Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 19:21

Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me.

21, 22. Overcome by his sense of the terrible enmity of God, Job piteously cries out for the compassion of men. There is a strong antithesis between “ye my friends” and the “hand of God,” “God” ( Job 19:22). The whole speech, even when the enmity of men is referred to ( Job 19:13 seq.), is occupied with the thought of God, He is regarded as the cause of men’s abhorrence. Job for a moment seeks refuge with men from God’s severity.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Have pity on me – A tender, pathetic cry for sympathy. God has afflicted me, and stripped me of all my comforts, and I am left a poor, distressed, forsaken man. I make my appeal to you, my friends, and entreat you to have pity; to sympathize with me, and to sustain me by the words of consolation. One would have supposed that these words would have gone to the heart, and that we should hear no more of their bitter reproofs. But far otherwise was the fact.

The hand of God hath touched me – Hath smitten me; or is heavy upon me. The meaning is, that he had been subjected to great calamities by God, and that it was right to appeal now to his friends, and to expect their sympathy and compassion. On the usual meaning of the word here rendered, hath touched ( nagaah from naga ), see the notes at Isa 53:4.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Job 19:21

Have pity upon me, for the hand of God hath touched me.

Christs passion

Apt illustration of a more perfect sufferer–one more holy than Job, and one involved in deeper sorrow.

I. In many respects there is an analogy between the sufferers.

1. Christ was an innocent and benevolent sufferer.

2. But when was He not a sufferer?

3. How His sufferings increased as He approached His end.

4. It was the hand of God that had touched Him.

5. Job suffered for himself, and for his own benefit; Christ, not for Himself, but for us, and in our stead.

II. How our pity should be evinced.

1. By the ordinary movement of our feelings.

2. We should awaken these feelings by the use of all means.

3. Our pity should be evinced by hatred of sin.

4. If our compassion is sincere, we shall feel a deep interest in the result of his sufferings. (F. Close, A. M.)

Compassion a human duty

Afflictions like Jobs were sufficient, one would have imagined, to have extorted a tear of pity from his most implacable foe. It would surely require none of the warm attachments and tender sensibilities of friendship to awaken compassion in the heart on such an occasion as this. With the common feelings of humanity, one would imagine it impossible to behold the afflictions of Job, and not to weep over them. These so-called friends, however, turned a deaf ear to his entreaties, and under the cloak of friendship continued to wound him by the most ungenerous and inhuman treatment. The world in which we live is full of misery. Distress appears before us in a thousand different forms; and in every shape she supplicates our notice, with an importunity which the humane and generous heart is unable to resist. Of all others, the most affecting scene of calamity which we can behold is, when a fellow creature is at once oppressed with the difficulties of want, and tormented with the pains of bodily affliction. Every man should consider himself as immediately addressed in supplications like this; for every man is, or ought to be, a friend to the wretched. Compassion is a debt which one human creature owes to another; a debt which no distinction of sect or party, no imperfection of character, no degree of ingratitude, unkindness, or cruelty will cancel, Compassion is a plant which flourishes in the human heart, as in its native soil. So great is the satisfaction which results from the sentiments of humanity, that there is scarcely any consideration which more fully vindicates the wisdom and goodness of the Supreme Being, in permitting the numerous ills of human life, than this, that they afford us an opportunity of exercising the most amiable affections, and partaking of the noblest pleasures. The exercise of this disposition is, likewise, necessary to gain the esteem and love of our brethren. And to show compassion to such as are in distress is the way to qualify ourselves for the Divine acceptance at the great day. Let us remember that to be compassionate is not merely to feel and cherish the emotions of pity in our hearts, but to embrace every opportunity of expressing them by our actions. (W. Enfield.)

Hindrances to sympathy

Sympathy is peculiarly liable to inhibition from other instincts which its stimulus may call forth. The traveller whom the Good Samaritan rescued may well have prompted such instinctive fear or disgust in the priest and Levite who passed in front of him, that their sympathy could not come to the front. Then, of course, habits, reasoned reflections, and calculations may either check or reinforce ones sympathy, as may also the instincts of love or hate, if these exist, for the suffering individual. The hunting and pugnacious instincts, when aroused, also inhibit our sympathy absolutely. This accounts for the cruelty of collections of men hounding each other on to bait or torture a victim. The blood mounts to the eyes, and sympathys chance is gone. (James, Psychology.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 21. Have pity upon me] The iteration here strongly indicates the depth of his distress, and that his spirit was worn down with the length and severity of his suffering.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

O ye my friends; for such you have been, and still pretend to be; and therefore fulfil that relation; and if you will not help me, yet at least pity me.

