. There is more or less of mystery about this part of the question. Still it is a mystery we are capable of grappling with, in all the practical bearings of the case at least. The desire after God does not begin on our part. God has not hidden himself from man for the purpose that he might allow his creature, his lost child, to cry after him. We love God because he first loved us. If we desire God it is because God first desired us. God asks for our heart as his tabernacle; he surrounds us night and day with ender, pathetic appeals; he says, “If any man love me, I will come in, and make my abode in his heart.” He plies us, as mother never plied her prodigal child to come home again; and there is not one word of grace, or pathos, or tender entreaty, which he has withheld from his argument, if haply he might find his way with our glad consent, into our heart of hearts. Do we desire God? Then it is because God first desired us. Do we feel kindlings of love towards him? Our love is of yesterday; God’s love comes up from unbeginning time, and goes on to unending eternity! There is nothing in his teaching that is likely to feed the self-sufficiency of men, or to put men into a false position, or to degrade the sovereignty and wondrous grace of God. For there is nothing at all in our hearts that is good and true and tender, that is not inspired by God the Holy Ghost!
Do we really desire to find God, to know him, and to love him? If so, that desire is the beginning of the new birth; that longing is the pledge that our prayers shall be accomplished in the largest, greatest blessing that the living God can bestow upon us. Still it may be important to go a little further into this, and examine what our object is in truly desiring to find God. It may be possible that even here our motive may be mixed; and if there is the least alloy in our motive, that alloy will tell against us. The desire must be pure. There must be no admixture of vanity or self-sufficiency; it must be a desire of true, simple, undivided love. Now, how is it with the desire which we at this moment may be presumed to experience? What is our object in desiring to find God? Is it to gratify intellectual vanity? That is possible. It is quite conceivable that a man of a certain type and cast of mind may very zealously pursue theological questions without being truly, profoundly religious. It is one thing to have an interest in scientific theology, and another thing really and lovingly to desire God for religious purposes. It is possible, to take an interest in the human frame, to be an ardent student of physiology, and yet not to have one spark of benevolence towards humanity, individual or social, in the heart. Is it not perfectly conceivable that a man shall take delight in dissecting the human frame, that he may find out and understand its structure; and yet do so without any intention ever to heal the sick, or feed the hungry, or clothe the naked? Some men seem to be born with a desire to anatomise; they like to dissect, to find out the secret of the human frame, to understand its structure and the interdependence of its several parts. So far we rejoice in their perseverance and their discoveries. But it is perfectly possible for such men to care for anatomy, without caring for philanthropy; to care about anatomy, from a scientific point of view, without any ulterior desire to benefit any living creature. So it is perfectly conceivable that a man may make the study of God a kind of intellectual hobby, without his heart being stirred by deep religious concern to know God as the Father, Saviour, Sanctifier, Sovereign of the human race. We therefore do not make any apology for putting this question so penetratingly. It is a vital question. Do you seek to know more of God simply as a scientific theological enquirer? Why do you desire to know God? Is it to solve the problem of rulership and sovereignty? It is very possible that men may put to themselves such a task as this: “We have heard a great deal from men of science about cause and effect; the law of continuity and the law of succession. Now I intend to find out whether it is a law a dead law that is behind all this phenomena, or whether it is a living being.” A man may start out on his journey after God with a purpose like that, and the probability is he will not find the God of the heart, the God of grace, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Why then do you desire to find out God? Is it to be delivered from some immediate difficulty? Some of us become very religious in proportion as our difficulties increase around us. We say that if God would only deliver us out of this perplexity, we should surely begin to pray unto him, and love him and serve him. When we are weak, when we are in pain, when days are long and nights are wearisome, because of some oppressive disease or affliction, then we say, “If God would raise me up from this bed of affliction, I know I should give the remainder of my days to him.” Is it in this spirit that we are seeking God, and desiring the Living One? Is there some great shadow lying over tomorrow? Are we almost afraid of Monday morning coming, because the pressure of great difficulty will be felt by us in our family relationships, or in our business responsibilities; and are we now saying, “If God would lift me over this great wall, on the other side I should fall down before him and pray, and nevermore would I leave his feet”? Are we quite sure that we mean what we say under such circumstances? We have experience to guide us upon this matter; we have observation to consult upon this case. There are many men who can plead guilty to the charge, that in certain crises, they professed and vowed that if God would deliver them they would be religious ever after, and they can also confess how far it is possible to desire God in that way and to be false to the solemn vows spoken in the most critical hours. What does your experience say upon this matter? You know how ill you were, you know when the physicians shook their heads and said they could do no more for you, when you family gathered around