Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 7:21
And why dost thou not pardon my transgression, and take away mine iniquity? for now shall I sleep in the dust; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I [shall] not [be].
21. seek me in the morning ] Rather, seek me, simply, or, seek me earnestly; the addition “in the morning” (just as “betimes,” ch. Job 8:5) rests upon a mistaken etymology. Job concludes his speech by a pathetic reference to what must be the speedy issue of God’s stringent watching of him: he will lie down in the dust and even should God enquire for him it will be too late.
There is something very open and engaging in the character of Job as it appears in this speech. He confesses the impatience that Eliphaz found fault with, though he excuses it by the incalculable weight of his affliction (ch. Job 6:2). He admits that his words have been wild, though he thinks this was but natural when a creature found himself in conflict with God (ch. Job 6:4). He even suggests to his friends the worth at which to estimate his language when he says that the words of one that is desperate go into the wind (ch. Job 6:26). And he goes so far as to speak of himself as losing hold of the fear of the Almighty under the trial of his calamities (ch. Job 6:14). There is something simple too and childlike in his defence of his cry of despair by the example of the lower creatures, which also express their pain or want by cries of distress (ch. Job 6:5).
In keeping with this openness in regard to himself is his impatience and resentment of the covert insinuations of his friends through their first spokesman. He demands that they should shew him what they are hinting at by the pictures they are drawing and the blind parables they are narrating at him (ch. Job 6:24); he himself will look them in the face and affirm his innocence (ch. Job 6:28). And even the one bitter sentence which he utters against their hard-heartedness (ch. Job 6:27) is quite in harmony with the honest directness of the rest of his words.
The state of Job’s mind in ch. 7, when he turns away from his friends and casts his eye over the life of man as a whole, is more difficult to estimate. It appears to him that God has made man’s condition upon the earth full of painfulness and bounded within iron limits. The world wears many aspects according to the eye that beholds it. It was natural for one in Job’s condition to view it on its dark side. His view, however, has deeper grounds than mere subjective feeling. The view which Eliphaz presented of a scheme of universal goodness linking all events into a unity and making good the end even of ill may be the view which we ultimately rest in. Yet we believe in such a scheme rather than observe it. And the reasons of our belief, though various, are instinctive and ideal oftener than inductive. There are moments when another view forces itself upon the mind. And Scripture has here given this experience a place in its picture of man’s life. It may be said that Job spoke under a mistake. Men so often make mistakes even in the highest things. It may also be said that enough was revealed to Job to correct his false impressions. But men so often are either unable or unwilling to receive that which is revealed.
There is this difference between us and Job: where we can say “the world,” he was obliged to say “God.” In this chapter he regards God almost exclusively on the physical side of His Being. He speaks out of the agony of suffering and from the abjectness of his own whole condition, and contrasts these with the natural Greatness of the Being who has plunged him into them. It is the physical claim of sentient life, which he urges, not to be tortured on any grounds whatsoever they be. In this mortal agony of the creature, and in view of the Greatness of God, moral considerations are almost mocked at, and sin is sneered out of reckoning as an irrelevancy.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
And why dost thou not pardon my transgression? – Admitting that I have sinned Job 7:20, yet why dost thou not forgive me? I shall soon pass away from the land of the living. I may be sought but I shall not be found. No one would be injured by my being pardoned – since I am so short-lived, and so unimportant in the scale of being. No one can be benefited by pursuing a creature of a day, such as I am, with punishment. Such seems to be the meaning of this verse. It is the language of complaint, and is couched in language filled with irreverence. Still it is language such as awakened and convicted sinners often use, and expresses the feelings which often pass through their hearts. They admit that they are sinners. They know that they must be pardoned or they cannot be saved. They are distressed at the remembrance of guilt, and under this state of mind, deeply convicted and distressed, they ask with a complaining spirit why God does not pardon them? Why does he allow them to remain in this state of agitation, suspense, and deep distress? Who could be injured by their being forgiven? Of what consequence to others can it be that they should not be forgiven? How can God be benefited by his not pardoning them? It may not be easy to answer these questions in a manner wholly satisfactory; but perhaps the following may be some of the reasons why Job had not the evidence of forgiveness which he now desired, and why the convicted sinner has not. The main reason is, that they are not in a state of mind to make it proper to forgive them.