Hath touched me, i.e. smitten or afflicted me sorely, as this word is oft used; as Job 1:11; Psa 104:32.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

21. When God had made him such apiteous spectacle, his friends should spare him the additionalpersecution of their cruel speeches.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Have pity upon me, have pity upon me,…. Instead of calumny and censure, his case called for compassion; and the phrase is doubled, to denote the vehemence of his affliction, the ardency of his soul, the anguish of his spirits, the great distress he was in, and the earnest desire he had to have pity shown him; and in which he may be thought not only to make a request to his friends for it, but to give them a reproof for want of it:

O ye my friends; as they once showed themselves to be, and now professed they were; and since they did, pity might be reasonably expected from them; for even common humanity, and much more friendship, required it of them, that they should be pitiful and courteous, and put on bowels of mercy and kindness, and commiserate his sad estate, and give him all the succour, relief, and comfort they could, see Job 6:14;

for the hand of God has touched me; his afflicting hand, which is a mighty one; it lay hard and heavy upon him, and pressed him sore; for though it was but a touch of his hand, it was more than he could well bear; for it was the touch of the Almighty, who “toucheth the hills, and they smoke”, Ps 104:32; and if he lays his hand ever so lightly on houses of clay, which have their foundation in the dust, they cannot support under the weight of it, since they are crushed before the moth, or as easily as a moth is crushed.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

21 Have pity upon me, have pity upon me,

O ye my friends, For the hand of Eloah hath touched me.

22 Wherefore do ye persecute me as God,

And are never satisfied with my flesh?

23 Oh that my words were but written,

That they were recorded in a book,

24 With an iron pen, filled in with lead,

Graven in the rock for ever!

25 And I know: my Redeemer liveth,

And as the last One will He arise from the dust.

In Job 19:21 Job takes up a strain we have not heard previously. His natural strength becomes more and more feeble, and his voice weaker and weaker. It is a feeling of sadness that prevails in the preceding description of suffering, and now even stamps the address to the friends with a tone of importunate entreaty which shall, if possible, affect their heart. They are indeed his friends, as the emphatic affirms; impelled towards him by sympathy they are come, and at least stand by him while all other men flee from him. They are therefore to grant him favour ( , prop. to incline to) in the place of right; it is enough that the hand of Eloah has touched him (in connection with this, one is reminded that leprosy is called , and is pre-eminently accounted as plaga divina ; wherefore the suffering Messiah also bears the significant name , “the leprous one from the school of Rabbi,” in the Talmud, after Isa 53:4, Isa 53:8), they are not to make the divine decree heavier to him by their uncharitableness. Wherefore do ye persecute me – he asks them in Job 19:22 – like as God ( , according to Saad. and Ralbag = , which would be very tame); by which he means not merely that they add their persecution to God’s, but that they take upon themselves God’s work, that they usurp to themselves a judicial divine authority, they act towards him as if they were superhuman (vid., Isa 31:3), and therefore inhumanly, since they, who are but his equals, look down upon him from an assumed and false elevation. The other half of the question: wherefore are ye not full of my flesh ( de ma chair , with , as Job 31:31), but still continue to devour it? is founded upon a common Semitic figurative expression, with which may be compared our Germ. expression, “to gnaw with the tooth of slander” comp. Engl. “backbiting”. In Chaldee, , to eat the pieces of (any one), is equivalent to, to slander him; in Syriac, ochelqarsso is the name of Satan, like . The Arabic here, as almost everywhere in the book of Job, presents a still closer parallel; for Arab. ‘kl lhm signifies to eat any one’s flesh, then (different from , Psa 27:2) equivalent to, to slander,

(Note: Vid., Schultens’ ad Prov. Meidanii, p. 7 (where “to eat his own flesh,” equivalent to “himself,” without allowing others to do it, signifies to censure his kinsmen), and comp. the phrase Arab. aclu – l – aradhi in the signification arrodere existimationem hominum in Makkari, i. 541, 13.)

since an evil report is conceived of as a wild beast, which delights in tearing a neighbour to pieces, as the friends do not refrain from doing, since, from the love of their assumption that his suffering must be the retributive punishment of heinous sins, they lay sins to his charge of which he is not conscious, and which he never committed. Against these uncharitable and groundless accusations he wishes (Job 19:23) that the testimony of his innocence, to which they will not listen, might be recorded in a book for posterity, or because a book may easily perish, graven in a rock (therefore not on leaden plates) with an iron style, and the addition of lead, with which to fill up the engraved letters, and render them still more imperishable. In connection with the remarkable fidelity with which the poet throws himself back into the pre-Israelitish patriarchal time of his hero, it is of no small importance that he ascribes to him an acquaintance not only with monumental writing, but also with book and documentary writing (comp. Job 31:35).

