Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 19:5
If indeed ye will magnify [yourselves] against me, and plead against me my reproach:
5. If his friends mean in earnest to found inferences on his calamities then he will tell them that it is God who hath brought these on him unjustly ( Job 19:6).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
If, indeed, ye will magnify yourselves against me – This is connected with the next verse. The sense is, all these calamities came from God. He has brought them upon me in a sudden and mysterious manner. In these circumstances you ought to have pity upon me; Job 19:21. Instead of magnifying yourselves against me, setting yourselves up as censors and judges, overwhelming me with reproaches and filling my mind with pain and anguish, you ought to show to me the sympathy of a friend. The phrase, magnify yourselves, refers to the fact that they had assumed a tone of superiority and an authoritative manner, instead of showing the compassion due to a friend in affliction.
And plead against me my reproach – My calamities as a cause of reproach. You urge them as a proof of the displeasure of God, and you join in reproaching me as a hypocrite. Instead of this, you should have shown compassion to me as a man whom God had greatly afflicted.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Magnify yourselves against me, i.e. use lofty, and imperious, and contemptuous speeches against me; or seek praise and honour from others, by your conquering or outreasoning of me.
My reproach; either,
1. Your reproaches of me; if your reproachful and censorious speeches must pass for solid arguments. Or,
2. My wickedness, which, if true, were just matter of reproach, and the cause of all my miseries. Or,
3. My contemptible and calamitous condition, for which you reproach and condemn me as a hypocrite and wicked man.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
5. magnify, c.Speak proudly(Oba 1:12 Eze 35:13).
against meemphaticallyrepeated (Ps 38:16).
plead . . . reproachEnglishVersion makes this part of the protasis, “if” beingunderstood, and the apodosis beginning at Job19:6. Better with UMBREIT,If ye would become great heroes against me in truth, ye must prove(evince) against me my guilt, or shame, which youassert. In the English Version “reproach” will meanJob’s calamities, which they “pleaded” against himas a “reproach,” or proof of guilt.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
If indeed ye will magnify [yourselves] against me,…. Look and talk big, set up themselves for great folk, and resolve to run him down; open their mouths wide against him and speak great swelling words in a blustering manner; or magnify what they called an error in him, and set it out in the worst light they could:
and plead against me my reproach; his affliction which he was reproached with, and was pleaded against him as an argument of his being a wicked man; if therefore they were determined to go on after this manner, and insist on this kind of proof, then he would have them take what follows.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
2. He has been overthrown by God. (Job. 9:5-12)
TEXT 19:512
5 If Indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me,
And plead against me my reproach;
6 Know now that God hath subverted me in my cause,
And hath compassed me with his net.
7 Behold I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard:
I cry for help, but there is no justice.
8 He hath walled up my way that I cannot pass,
And hath set darkness in my paths.
9 He hath stripped me of my glory.
And taken the crown from my head.
10 He hath broken me down on every side,
and I am gone; And my hope hath he plucked up like a tree.
11 He hath also kindled his wrath against me,
And he counteth me unto him as one of his adversaries.
12 His troops come on together,
And cast up their way against me,
And encamp round about my tent.
COMMENT 19:512
Job. 19:5Job chides his friends for assuming an air of superiority. If taken as a rhetorical question, the answer is clearly positive. The verb translated magnify has a negative sense here as in Psa. 35:26; Psa. 38:16. The last line contains a verb used in Job. 16:21 and here means plead my disgrace against me. His humiliation is taken as proof of the accuracy of their charge.
Job. 19:6This verse is proof that Job. 19:4 does not contain a confession of guilt. Bildad has asserted that the godless man is caught in his own net in Job. 18:8. The word for net is a different one from any employed by Bildad. Here the image is one of a hunters large net into which animals are driven.
Job. 19:7Jobs friends have built their arguments on the doctrines of divine justice from the assumption that he is conscious of his own innocence. The verse begins with emphatic appeal to injusticeHab. 1:2 and Jer. 20:8. The same verb cry aloud appears in Job. 24:12; Job. 19:12; Job. 30:28; Job. 35:9; Job. 36:13. Yet, his pitiful cries for help go unheard. God remains silent.
Job. 19:8Job has been hemmed in; restrictions surround himLam. 3:7; Hos. 2:6; Job. 3:23; Job. 13:27; Job. 14:5. In Job. 1:10 Satan had asserted that God had placed protective barriers around Job. Perhaps darkness should be amended to thorn hedge.[205]
[205] A. Guillaume, Promise and Fulfillment, ed. by F. F. Bruce, 1963, pp. 106ff.
Job. 19:9The crown of glory (kabodLXX doxa)[206] is a metaphor for esteem. Jobs crown of righteousness has been removed from himPsa. 8:5. Shame as a garment is an image used in Job. 8:22. Honor is a garment to be worn by the godly, or removed fromstripped offthe unrighteousJob. 29:14; Isa. 61:3. Job was once a prosperous man who enjoyed an honorable reputation; now he has nothing.
[206] Kittel and von Rad, Doxa, TWNT, Vol. II, 232255.
Job. 19:10The metaphors are rich and varied. In this verse God has pulled Job down as one wrecks a building. The second metaphor is that of a tree uprootedPsa. 52:5. The common verbhalakmeaning walk used metaphorically as a way of life, i.e., life style, here appears as an image of death, death as a way of existence.
Job. 19:11The metaphor now shifts to warfare. God will not cease His aggression against Job. God is pictured as a leader directing one attack after another on JobJob. 10:17; Job. 16:12 ff. The Hebrew text has the plural, his adversaries, but here it is God and probably should be in the singular, his adversary.
Job. 19:12The military metaphor is extended. Here the troops are raising a siege ramp. But there is a strong conflict between the image of the siege ramp and a tent. One does not need to besiege a tent with an attack force. Perhaps this tension suggests the inequity of it all.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
5. And plead Then prove. If ye will look down upon me in pride, it is incumbent upon you by good arguments to prove against me shamelessness of deed or of life. Reproach, in the original, is the sense of shame which sin brings in its train. The Hebrew has no stronger word for shame than . Some make this verse a question.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 19:5 If indeed ye will magnify [yourselves] against me, and plead against me my reproach:
Ver. 5. If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me ] Or, Will you indeed magnify yourselves against me? sc. because of mine error, as Job 19:4 , which yet ye have not convinced me of? Will ye insult me, therefore, and throw dirt upon me? Of Bonassus, a certain beast as big as an ox, Aristotle reporteth, that having horns bending inward and unfit for fight, after that he is wounded by the hunters, he fleeth for his life, and often letteth fly his dung for four yards or more, upon the dogs or men that pursue him, to their great annoyance (Hist Animal., lib. ix. cap. 4, 5). In like sort deal many disputers of this world; when they cannot make good their matter by strength of argument, they cast upon their adversaries the dung of calumnies, so seeking to magnify themselves against him, and pleading against him his reproach.
And plead against me my reproach
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
magnify: Psa 35:26, Psa 38:16, Psa 41:11, Psa 55:12, Mic 7:8, Zep 2:10, Zec 12:7
plead: 1Sa 1:6, Neh 1:3, Isa 4:1, Luk 1:25, Luk 13:2-4, Joh 9:2, Joh 9:34
Reciprocal: Job 13:19 – that will plead