(1) There is a feeling that they have a claim on God for pardon, or that it would be wrong for God not to pardon them. When people feel that they have a claim on God for pardon, they cannot be forgiven. The very notion of pardon implies that it must be when there is no claim existing or felt.
(2) There is no proper submission to God – to his views, his terms, his plan. In order that pardon may be extended to the guilty, there should be acquiescence in Gods own terms, and time, and mode. The sinner must resign himself into his hands, to be forgiven or not as he pleases – feeling that the whole question is lodged in his bosom, and that if he should not forgive, still it would be right, and his throne would be pure. In particular, under the Christian method of pardon, there must be entire acquiescence in the plan of salvation by the Lord Jesus Christ; a willingness to accept of forgiveness, not on the ground of personal claim, but on the ground of his merits; and it is because the convicted sinner is not willing to be pardoned in this way, that he remains unforgiven. There should be a feeling, also, that it would be right for God to pardon others, if he pleases, even though we are not saved; and it is often because the convicted sinner is not willing that that should be done, because he feels that it would be wrong in God to save others and not him, that he is not forgiven. The sinner is often suffered to remain in this state until he is brought to acquiesce in the right of a sovereign God to save whom he pleases.
(3) There is a complaining spirit – and that is a reason why the sinner is not forgiven. That was manifestly the case with Job; and when that exists, how can God forgive? How can a parent pardon an offending child, when he is constantly complaining of his injustice and of the severity of his government? This very spirit is a new offence, and a new reason why he should be punished. So the awakened sinner murmurs. He complains of the government of God as too severe; of his law, as too strict; of his dealings, as harsh and unkind. He complains of his sufferings, and thinks they are wholly beyond his deserts. He complains of the doctrines of the Bible as mysterious, incomprehensible, and unjust. In this state how can he be forgiven? God often suffers the awakened sinner, therefore, to remain under conviction for sin, until he is willing to acquiesce in all his claims, and to submit without a complaint; and then, and not until then, he extends forgiveness to the guilty and troubled spirit.
For now shall I sleep in the dust – On the word sleep, as applied to death, see the notes at Job 3:13. The meaning is, that he was soon to die. He urges the shortness of the time which remained to him as a reason why his afflictions should be lightened, and why he should be pardoned. If God had anything that he could do for him, it must be done soon. But only a brief period remained, and Job seems to be impatient lest the whole of his life should be gone, and he should sleep in the dust without evidence that his sins were pardoned. Olympiodorus, as quoted by Rosenmuller, expresses the sense in the following manner: If, therefore, I am so short-lived (or momentary, proskairos) and obnoxious to death, and must die after a short time, and shall no more arise, as if from sleep, why dost not thou suffer the little space of life to be free from punishment?
And thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be – That is, thou shalt seek to find me after I have slept in the dust, as if with the expectation that I should wake, but I shall not be found. My sleep will be perpetual, and I shall no more return to the land of the living. The idea seems to be, that if God were to show him any favor, it must be done soon. His death, which must happen soon, would put it out of the power even of God to show him mercy on earth, if he should relent and be inclined to favor him. He seems not to doubt that God would be disposed yet to show him favor; that he would be inclined to pardon him, and to relax the severity of his dealings with him, but he says that if it were done it must be done soon, and seems to apprehend that it would be delayed so long that it could not be done. The phrase in the morning here is used with reference to the sleep which he had just mentioned.
We sleep at night, and awake and arise in the morning. Job says it would not be so with him in the sleep of death. He would awake no more; he could no more be found. – In this chapter there is much language of bitter complaint, and much which we cannot justify. It should not be taken as a model for our language when we are afflicted, though Job may have only expressed what has passed through the heart of many an afflicted child of God. We should not judge him harshly. Let us ask ourselves how we would have done if we had been in similar circumstances. Let us remember that he had comparatively few of the promises which we have to comfort us, and few of the elevated views of truth as made known by revelation, which we have to uphold us in trial. Let us be thankful that when we suffer, promises and consolations meet us on every hand. The Bible is open before us – rich with truth, and bright with promise.