The fut., which also elsewhere (Job 6:8; Job 13:5; Job 14:13, once the praet., Job 23:3, noverim ) follows , quis dabat = utinam , has Waw consec. here (as Deu 5:26 the praet.); the arrangement of the words is extremely elegant, stands per hyperbaton emphatically prominent. and (whence fut. Hoph. with Dag. implicitum in the , comp. Job 4:20, and the Dag. of the omitted, for , according to Ges. 67, rem. 8) interchange also elsewhere, Isa 30:8. , according to its etymon, is a book formed of the skin of an animal, as Arab. sufre , the leathern table-mat spread on the ground instead of a table. It is as unnecessary to read (comp. Job 16:8, lxx, ) instead of here, as in Isa 30:8. He wishes that his own declaration, in opposition to his accusers, may be inscribed as on a monument, that it may be immortalized,

(Note: is differently interpreted by Jerome: evermore hewn in the rock; for so it seems his vel certe (instead of which celte is also read, which is an old northern name for a chisel) sculpantur in siliece must be explained.)

in order that posterity may behold it, and, it is to be hoped, judge him more justly than his contemporaries. He wishes this, and is certain that his wish is not vain. His testimony to his innocence will not descend to posterity without being justified to it by God, the living God.

Thus is connected with what precedes. yd`ty is followed, as in Job 30:23, Ps. 9:21, by the oratio directa . The monosyllable tone-word (on account of which go’aliy has the accent drawn back to the penult.) is 3 praet.: I know: my redeemer liveth; in connection with this we recall the name of God, , Dan 12:7, after which the Jewish oath per Anchialum in Martial is to be explained. might (with Umbr. and others), in comparison with Job 16:18, as Num 35:12, be equivalent to : he who will redeem, demand back, avenge the shedding of his blood and maintain his honour as of blood that has been innocently shed; in general, however, g’l signifies to procure compensation for the down-trodden and unjustly oppressed, Pro 23:11; Lam 3:58; Psa 119:154. This Rescuer of his honour lives and will rise up as the last One, as one who holds out over everything, and therefore as one who will speak the final decisive word. To have been given the significations Afterman in the sense of vindex (Hirz., Ewald), or Rearman in the sense of a second [ lit. in a duel,] (Hahn), but contrary to the usage of the language: the word signifies postremus, novissimus , and is to be understood according to Isa 44:6; Isa 48:12, comp. Job 41:4. But what is the meaning of ? Is it: upon the dust of the earth, having descended from heaven? The words may, according to Job 41:25 [Hebr., Engl. Job 41:33], be understood thus (without the accompanying notion, formerly supposed by Umbreit, of pulvis or arena = palaestra , which is Classic, not Hebraic); but looking to the process of destruction going on in his body, which has been previously the subject of his words, and is so further on, it is far more probable that is to be interpreted according to Job 17:16; Job 20:11; Job 21:26; Psa 30:10. Moreover, an Arab would think of nothing else but the dust of the grave if he read Arab. ala turabin in this connection.

(Note: In Arabic fr belongs only to the ancient language (whence afarahu , he has cast him into the dust, placed him upon the sand, inf. afr ); Arab. gbar (whence the Ghobar, a peculiar secret-writing, has its name) signifies the dry, flying dust; Arab. trab , however, is dust in gen., and particularly the dust of the grave, as e.g., in the forcible proverb: nothing but the turab fills the eyes of man. So common is this signification, that a tomb is therefore called turbe .)

Besides, it is unnecessary to connect , as perhaps 2Ch 21:4, and the Arab. qam ala (to stand by, help): is first of all nothing more than a defining of locality. To affirm that if it refer to Job it ought to be , is unfounded. Upon the dust in which he is now soon to be laid, into which he is now soon to be changed, will He, the Rescuer of his honour, arise ( , as in Deu 19:15; Psa 27:12; Psa 35:11, of the rising up of a witness, and as e.g., Psa 12:6, comp. Psa 94:16, Isa 33:10, of the rising up and interposing of a rescuer and help) and set His divine seal to Job’s own testimony thus made permanent in the monumental inscription. Oetinger’s interpretation is substantially the same: “I know that He will at last come, place himself over the dust in which I have mouldered away, pronounce my cause just, and place upon me the crown of victory.”

A somewhat different connection of the thought is obtained, if is taken not progressively, but adversatively: “Yet I know,” etc. The thought is then, that his testimony of his innocence need not at all be inscribed in the rock; on the contrary, God, the ever living One, will verify it. It is difficult to decide between them; still the progressive rendering seems to be preferable, because the human vindication after death, which is the object of the wish expressed in Job 19:23, is still not essentially different from the divine vindication hoped for in Job 19:25, which must not be regarded as an antithesis, but rather as a perfecting of the other designed for posterity. Job 19:25 is, however, certainly a higher hope, to which the wish in Job 19:23. forms the stepping-stone. God himself will avenge Job’s blood, i.e., against his accusers, who say that it is the blood of one who is guilty; over the dust of the departed He will arise, and by His majestic testimony put to silence those who regard this dust of decay as the dust of a sinner, who has received the reward of his deeds.

But is it perhaps this his hope of God’s vindication, expressed in Job 19:25, which (as Schlottmann and Hahn,

(Note: Hahn, after having in his pamphlet, de spe immortalitatis sub V.T. gradatim exculta, 1845, understood Job’s confession distinctly of a future beholding in this world, goes further in his Commentary, and entirely deprives this confession of the character of hope, and takes all as an expression of what is present. We withhold our further assent.)

though in other respects giving very different interpretations, think) is, according to Job’s wish, to be permanently inscribed on the monument, in order to testify to posterity with what a stedfast and undismayed conviction he had died? The high-toned introitus , Job 19:23, would be worthy of the important inscription it introduces. But (1) it is improbable that the inscription would begin with , consequently with Waw, – a difficulty which is not removed by the translation, “Yea, I know,” but only covered up; the appeal to Psa 2:6; Isa 3:14, is inadmissible, since there the divine utterance, which begins with Waw, per aposiopesin continues a suppressed clause; would be more admissible, but that which is to be written down does not even begin with in either Hab 2:3 or Jer 30:3. (2.) According to the whole of Job’s previous conduct and habitual state of mind, it is to be supposed that the contents of the inscription would be the expression of the stedfast consciousness of his innocence, not the hope of his vindication, which only here and there flashes through the darkness of the conflict and temptation, but is always again swallowed up by this darkness, so that the thought of a perpetual preservation, as on a monument, of this hope can by no means have its origin in Job; it forms everywhere only, so to speak, the golden weft of the tragic warp, which in itself even resists the tension of the two opposites: Job’s consciousness of innocence, and the dogmatic postulate of the friends; and their intensity gradually increases with the intensity of this very tension. So also here, where the strongest expression is given both to the confession of his innocence as a confession which does not shun, but even desires, to be recorded in a permanent form for posterity, and also at the same time in connection with this to the confidence that to him, who is misunderstood by men, the vindication from the side of God, although it may be so long delayed that he even dies, can nevertheless not be wanting. Accordingly, by we understand not what immediately follows, but the words concerning his innocence which have already been often repeated by him, and which remain unalterably the same; and we are authorized in closing one strophe with Job 19:25, and in beginning a new one with Job 19:26, which indeed is commended by the prevalence of the decastich in this speech, although we do not allow to this observance of the strophe division any influence in determining the exposition. It is, however, of use in our exposition. The strophe which now follows develops the chief reason of believing hope which is expressed in Job 19:25; comp. the hexastich Job 12:11-13, also there in Job 12:14 is the expansion of Job 12:13, which expresses the chief thought as in the form of a thema.

Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament

(21) Have pity upon me.Now comes once more an exceeding great and bitter cry. (Comp. Job. 16:20.)

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

Second division THE PITEOUS APPEAL JOB MAKES TO HIS FRIENDS FOR SYMPATHY OPENS UP AN EXTREMITY OF DISTRESS, OUT OF WHICH, AS IS SO COMMON IN THE ECONOMY OF GRACE, SPRINGS A MOST TRIUMPHANT ASSURANCE OF FAITH IN GOD’S PURPOSES OF ETERNAL GOOD TOWARDS HIM, Job 19:21-27.

The intensified storm of doubts, fears, griefs, and desolation quickly retires along the sky, and discloses a bow of peace, in beauty far transcending that of nature. Taylor Lewis supposes that a pause ensued after the repeated prayer for pity.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

21. Touched me , naga’h. The leprosy was called the stroke ( nega’h) of God. (See note Job 2:8.) The most touching appeal of the leper is, even at the present day, in vain. Though he be the greatest personage, he is removed at least a mile or two from the encampment, where a small black hair tent is put up for him, while an old woman who has no relations living is given him for a nurse until he dies. No one visits him, not oven his nearest relations. He is cast off as muqatal Allah, “slain of God.” Wetzstein.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments