Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 17:11
My days are past, my purposes are broken off, [even] the thoughts of my heart.
11. Very different from their delusive anticipations was the truth in regard to Job’s condition. His days were past, and his life with all its cherished purposes cut off. The thoughts of his heart is lit. as margin, the possessions, i. e. the enterprises and purposes which he cherished and clung to as that dearest to him.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
My days are past – I am about to die. Job relapses again into sadness – as he often does. A sense of his miserable condition comes over him like a cloud, and he feels that he must die.
My purposes are broken off – All my plans fail, and my schemes of life come to an end. No matter what they could say now, it was all over with him, and he must die; compare Isa 38:12 :
My habitation is taken away, and is removed from me
Like a shepherds tent;
My life is cut off as by a weaver
Who severeth the web from the loom;
Between the morning and the night thou wilt make an end of me.
Even the thoughts of my heart – Margin, possessions. Noyes, treasures. Dr. Good, resolves. Dr. Stock, the tenants of my heart. Vulgate, torquenes cor meum. Septuagint, ta arthra tes kardias mou – the strings of my heart. The Hebrew word ( morash) means properly possession (from yarash, to inherit); and the word here means the dear possessions of his heart; his cherished plans and schemes; the delights of his soul – the purposes which he had hoped to accomplish. All these were now to be broken on by death. This is to man one of the most trying things in death. All his plans must be arrested. His projects of ambition and gain, of pleasure and of fame, of professional eminence and of learning, all are arrested midway. The farmer is compelled to leave his plow in the furrow; the mechanic, his work unfinished; the lawyer, his brief half prepared; the student, his books lying open; the man who is building a palace, leaves it incomplete; and he who is seeking a crown, is taken away when it seemed just within his grasp. How many unfinished plans are caused by death every day! How many unfinished books, sermons, houses, does it make! How many schemes of wickedness and of benevolence, of fraud and of kindness, of gain and of mercy, are daily broken in upon by death! Soon, reader, all your plans and mine will be ended – mine, perhaps, before these lines meet your eye; yours soon afterward. God grant that our purposes of life may be such that we shall be willing to have them broken in upon – all so subordinate to the GREAT PLAN of being prepared for heaven, that we may cheerfully surrender them at any moment, at the call of the Master summoning us into his awful presence!
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Job 17:11
My purposes are broken off.
Broken purposes
What mental anguish is concentrated in these few words! They raise the sufferings of Job from one of mere physical pain to one of mental despair: Let us glance, first, at some objects of human ambition–their wreck, their loss, and their gain.
I. The cherished purposes of life. The generality of persons live without forming any purposes at all. They drift along the current, and laying aside the strength and glory of manhood are nothing but logs. The true purposes of life are not mere languid dreams, or objectless hopes, or anticipations of pleasure, and we must not confound these with the ambition alluded to by Job. But they are the thought out plans and aspirations of a vigorous mind in true earnest.
1. Sometimes these purposes are selfish.
2. Sometimes these ambitions are philanthropic.
3. Sometimes these purposes are religious.
There is the longing to lead a notably pious life, to be a pattern for others to copy, to bring up a godly family, to convert sinners, and to be worthy soldiers of the cross.
II. The broken purposes of life. How often are ambitions formed; how seldom are they realised! Our purposes are always being broken. We have had a cherished plant, and longed to see it flower. But the frost has nipped the bud, and it has withered and drooped. We have had a loved child for whom we cherished a hope of carrying forward the work of our lives. But the loved one had been taken from us altogether or has turned out a sorrow instead of a joy. We have intended to go hither or thither, but the storm has intervened and we have been left behind.
III. The hand of God in the purposes of life. Job did not realise that his purposes had been cut off by God, and that there was an object underlying the sorrow which filled his heart. Neither do men understand that there may be a reason that they cannot fathom which has hindered the success of their cherished hopes. Eternity will show that mans purposes are broken–
1. Because if successful they would have been injurious to ourselves. Many souls have been saved by being kept from riches or power. Many have been kept from ruin by having their cherished idol taken away.
2. Because they might work some evil for others. We often see instances of misdirected philanthropy. But how seldom we can see behind the scenes, and how little do we know what will really benefit our fellow creatures!
3. Because God sees that we are not fitted for the work,
4. Because He has higher and better purposes for us.
5. Because He desires to bring us to a state of perfect trust in Himself. He crushes our plans to show us how weak, how foolish we are, and to lay us low in humility. How much wiser are His arrangements! (J. J. S. Bird.)
Broken purposes
I. Men form purposes. Mind is active and made to think. Men speculate and resolve. Pleasure and wealth, honour and worldly position eagerly sought.
II. These purposes not always fulfilled. Broken off as threads of the web cut off from the loom (Isa 32:1-20). Impossible to realise. Providence intervenes; man proposeth, God disposeth. Greeks represented the fates as spinning the threads of human life. Procrastination prevents performance. Satan hinders (1Th 2:18).
III. This is a sad fact in experience. My purposes. Good resolutions formed and never carried out; plans adopted and forsaken; principles never come to maturity, and life wasted in attempting, and nothing done! (The Study.)
Broken purposes
The world is full of broken columns. Every heart carries its own crowded cemetery. The cemeteries in which you lay dead flesh and bones are not the true cemeteries. The graveyards are in the heart. My purposes are broken off; this is the cry of a disappointed man; the muffled moan of a baffled hope. It is not the peculiar cry of a Jew, or of a Gentile, of an Orientalist, or an Occidentalist, it is simply the voice of universal man. God has graciously enriched the world with example men; men who have been made to show in their melancholy experience how vain is ambition, how uncertain is expectation, how unstable is strength. Job is such man.
I. As revealing the speculative side of human life. All men have purposes. Man cannot live by history alone; he must strengthen himself by hope. Man puts out his hand and plucks of the tree of tomorrow. Every man speculates concerning the future, and feels himself inspired as he dwells on the charms of the coming time. Mans power of speculation always exceeds mans power of realisation. The poetic fancy is in advance of the toiling hand. The wanderers mind is at the destination long before the wanderers foot has taken the first step of the journey! The power of speculation and the power of realisation are not coordinate. We paint many a fire which we never can enkindle. We plant olive yards which bear no fruit, and dig wells which hold no water. Yet we would not give up this power of projecting ourselves into the future! We would not like to be barred in the small prison called today. Not a man but is pleasing himself with some dream of fancy. Each is saying, The times will change for the better; the cold winds will die out; the sky will be a cloudless arch; I shall walk on a carpet of violets through palaces of perfume.
II. As disclosing the real side of human experience. Purposes!–that is poetry; Broken! – that is history! This is a sad combination of words! Life is full of half-built towers. Men had begun to build, but were not able to finish. Life is a pile of fragments. Nowhere is there aught complete. Life is all beginnings; there is no finished pinnacle!
III. As suggesting mans true course as a speculatist and as a worker. Go to now, ye that say today or tomorrow, etc. There is a tonight between today and tomorrow. Learn–
1. All purposes against God must be broken off.
2. Form the loftiest purposes for God, and they will be fulfilled.
3. Remember the moral import of uncertainty. (Anon.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 11. My days are past] Job seems to relapse here into his former state of gloom. These transitions are very frequent in this poem; and they strongly mark the struggle of piety and resignation with continued affliction, violent temptation, and gloomy providences.
The thoughts of my heart.] All my purposes are interrupted; and all my schemes and plans, in relation to myself and family, are torn asunder, destroyed, and dissipated.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
My days; the days of my life. I am a lost and dying man, and therefore the hopes you give me of the bettering of my condition are vain and groundless.
My purposes; or, my designs, or
thoughts, to wit, which I had in my prosperous days, concerning myself and children, and the continuance of my happiness.
The thoughts of my heart, Heb. the possessions of my heart, i.e. those thoughts which in a great measure possessed my heart, which were most natural, and familiar, and delightful to me. All my thoughts, and designs, and hopes are disappointed, and come to nothing.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
11. Only do not vainly speak ofthe restoration of health to me; for “my days are past.”
broken offas thethreads of the web cut off from the loom (Isa38:12).
thoughtsliterally,”possessions,” that is, all the feelings and fair hopeswhich my heart once nourished. These belong to the heart, as”purposes” to the understanding; the two togetherhere describe the entire inner man.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
My days are past,…. Or “passed away”, or “passed over” w; not that they passed over the time fixed and appointed by God, for there is no passing the bound settled by him, Job 14:5; but either the common term of man’s life was passed with Job, or he speaks of things in his own apprehension; he imagined his death was so near, that he had not a day longer to live; his days, as he before says, were extinct, were at an end, he should never enjoy another day; and therefore it was folly to flatter him with a promise of long life, or encourage him to expect it; which he may mention as a proof of there being not a wise man among them, since they all suggested this in case of repentance; or his meaning is, that his good days, or days of goodness, as Jarchi interprets it, were past; his days of prosperity were at an end, and evil days were come upon him, in which he had no pleasure; nor had he any reason to believe it would be otherwise with him:
my purposes are broken off; Job doubtless had formed in his mind great designs of good things, natural, civil; and religious, concerning the enlargement of his temporal estate, the settlement of his children in the world, making provision for the poor, supporting and enlarging the interest of true religion, the reformation of his Heathenish neighbours, and the spread of divine truths among them; but now they were all frustrated, he was not in a capacity of carrying them into execution, and was obliged to drop them, and think no more of them, nor was there with him any prospect of ever renewing them; they were “rooted up” x, or plucked up, as some render the word, so that there was no likelihood of their ever rising up again, and coming to any effect:
[even] the thoughts of my heart; or “the possessions” y of it, as the thoughts are; they are the things of a man, which especially belong to him; they are the inheritance of his mind, what none have a right unto, and a claim upon, but himself, nor can any know but himself, and to whom he discovers them: now the thread of these is broken off at death, they then cease; not that the mind or soul of man ceases to be, or ceases to be a thinking being, it still thinks; but only its thoughts are not employed about the same things in a future state, or in the state after death, as in this, see Ps 146:4.
w “transierunt”, Pagninus, Montanus, c. x “evulsae sunt”, Pagninus, Montanus, Piscator “radicitus evulsae sunt”, Michaelis. y “possessiones”, Montanus, Vatablus, Piscator, Cocceius, Schmidt; “haereditariae possessiones”, Schultens; so Drusius & Michaelis.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
11. My days are past The want of wisdom Job has just spoken of, the friends have shown in their glowing promises of future worldly bliss provided he will repent; that, too, while he has both feet in the grave. The thought serves as a transition to the elegy renewed in this verse.
Thoughts , possessions, or treasures. Zockler calls them the wards, or nurslings, of the heart. The term comprehends thought, hope, purpose, affection all the furniture of the soul.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job’s Hopelessness in his Affliction
v. 11. My days are past, v. 12. They change the night into day, v. 13. If I wait, the grave is mine house, v. 14. I have said to corruption, Thou art my father, v. 15. and where, v. 16. They shall go down to the bars of the pit,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Job 17:11-12. The thoughts of my heart, &c. The gnawings of my heart (Job 17:12.) causeth it to be night instead of day; the light is short in comparison of darkness. Heath.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
(11) My days are past, my purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart. (12) They change the night into day: the light is short because of darkness. (13) If I wait, the grave is mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness. (14) I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister. (15) And where is now my hope? as for my hope, who shall see it? (16) They shall go down to the bars of the pit, when our rest together is in the dust.
There are two sweet thoughts of Job contained in these verses, which very highly merit our regard. The first is, of the alliance man hath with corruption; and the other is, of the conduct which should be ever preserved among those, who have worms for their nearest relations. Sweet were Paul’s thoughts on the same subject, when he protested to the Corinthian church that he died daily. 1Co 15:31 . And how affectionately doth Job close his address in this chapter toward his friends, notwithstanding all the harsh lectures which they had been reading to him. They shall go down to the bars of the pit, (that is, we shall, saith Job, along with all mankind), and there we shall rest together in the dust. What though we cannot agree here; in that silent home the wicked cease from troubling. However in life men differ; in death contention ceaseth. Blessed consideration to the believer in JESUS! Though, sin brought death into the world, JESUS by taking out the sting of death, hath put a blessing into death. ‘Blessed, ‘ said a voice from heaven, ‘are the dead which die in the LORD. Yea, saith the SPIRIT, ‘ as if confirming the glorious truth, ‘for they rest from their labors, and their works do follow them.’ Rev 14:13 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Job 17:11 My days are past, my purposes are broken off, [even] the thoughts of my heart.
Ver. 11. My days are past ] q.d. It is past time of day for me to hope for a return of a prosperous condition, since I am irrecoverably diseased, and cannot be long of life.
My purposes are broken off
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
My days: Job 7:6, Job 9:25, Job 9:26, Isa 38:10
purposes: Pro 16:9, Pro 19:21, Ecc 9:10, Isa 8:10, Lam 3:37, Rom 1:13, 2Co 1:15-17, Jam 4:13-15
thoughts: Heb. possessions
Reciprocal: Job 17:7 – members Job 19:10 – I am gone Job 33:17 – withdraw Psa 88:15 – afflicted Psa 146:4 – his thoughts Ecc 2:20 – General Lam 3:54 – I said
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Job 17:11. My days are past The days of my life. I am a dying man, and therefore the hopes you give me of the bettering of my condition are vain. My purposes are broken off Or the designs and expectations which I had in my prosperous days concerning myself and children, and the continuance of my happiness. Even the thoughts of my heart Hebrew, , morashei; the possessions of my heart; that is, those counsels and intentions which in a great measure possessed my heart, and were natural and familiar to me. All these are disappointed and come to nothing.