Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 31:3
[Is] not destruction to the wicked? and a strange [punishment] to the workers of iniquity?
Is not destruction to the wicked? – That is, Job says that he was well aware that destruction would overtake the wicked, and that if he had given indulgence to impure desires he could have looked for nothing else. Well knowing this, he says, he had guarded himself in the most careful manner from sin, and had labored with the greatest assiduity to keep his eyes and his heart pure.
And a strange punishment – – weneker. The word used here, means literally strangeness – a strange thing, something with which we were unacquainted. It is used here evidently in the sense of a strange or unusual punishment; something which does not occur in the ordinary course of events. The sense is, that for the sin here particularly referred to, God would interpose to inflict vengeance in a manner such as did not occur in the ordinary dealings of his providence. There would be some punishment adopted especially to this sin, and which would mark it with his special displeasure. Has it not been so in all ages? The Vulgate renders it, alienatio, and the Septuagint translates it in a similar manner – apallotriosis – and they seem to have understood it as followed by entire alienation from God; an idea which would be every where sustained by a reference to the history of the sin referred to by Job. There is no sin that so much poisons all the fountains of pure feeling in the soul, and none that will so certainly terminate in the entire wreck of character.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 3. Is not destruction to the wicked] If I had been guilty of such secret hypocritical proceedings, professing faith in the true God while in eye and heart an idolater, would not such a worker of iniquity be distinguished by a strange and unheard-of punishment?
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Destruction is their portion, and a strange punishment, some extraordinary and dreadful judgment, which of right and course belongs to them, and only to such as they are, although it hath pleased God out of his sovereign power to inflict it upon me, who have lived in all good conscience before him. Heb. an alienation or estrangement, to wit, from God and from his favour. Had I been such a one, I neither could nor should have expected any kindness or mercy from God, as now I do.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
3. Answer to the question in Job31:2.
strangeextraordinary.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
[Is] not destruction to the wicked?…. It is even to such wicked men, who live in the sin of fornication, and make it their business to ensnare and corrupt virgins; and which is another reason why Job was careful to avoid that sin; wickedness of every sort is the cause of destruction, destruction and misery are in the ways of wicked men, and their wicked ways lead unto it, and issue in it, even destruction of soul and body in hell, which is swift and sudden, and will be everlasting: this is laid up for wicked men among the treasures of God’s wrath, and they are reserved that, and there is no way of deliverance from it but by Christ:
and a strange [punishment] to the workers of iniquity; the iniquity of fornication and whoredom, Pr 30:20; who make it their business to commit it, and live in a continued course of uncleanness and other sins; a punishment, something strange, unusual, and uncommon, as the filthy venereal disease in this world, and everlasting burnings in another; or “alienation” y, a state of estrangement and banishment from the presence of God and Christ, and from the society of the saints, to all eternity; see Mt 25:46.
y “et abalienatio”, Munster; “et alienatio”, V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Mercerus, Drusius, Schmidt.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(3) Is noti.e., Is not this the portion of Job. 31:2?
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
3. A strange punishment . The word bears a similar meaning in the Arabic. Thus Mohammed: “He shall visit him with a strange, ( nukran,) or awful, penalty.” The punishment of such “workers of iniquity” is strange, extraordinary. The diseases and the remorse that spring from a life of licentiousness are markedly exceptional, and argue peculiar punishment in the next life.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 31:3 [Is] not destruction to the wicked? and a strange [punishment] to the workers of iniquity?
Ver. 3. Is not destruction to the wicked? ] Yes, that is their portion, their inheritance; and so Job makes answer to his own question proposed in the preceding verse. The ruin of impure souls is infallible, unsupportable, unavoidable; if God hath aversion from all other sinners, he hath hatred and horror for the unchaste; such stinking goats shall be set on the left hand, and sent to hell; where they shall have so much the more of punishment as they had here of sensual and sinful pleasure, as sour sauce to their sweet meats, Rev 18:7 . Not to speak of the miseries they meet with here, which are not a few: in their souls, hardness of heart, or horror of conscience: in their bodies, foul and loathsome diseases, such as will stick to them when their best friends forsake them: in their names, indelible reproach and infamy; like an iron mole, which nothing can fetch out; like the leprosy, which could never be scraped out of the walls: in their estates, poverty, even to a piece of bread, Pro 6:26 . Harlots are poscinummia, crumenimulgae, suck purses, Luk 15:14 . In their posterity, as Jericho was built, so is uncleanness plagued, both in the eldest and youngest; it goes through the race, till it have wasted all.
Corpus, opes, animam, famam, vim, lumina, Scortum
Debilitat, perdit, necat, aufert, eripit, orbat.
And a strange punishment to the workers of iniquity? ] Even such as is unusual and extraordinary; as upon the Sodomites, who, going after strange flesh, were thrown forth for an example, as Jude hath it, Jdg 1:7 . So those Benjamites, Jdg 20:12-15 ; Jdg 20:43-48 ; the Trojans; the Lacedemonians at Leuctra; Zimri and Cozbi; Zedekiah and Ahab, Jer 29:22 ; Eli’s two sons; Heraclius, the emperor; Muleasses, king of Tunis, in Barbary, bereft by his own son Amida (another Absalom), not of his kingdom only, but of his eyes too, put out with a burning hot iron; those eyes of his that had been full of adultery, and could not cease to sin. In Hebrew the same word signifieth both an eye and a fountain; to show, saith one, that from the eye, as a fountain, floweth both sin and misery.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Is not . . . ? Figure of speech Erotesis. App-6.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
destruction: Job 21:30, Psa 55:23, Psa 73:18, Pro 1:27, Pro 10:29, Pro 21:15, Mat 7:13, Rom 9:22, 1Th 5:3, 2Th 1:9, 2Pe 2:1
a strange: Isa 28:21, Jud 1:7
Reciprocal: Num 16:30 – make a new thing Jdg 9:53 – woman Jdg 9:56 – God rendered Jdg 16:30 – and the house 1Sa 5:6 – emerods 1Sa 15:18 – the sinners 2Sa 17:23 – and hanged 2Sa 18:9 – taken up 2Ki 1:2 – was sick 2Ki 9:35 – but they found Job 20:29 – the portion Job 27:8 – General Job 27:13 – the portion Job 34:22 – the Isa 1:28 – the destruction
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Job 31:3-4. Is not destruction to the wicked? Destruction is their portion. And a strange punishment Some extraordinary and dreadful judgment, which of right belongs to them. Hebrew, , venecher, an alienation, or estrangement, namely, from God and his favour: had I been such a one, I neither should nor could have expected any kindness or mercy from God in a future world, as now I do. Doth not he see my ways? That is, all my counsels and courses. This was another reason why he was so circumspect and exact in restraining his thoughts, and senses, and whole man from sinful practices, because he knew that God would discern them, and therefore punish them, as he said, Job 31:3.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
31:3 [Is] not destruction to the wicked? and a strange [punishment] to {c} the workers of iniquity?
(c) Job declares that the fear of God was a bridle to stay him from all wickedness.