Let us remember that death is not as dark and dismal to us as it was to the pious in the time of the patriarchs – and that the grave is not now to us as dark and chilly, and gloomy, and comfortless an abode. To their view, the shadow of death cast a melancholy chillness over all the regions of the dead; to us the tomb is enlightened by Christian hope. The empire of Death has been invaded, and his power has been taken away. Light has been shed around the tomb, and the grave to us is the avenue to immortal life; the pathway on which the lamp of salvation shines, to eternal glory. Let us not complain, therefore, when we are afflicted, as if the blessing were long delayed, or as if it could not be conferred should we soon die. If withheld here, it will be imparted in a better world, and we should be willing to bear trials in this short life, with the sure promise that God will meet and bless us when we pass the confines of life, and enter the world of glory.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Job 7:21
And why dost Thou not pardon my transgression, and take away mine iniquity?
Why some sinners are not pardoned
No man should rest until he is sure that his sin is forgiven.
I. I shall first take our text as a question that may be asked, as in jobs case, by a true child of God. Why dost Thou not pardon my transgression, and take away mine iniquity? Sometimes this question is asked under a misapprehension. Job was a great sufferer; and although he knew that he was not as guilty as his troublesome friends tried to make out, yet he did fear that, possibly, his great afflictions were the results of some sin. If it be caused by sin, why dost Thou not first pardon the sin, and then remove its effects?
1. Now I take it that it would have been a misapprehension on Jobs part to suppose that his afflictions were the result of his sin. Mark you, we are, by nature, so full of sin that we may always believe that there is enough evil within us to cause us to suffer severe affliction if God dealt with us according to justice; but do recollect that, in Jobs case, the Lords object, in his afflictions and trials, was not to punish Job for his sin, but to display in the patriarch, to His own honour and glory, the wonders of His grace. It may happen to you that you think that your present affliction is the result of some sin in you, yet it may be nothing of the kind. It may be that the Lord loves you in a very special manner because you are a fruit-bearing branch, and He is pruning you that you may bring forth more fruit. There are certain kinds of affliction that come only upon the more eminent members of the family of God; and if you are one of those who are thus honoured, instead of saying to your Heavenly Father, When wilt Thou pardon my sin? you might more properly say, My Father, since Thou hast pardoned mine iniquity, and adopted me into Thy family, I cheerfully accept my portion of suffering, since in all this, Thou art not bringing to my mind the remembrance of any unforgiven sin, for I know that all my transgressions were numbered on the Scapegoats head of old.
2. Sometimes, also, a child of God uses this prayer under a very unusual sense of sin. You know that, in looking at a landscape, you may so fix your gaze upon some one object that you do not observe the rest of the landscape. If you fix your eye upon your own sinfulness, as you well may do, it may be that you will not quite forget the greatness of Almighty love, and the grandeur of the atoning sacrifice; but, yet, if you do not forget them, you do not think so much of them as you should, for you seem to make your own sin, in all its heinousness and aggravation, the central object of your consideration. There are certain times in which you cannot help doing this; they come upon me, so I can speak from my own experience.
3. There is another time when the believer may, perhaps, utter the question of our text; that is, whenever he gets into trouble with his God. I fear that some of you must have known at times what this experience means; for between you and your Heavenly Father–although you are safe enough, and He will never cast you away from Him–there is a cloud. You are not walking in the light, your heart is not right in the sight of God.
II. The question in our text may be asked by some who are not consciously Gods children. Why dost Thou not pardon my transgression, and take away mine iniquity?
1. And, first, I think that I hear somebody making this kind of inquiry, Why does not God pardon my sin, and have done with it? When I come to this place, I hear a great deal about atonement by blood, and reconciliation through the death of Christ; but why does not God just say to me, It is true that you have done wrong, but I forgive you, and there is an end of the matter? With the utmost reverence for the name and character of God, I must say that such a course of action is impossible. God is infinitely just and holy, He is the Judge of all the earth, and He must punish sin. God will not permit anarchy in order that He may indulge your whims, or vacate the throne of heaven that He may save you according to your fancy.
2. Perhaps somebody else says, Well, then, if that is Gods way of salvation, let us believe in Jesus Christ, and let us have pardon at once. But you talk about the need of a new birth, and about forsaking sin, and following after holiness, and you say that without holiness no man can see the Lord. Yes, I do say it, for Gods Word says it. The curse of sin is in the evil itself rather than in its punishment; and if it could become a happy thing for a man to be a sinner, then men would sin, and sin again, and sin yet more deeply; and this God will not have.
3. Well, says another friend, that is not my trouble. I am willing to be saved by the atonement of Christ, and I am perfectly willing to be made to cease from sin, and to receive from God a new heart and a right spirit; why, then, does He not pardon me, and blot out my transgressions? Well, it may be, first, because you have not confessed your wrong-doing. May it not be possible, also, you who cannot obtain pardon and peace, that you are still practising some known sin?
4. Well, say you, I do not know that this is my case at all, for I really do, from my heart, endeavour to give up all sin, and I am sincerely seeking peace with God. Well, perhaps you have not found it because you have not been thoroughly earnest in seeking it.
5. There is still one thing more that I will mention as a reason why some men do not find the Saviour, and get their sins forgiven; and that is, because they do not get off the wrong ground on to the right ground. If you are ever to be pardoned, it must be entirely by an act of Divine, unmerited favour. Now perhaps you are trying to do something to recommend yourself to God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
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Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 21. And why dost thou not pardon] These words are spoken after the manner of men. If thou have any design to save me, if I have sinned, why dost thou not pardon my transgression, as thou seest that I am a dying man; and to-morrow morning thou mayest seek me to do me good, but in all probability I shall then be no more, and all thy kind thoughts towards me shall be unavailing? If I have sinned, then why should not I have a part in that mercy that flows so freely to all mankind?
That Job does not criminate himself here, as our text intimates, is evident enough from his own repeated assertions of his innocence. And it is most certain that Bildad, who immediately answers, did not consider him as criminating but as justifying himself; and this is the very ground on which he takes up the subject. Were we to admit the contrary, we should find strange inconsistencies, if not contradictions, in Job’s speeches: on such a ground the controversy must have immediately terminated, as he would then have acknowledged that of which his friends accused him; and here the book of Job would have ended.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Seeing thou art so gracious to others, so ready to preserve and pardon them, why may not I hope for the same favour from thee? If thou dost not speedily help me, it will be too late, I shall be dead, and so uncapable of those blessings which thou usest to give to men in the land of the living. When thou shalt diligently seek for me, that thou mayst show favour to me, thou wilt find that I am dead and gone, and so wilt lose thy opportunity: help therefore speedily.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
21. for nowvery soon.
in the morningnot theresurrection; for then Job will be found. It is a figure, from oneseeking a sick man in the morning, and finding he has died in thenight. So Job implies that, if God does not help him at once, it willbe too late, for he will be gone. The reason why God does not give animmediate sense of pardon to awakened sinners is that they think theyhave a claim on God for it.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And why dost thou not pardon my transgression,…. Or “lift [it] up” d; every sin is a transgression of the law of God, and the guilt of it upon the conscience is a burden too heavy to bear, and the punishment of it is intolerable; pardon lifts up and takes away all manner of sin, and all that is in sin; it takes off the load of sin from the conscience, and eases it, and loosens from obligation to punishment for it, which comes to pass in this manner: Jehovah has taken lifted up sin from his people, and has put and laid it, or caused it to meet on his Son, by the imputation of it to him; and he has voluntarily taken it on himself, and has bore it, and has taken it away by his blood and sacrifice, which being applied to the conscience of a sinner, lifts it up and takes it from thence, and speaks peace and pardon to him; it wholly and entirely removes it from him, even as far as the east is from the west; and for such an application Job postulates with God, with whom there was forgiveness, and who had proclaimed himself a God pardoning iniquity, transgression, and sin; and which he does when he both removes the guilt of it from the conscience, and takes away all the effects of it, such as afflictions and the like; in which latter sense Job may well be understood, as agreeing with his case and circumstances:
and take away mine iniquity? or “cause it to pass away” e from him, by applying his pardoning grace and mercy to his conscience, and by removing his afflicting hand from him:
for now shall I sleep in the dust; having sin pardoned, and the hand of God removed; I shall depart out of the world in peace, lie down in the grave, and rest quietly till the resurrection; there being in the bed of dust no tossings to and fro as now, nor a being scared with dreams and terrified with night visions. Mr. Broughton renders it, “whereas I lie now in the dust”; as if it referred to his present case, sitting as a mourner in dust and ashes, and his flesh clothed with clods of dust; or, in a figurative sense, lying in the dust of self-abhorrence; but the former sense seems best:
and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I [shall] not [be]; meaning not in the morning of the resurrection, for then he will be found; but it is a figurative way of speaking, as Bar Tzemach observes, just as one goes to visit a sick man in a morning, and he finds him dead, and he is not any more in the land of the living: many interpreters understand this as Job’s sense, that he should quickly die; he could not be a long time in the circumstances he was; and therefore if the Lord had a mind to bestow any good thing on him in the present life, he must make haste to do it, since in a short time he should be gone, and then, if he sought for him, it would be too late, he should be no more; but the sense is this, that when he lay down in the dust, in the grave, he should be seen no more on earth by any man, nay, not by the eye of God himself, should the most early and the most diligent search be made for him. Mr. Broughton takes it to be a petition and request to die, rendering the words,
“why dost thou not quickly seek me out, that I should be no more?”
and to which others f agree.
d “tolles”, Montanus, Beza, Drusius, Mercerus, Michaelis. e “transire facies”, Pagninus, Montanus, Drusius. f So Junius & Tremellius.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(21) And why dost thou not pardon my transgression?In Jobs belief, sin was the origin of all disaster, and so he thinks that if he were but pardoned his sorrows would pass away. Our Lord has not discouraged the belief when He has taught us that His miracle of healing the paralytic was accompanied with the assurance of forgiveness (e.g., Mat. 9:2; Mar. 2:5; Luk. 5:20).
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
21. But I shall not be He fain conceives that God will relent from his apparent purpose of ill, and diligently seek him, in order to bestow favour upon him, but fears that it will be too late, as he will soon be asleep in the dust, (Psa 22:15, “dust of death,”) and no more be found among men.
EXCURSUS No. III.
SHEOL.
Sheol, , is the word employed in the Old Testament to represent the abode of the dead. This word occurs sixty-five times, and is rendered in the authorized version thirty-one times by grave, as many more by hell, and three times by pit; in the Septuagint sixty-one times by hades, twice by death, , while twice (Job 24:19, Eze 32:21) the Greek translators omit it altogether. The more ancient lexicographers derived the word from , to ask or crave; the more recent make the word cognate with , to make hollow, (Gesenius,) or go down deep, (Furst,) a meaning which radically belongs to the German holle, and the same word in our own language, hell, ( hollow;) Greek, , Latin, coelum. So that the etymological result is reached, that the hollow beneath corresponds to the concave above. The sense of insatiableness and inexorable demand, that some of the more recent Hebrew writers (Pro 27:20; Pro 30:15-16; Isa 5:14; Hab 2:5) attach to this word, tends to confirm the root idea to be that of “asking” or “seeking.” This craving they must have attributed to sheol objectively, as a place demanding to be filled, in keeping with the classical ideas, (“the rapacious Orcus” of Catullus, and “the robber,” , in Callimachus,) and not subjectively, as Dr. Tayler Lewis, following Horsley eloquently urges, to anxious inquirers into the mysteries of the unseen world.
1 . The grave was evidently associated with all their conceptions of the gathering place of their conscious dead; so that sheol may be regarded as an ideal enlargement of the sepulchre. The gloom of the grave so intermingled itself with the dim light of a primeval revelation as to darken and confuse their conceptions of the place, and condition of the dead. Thus the popular mind regarded sheol as the nether region of the universe, corresponding in depth to the height of the heavens, (Deu 32:22; Job 11:8; Psa 139:8; Eze 31:14; Amo 9:2,) having depths of various gradations, (Psa 86:13; Pro 9:18,) fastened with bars (Job 17:16) and gates, (Isa 38:10,) yet open and naked to God (Job 26:6). It also conceived sheol to be located somewhere within the bowels of the earth. Num 16:30; Num 16:33; 1Sa 28:13; Job 26:5; Job 38:16-17; Psa 63:9; Eze 26:20; Eze 32:18. With respect to a conception so foreign to our ordinary ideas, Ruloff profoundly suggests that the “kingdom of death cannot, as a region of immaterial and therefore of spiritual being, be subjected to the laws of locality of material beings in the degree in which the things of the visible world are so. There are spiritual localities of which we can have no idea, very probably extending themselves throughout the whole dimension of visibility and beyond it.” Such are some of the local features of this underworld of the dead. See page 166. On hades, and the New Testament idea of the under world, see notes on Eph 4:9-10.
2 . Notwithstanding, in the popular conception sheol was entirely distinct from the grave. The term sheol is used under circumstances where it is plain that the grave, in its ordinary meaning, cannot be intended. For instance, in Gen 37:35, where the word first appears, Jacob says he will go down to sheol, , unto his son, mourning. But in a preceding verse (the 33d) he had expressed his convictions that an evil beast had devoured him.
Lucifer, the Babylonian monarch, is, according to Isa 14:15, brought down to sheol, “to the sides of the pit;” while the 19th verse represents him as denied the honour of a grave, . In powerful figure sheol is moved from beneath to meet him at his coming, and to stir up the dead for him. Job 7:9.
The various etymological forms, in marked contradistinction to sheol, in which the older word ( ) for sepulchre appears, show that sheol, in its primary sense, did not mean the grave, but from the beginning was used in the more general and abstract meaning of abode or state of the dead. See Methodist Quar. Revelation, 1856, 7:281-287.
It is also to be remarked, that while , the grave, appears perhaps a hundred times in the Scriptures, it is never used in connexion with nephesh, soul, as is sheol. The reason is, that the Hebrews employed the one for the receptacle of the body, the other for that of the soul.
3 . Sheol was a state or place which the righteous expected to enter. Jacob, as we have seen, declared that he “will go down in mourning to sheol,” , toward sheol, or on the way to sheol, this being the terminus of his sad pilgrimage (also Job 42:38). Job felt that if he wait, it is for “sheol, his house,” Job 17:13; see also Job 14:13. David triumphantly predicts that he (or the Greater than he) “shall not be left to, or in, sheol,” , Psa 16:10, also Act 2:27, which St. Peter cites from the Septuagint, where it is rendered hades, whose meaning he could have hardly been ignorant of; (compare Psa 139:8😉 and Hezekiah assumes that had he died, sheol would have been his destination. Isa 38:17-18. See also Psa 30:3; Psa 49:15; Psa 86:13; Isa 38:10; Hos 13:14. The Hebrew mind, front the most ancient times, held fast the idea of a gathering place of the conscious dead, as is evinced in the oft-recurring expression “gathered to his people.” Gen 25:8; Gen 25:17; Gen 35:29; Gen 49:33; Num 20:24. Compare Job 7:28. That this cannot mean the burial together of their dead, may be shown not only from the burial of Aaron, but from the application of the same phrase to Moses, (Num 27:13,) whom God buried apart from all others. Even Warburton admits that “the phrase originally arose (whatever people first employed it) from the notion of some common receptacle of souls.” Divine Legation, vi, section iii, p. 4.
The righteous entered sheol with dread. It was an existence shrouded in mystery, one of indescribable darkness, (see note on Job 10:21-22,) “without any order;” the realm, not only for vague and flitting spirits, but for fears and dark forebodings. The very name its inhabitants bore, , rephaim, (“the weak,” “the powerless,” from rapha, to be weak, see note on Job 26:5, like Homer’s , the wearied, for the dead,) was in keeping with the popular idea that death, even for the good, meant loss, not to say descent in being: a descent from the knowledge, the religious privileges, the prerogatives of life. Psa 6:5; Psa 30:3; Psa 30:9; Isa 38:18. There were evidently fluctuations, both of faith and knowledge, as to the state of the dead, during the long centuries embraced by the patriarchal and Mosaical dispensations twilights not only of light but of darkness alternating periods of rational faith and doubt, if not despair. Such, Job embodied in himself. Yet it is plain under every dispensation that “the righteous had hope in his death.” He took with him into the darkness faith in his God, a child-like faith that the man of deliverance should come.
4 . Into a world bearing the same name (sheol) the wicked were cast for purposes of punishment at the close of life. “They went down alive into sheol.” Num 16:33. “Sheol violently takes those who have sinned.”
Job 24:19, (margin:) “The wicked shall be turned into sheol.” Psa 9:17: “Let them be silent,” or, “cut off,” (margin,) in or to sheol. Psa 31:17. See also Deu 32:22; Pro 5:5; Pro 9:18; Isa 57:9. Since the abodes of both good and bad were called sheol, we may be justified in inferring that the Hebrews believed themselves to enter, at death, either into one common receptacle, and to be separated from each other by laws of affiliation apparently implied in the frequent expression, “slept with his fathers;” or, as is more probable, into compartments or separate dwellings of the one great under world determined and fixed by God himself. See Peter’s Critical Diss. on Job, part iii, sec. 8. But the condition of the two vast classes was not at all similar. There were grades of punishment even in sheol. Moses spoke of a fire that burned unto the lowest sheol. Deu 32:22. Compare Job 31:12; Psa 86:13. Moreover, the ancient Scriptures gave indications of depths, or a world of retribution, that lay beneath or beyond sheol, to which they gave the name of abaddon. This was total perdition. Our translators have accordingly rendered it destruction. Job 26:6; Job 28:22; Job 31:12; Psa 88:11; Pro 15:11; Pro 27:20.
5 . There are intimations in the Scriptures that the Hebrews regarded sheol as a temporary abode for the righteous. We have seen how they shuddered to enter it, and yet we are told that they looked for “a better” (country), even “a heavenly,” and that they endured, “that they might obtain a better resurrection.” Heb 11:16; Heb 11:35. Faith plainly overleaped the dismal sojourn in sheol, and planted itself within the region of hope beyond. The later Hebrews descried a time when the dead should arise and sing. Isa 26:19. This was meridian light, preceded by a long-protracted dawn.
A dying Jacob strangely interrupts his predictions with the ejaculation, “I wait ( piel form) for thy salvation, O Jehovah!” Gen 49:18. Job compares his sojourn in sheol to the lot of a sentinel patiently waiting to be relieved, Job 14:14-15; see note. The psalmist declares God shall not leave his soul in, or to, sheol, Psa 16:10; but He shall ransom it from the hand, that is, the grasp, of sheol, Psa 49:15; (comp. Hos 13:14,) and that he himself shall awake in the likeness of God, Psa 17:15. God shall swallow up death forever, , exclaims Isaiah, (Isa 25:8, a passage which the apostle refers to the resurrection, 1Co 15:54,) and “the earth shall cast out the rephaim,” the dwellers in sheol. Isa 26:19.
With these views agrees the remarkable language of Josephus: “They [the Pharisees] also believe that souls have an immortal vigour in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and that the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again.” Antiquities, xviii, chap. Job 1:3. About four centuries previously Plato had spoken of “an ancient saying which we,” he says, “now call to mind, that souls departing hence exist there, [in hades,] and return hither again, and are produced from the dead.” Phaedo, sec.
40 . The ancient Egyptians, too, according to Plutarch, gave the name amenthes to “that subterraneous region whither they imagine the souls of those who die go to after their decease; a name,” he says, “which expressly signifies the receiver and GIVER.” De Iside, ch. 29.
The word shaal, the root of sheol, has among its significations, to demand or crave as A LOAN. 1Sa 1:28; 2Ki 6:5. See also Furst, s.v. Thus the very word itself, like amenthes, may imply that the prey of sheol is to be rendered back.