you, and were about to bid you farewell, you said in your heart, “If I could but be raised up again, I should be a new man, and have a desire after better things. If God would but spare me and recover my strength, I know I should be a good man.” You said that, and you were raised up again. How long did the vow keep you under its discipline? How long did that pledge, extorted in such pain, rule your life and control your purpose? A day? Yes. A week? Perhaps. A year? No! Where are you now? Perhaps farther off than ever; because slighted mercies mean harder hearts, neglected opportunities mean blinder eyes. How is it with you now? We repeat, that it is possible for a man to be desiring God because he is under the pressure of some peculiar difficulty and obligation, and his desire simply means this: If God would deliver me I think I would serve him, but all the probabilities are, that as soon as I enjoy the blessing I should forget my vow. Is the ground now tolerably clear of difficulties? Have we said sufficient about the danger of merely selfish fear and cowardly concern in this matter of seeking after God? Have we shown with sufficient suggestiveness that it is possible to seek after God from an intellectual point of view, and to care little or nothing about him religiously? That it is possible to seek out rulership and sovereignty, without going in quest of Fatherhood and redemptiveness? Is it clear to us by experience, as well as by exposition, that many a man, made a coward by affliction, has sought to make himself a saint through cowardice, and has turned out to be an arrant liar or a horrible hypocrite? If so, we may advance to our third enquiry, How then may I seek God so that I may find him religiously and know him as he is in his heart, and feel the redeeming grace and power of which I hear much in the gospel of his Son? We will answer that enquiry with a full, glad heart.
We are to seek God as men who know there is no other help for us. If there be the least distraction of feeling or affection on our part as to this point, we cannot find God! If we suppose that God is to be found in any other way than that in which he himself has revealed, all our enquiry will end in the bitterest disappointment. If we think that God is one among many, that there be many solaces and many sources of strength in human life, and that God is but one of them, even the chief of them, he will not show the lustre of his face, or the grace of his heart to us. We must come to him as men who can say, “We have tried every other source of strength and consolation, and behold, they are broken cisterns that can hold no water. We have consulted other physicians; we have spent all we have upon them, and have become worse rather than better; now we come to thee, God of salvation, God of grace, that we may find healing and recovery.” How is it with us at this point? Have you still some lingering feeling that there is a complement to religion, a supplement to it, something that is required to round it off and make it complete? Then do not be surprised that you do not find God, and do not know him, in the truly Christian sense of the term. No man can know God, until his heart has been emptied of every desire but a desire after Christ; and of every conviction but a conviction that God alone can meet faith in himself by the life that is eternal. See the poor woman in the crowd, who has spent all her living on seeking health, and has spent that living in vain. She comes behind the Great Teacher, in the crowd secretly, saying, “If I may but touch the hem of his garment, I shall be made whole.” She had tried every other resource, gone to every professed healer, had been filled with disappointment, and she was about to give up in despair; and in that critical hour of her experience, she touched the Saviour and was healed. It must be literally so with us. We must shut every other book, turn from every other teacher, forsake every broken cistern and every shallow fountain, and come to God and say, “We find life nowhere else; can we find it in thee, thou living One?” When a man is shut up to this course, pressed down to this point, and goes in quest of God in this spirit, he will return from his investigation filled with the grace and love of God, and made bright and joyous with the hope of the gospel. If we would really and truly find God, we must go to him as men who have lost all right of standing before him. No man is allowed to stand before God on equal terms. No sinner is permitted to go to God and say, “I come with a case, part of which I can meet myself; I wish to discuss this thing in thy hearing, and take thy counsel upon it.” That is not religious language. That is the language of pride, it is the language of self-sufficiency, it is the language of sin. How, then, are we to go? Not as the Pharisee went. The Pharisee went to the temple, but he found no justification there. He went to the right place, but he went in the wrong spirit. He prayed, but his prayer was rather to himself than to God. It was an exhibition of himself in set, stiff, religious language; a prayer, in the true sense of the term, it was not, and it never entered heaven. How then are we to go? As the publican went He went and lifted not up so much as his eyes unto heaven; he smote upon his breast; he condemned himself; he had no status in the house of God; he had no right to be there. But he came on the ground of mercy; and his beautiful prayer which a child might store in its young heart, and the most ignorant might learn in a moment was this: “God be merciful to me a sinner!” That man went from the temple to his house justified, forgiven, pardoned. If he he had stood upon one speck of his own right; if he had laid but a finger-tip upon any one virtue he had ever exhibited; if he had said, “I make this the ground of my claim, I put this in as a right and title to thy consideration,” God would not have regarded his prayer. But self-renouncing, self-distrusting, hungering and thirsting after mercy and righteousness, God heard his cry, and he left the temple without the burden he took to the holy place.
It is thus we must desire God; as the one object of life’s hope, as the one life without which we cannot live, as the one grace and comfort without which the heart would perish. We may put it into what words we please; select our own phraseology, but it comes to this, that except we renounce every other help, and renounce the conviction that we can do anything of ourselves on the ground of righteousness, we never can find God as the Redeemer and Saviour of our souls. What then is wanted? This: that we should now empty ourselves of everything that is of the nature of self-flattery; that we should view our own resources with contemptuous self-distrust, and look upon our own life with hatred and abhorrence, and then say, “Oh that I knew where I might find him!” We should open our eyes after that prayer and see God! Where? At the cross? Yes. But why at the cross? Because on it! It is God that is on the cross; it is God that dies for the sinner; it is God that brings our peace by righteousness, purity by holiness. We shall see them there, and the sight will be to us the beginning and the pledge of heaven.
But what is that exercise of the heart or of the mind by which we lay hold of religious things, livingly and with advantage, so that we derive from them strength and comfort and hope? It is a religious word. It is a word of one syllable. The youngest may remember it. It is faith. We are saved by faith. It is trust; it is the casting of the heart upon these things, and living according to them; the life coming out of faith being nothing in itself, but as it comes out of that divine eternal root, faith in the Son of God. Jesus always insisted upon having faith. When the very poorest man came up to him, he said, “Dost thou believe?” When the man wanted his withered hand healed, he said, “Dost thou believe?” When the leper came to him, he said, “Dost thou believe?” He never said, “Dost thou fear?” but always said. “Hast thou faith?” He never said, “Hast thou dread of God?” He never said, “Art thou so afraid of God’s power that thou desirest to run away from it and hide thyself?” He always put one question he never changed his question “Hast thou faith; dost thou believe; is it thine heart’s desire that this should be done unto thee?” In some places he could not do many mighty works because of the unbelief of the people. The question then comes to be this: Have we faith? We can only receive God through the medium of our belief. God enters our heart, because we open the door of our trust He does not come to us with difficult propositions and hard questions, and set us perplexing and baffling tasks. He says to the heart, “Art thou broken?” He says to the desire, “Art thou complete?” He says to our faith, “Dost thou rest on me?” And in so far as we can say, “Yes, Lord,” he will give us the blessing we need, and dwell in the heart that is prepared for him! Men find God in different ways. Some find him in great pain and affliction; and others never would have found him but for fire and loss and death and desolation! Others have been drawn to him by the kind ministry of loving parents, or brothers, or sisters. There is an infinite variety in the details, but there is no variety in the principle. We must desire God with a true heart, with an unmixed love, and then he will come to us and be our God.
It is possible to resist all appeals. I am not so sanguine as to imagine that any appeal of mine, or any other man’s, is irresistible, if so be you set your mind to resist it. A man may put his fingers into his ears and resolutely say, “I will not hear this.” Or he may listen with his ears, and stop the hearing of his heart, and say, “Not a word of this shall sink into my being.” It is perfectly possible for a man to answer arguments, and to bandy objections, and to criticise positions, and yet know nothing of the reality and sweetness of the gospel and grace of God. Do you really desire God to dwell in your hearts? That desire is prayer. Do you say, I wish I knew how to pray? The desire of your heart is the best prayer; it is the only true prayer. You may not be able to utter a word, or if you do utter words, you may stumble and blunder in every sentence; but God looks at the desire of the heart and the purpose of the soul; and the sighing of the wounded and the contrite brings him from his hiding-place, and to the trouble of the heart he extends his strength.
To the Christian let me say: No man can find out God unto perfection. You will not suppose that you have concluded your studies of the divine nature. In proportion as you are really religious, you will be the first to resent the suggestion that you have done more than just begun your studies of the divine Person, the divine law, and the divine grace. Let the word of God dwell in you richly. But some may need an exhortation: those who once did desire to know God, and who once professed to have found him, and who united themselves with the children of God, and made open profession of the gospel of Christ. Where are they now? They began enthusiastically; there was emphasis in their early testimony; there was holy boldness in their early declarations and first efforts in Christian service. Where are they now? “Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings, I will receive you graciously and love you freely!” That is God’s word to the backslider. Knowing the power of temptation, and by how many ways the devil may come into one’s soul and steal the good seed, and harden the opening heart, and destroy religious impressions, and quench and stifle aspiration, we send after you the cry of the Living One, whom you have deserted, “Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings!” Come to us again. Be not ashamed to excess; be ashamed of your sin, but do not let your shame destroy any hope that is in you, or any good desire that stirs your heart. Do not let the shame that you ought to feel kill you! Feel ashamed burn with shame; feel agony of contrition; put your head in the dust. Come amongst the people of God again, owning your sin, your evil behaviour, and, knowing what you have done, you will walk the more softly and cautiously in years to come. Do not be criticising the finger that points the road, and forget to take the journey. Do not say to the fingerpost, “You should have been higher and broader,” Go the road! That is what you have to do. The devil could have no greater joy a grim and terrible joy is his than to find you quarrelling with the guide, quarrelling with the index finger and not walking one step of the road. Rise, thy Father calleth thee! Go to him and say, “Father, I have sinned before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.” And, ere thou hast gone so far, he will lock thee in his heart, he will give thee home in his love!
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
Job 23:3 Oh that I knew where I might find him! [that] I might come [even] to his seat!
Ver. 3. Oh that I knew where I might find him! ] That is, God, so oft in his mind and mouth, that his acquaintance might easily know whom he meant. Aph-Hu, even he, 2Ki 2:4 , as held by some to be one of God’s attributes (Weems). And M , without mention of D , was an ordinary oath in Plato’s mouth, as Suidas recordeth.
That I might come even to his seat!
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Oh. Figure of speech Ecphonesis. App-6.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Oh that: Job 13:3, Job 16:21, Job 40:1-5, Isa 26:8, Jer 14:7
where: Isa 55:6, Isa 55:7, 2Co 5:19, 2Co 5:20, Heb 4:6
that I might: Job 31:35-37
Reciprocal: Gen 18:28 – wilt Job 9:3 – he will contend Job 9:32 – we should Job 11:5 – General Job 19:7 – no judgment Job 23:15 – General Job 29:5 – the Almighty Job 33:6 – I am Job 35:14 – thou sayest Job 38:3 – for Job 40:7 – Gird Psa 42:2 – living Psa 84:2 – heart Isa 41:1 – let us Isa 41:21 – Produce Isa 43:26 – Put Isa 50:8 – let us Jer 30:21 – engaged Jer 49:19 – appoint me the time Heb 7:25 – come
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Job 23:3-5. O that I knew where I might find him! Namely, God, as his friends well knew. Thou advisest me to acquaint myself with him, I desire nothing so much as his acquaintance and presence; but, alas! he hides his face from me, that I cannot see or come near him. That I might come even to his seat To his throne or judgment-seat, to plead my cause before him. I would order my cause Declare in order the things which concern my cause, would set it in a true light, and show the justice of it, and that before him, who searches my heart. And fill my mouth with arguments To prove my sincerity and innocence toward him, and consequently, that my friends accuse me falsely. I would know what he would say to me If he should discover to me any secret sins, for which he contendeth with me, I would humble myself before him, and accept of the punishment of mine iniquity.