REFLECTIONS
LET me call upon my own heart, while I call upon the Reader’s also, to make the necessary improvements from what this chapter of Job’s sufferings affords, as it may suit our own circumstances and situations in life. No man hath any cause to wonder at afflictions. Our life, as Job saith, at the best is but wind. A life, therefore, so much like the vapour, must be marked with vanity. And if the LORD marks this life with trial, it is because some blessed end, some gracious design is to be the result of it. And if we could but see the kind and gracious hand of JESUS in all, what a blessing would be in it. Here lies all the difference between the sufferings of one man and another. All men, more or less, are born to trial. For he that follows the world, as well as he that follows JESUS, must take up a cross: but while the one hath that cross lightened by JESUS, the other finds his the heavier for want of JESUS. My Brother! are these lines under the eye of a troubled soul? Do you feel sorrow? Do you see the hand of JESUS in that trouble? Are you prayerful under it? Are you humbled with it? Is it sanctified? Doth it lead you to the LORD, and not from the LORD? Put these questions close: see to it that the answers are what they should be. And mark this down as a circumstance never to be questioned or disputed; the trouble that leads the heart to GOD, never did, nor ever will, do any harm. And, on the contrary, the affliction that doth not accomplish this end, never did, nor ever will, do any good, Precious JESUS! make all my trials to bring about this grand and important purpose. Choose thou for me, O my GOD; send what thou knowest to be most suited to thy glory, and my everlasting good. LORD! let not my way-ward fancy direct, but thy wisdom. Let the affliction be what thou seest proper. In what measure, to what extent, how long, and how lasting; sure I am, all will turn to my good, if JESUS be in it. Lead me, LORD, when my heart is at anytime overwhelmed, to the Rock that is higher than I; and then, though in the world I may and shall have tribulation, yet in thee I shall have peace.
Job 7:21 And why dost thou not pardon my transgression, and take away mine iniquity? for now shall I sleep in the dust; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I [shall] not [be].
Ver. 21. And why dost thou not pardon my transgression? ] Heb. Lift up, or take away; for sin was Job’s greatest burden, which therefore he prayed to God to pardon; and that not in heaven only, but in his own conscience; and then no darkness can be so desolate, no cross so cutting, no burden so importable, but he shall, by God’s grace, be able to deal with it. Hence this vehement expostulation of his for remission and removal of sin first, and then of its evil consequents; for pardon of sin is a voluminous mercy; and being justified by faith, we can glory in tribulation, Rom 5:1 ; Rom 5:3 .
For now shall I sleep in the dust transgression. Hebrew pasha’.
iniquity. Hebrew. ‘avah.
why dost: Job 10:14, Job 13:23, Job 13:24, Isa 64:9, Lam 3:42-44, Lam 5:20-22
take away: 2Sa 24:10, Mic 7:18, Mic 7:19, Hos 14:2, Joh 1:29, Tit 2:14, 1Jo 1:9, 1Jo 3:5
sleep: Job 3:13, Job 17:14, Job 21:32, Job 21:33, Ecc 12:7, Isa 26:19, Dan 12:2
in the morning: Job 7:18
but I shall not be: Psa 37:36, Psa 103:15
Reciprocal: 2Sa 12:13 – The Lord Job 7:8 – I am not Job 8:22 – come to nought Job 9:21 – I would Job 14:12 – awake Job 14:15 – thou wilt have Job 30:21 – become cruel Psa 22:15 – into the Psa 31:2 – deliver Psa 37:10 – wicked Psa 69:17 – hear me speedily Psa 102:2 – in the day Psa 103:14 – we are dust Psa 141:1 – make haste Jer 31:15 – because Lam 5:7 – and are Heb 9:26 – he appeared
Job 7:21. Why dost thou not pardon, &c. Seeing thou art so gracious to others, so ready to preserve and forgive them; why may not I hope for the same favour from thee? For now shall I sleep in the dust If thou dost not speedily help me it will be too late, I shall be dead, and so incapable of receiving those blessings which thou art wont to give to men in the land of the living; and thou shalt seek me, &c., but I shall not be When thou shalt diligently seek for me that thou mayest show favour to me, thou wilt find that I am dead and gone, and so wilt lose the opportunity of doing it; help, therefore, speedily. The consideration of this, that we must shortly die, and perhaps may die suddenly, should make us all very solicitous to get our sins pardoned, and our iniquities taken away.
7:21 And why dost thou not pardon my transgression, and take away mine iniquity? for now shall I sleep in the dust; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I [shall] {o} not [be].
(o) That is, I will be dead.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes