Job 19:2

How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words?

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

XIX.

(2) How long?—Job begins as Bildad himself had begun in both cases. His last speech had been so offensive and unfeeling that Job may well ask “How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words?” Moreover, Bildad had infused a kind of personal malice into his charges, which Job felt most keenly, so that he is constrained to ask, “If indeed I have erred, doth not my error remain with myself? I alone suffer for it, and ye do not even sympathise or suffer with me.”

Benson Commentary

Job 19:2-3. And break me in pieces with words — With mere empty words, void of sense or argument; with your impertinent and unedifying discourses and bitter reproaches. These ten times have ye reproached me — That is, many times, a certain number being put for an uncertain. Ye make yourselves strange — You carry yourselves like strangers to me, are not affected with my calamities, and condemn me as if you had never known my integrity and piety.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

19:1-7 Job's friends blamed him as a wicked man, because he was so afflicted; here he describes their unkindness, showing that what they condemned was capable of excuse. Harsh language from friends, greatly adds to the weight of afflictions: yet it is best not to lay it to heart, lest we harbour resentment. Rather let us look to Him who endured the contradiction of sinners against himself, and was treated with far more cruelty than Job was, or we can be.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

How long will ye vex my soul? - Perhaps designing to reply to the taunting speech of Bildad; Job 18:2. "He" had asked "how long it would be ere Job would make an end of empty talk?" "Job" asks, in reply, "how long" they would torture and afflict his soul? Or whether there was on hope that this would ever come to an end!

And break me in pieces - Crush me, or bruise me - like breaking any thing in a mortar, or breaking rocks by repeated blows of the hammer. "Noyes." He says they had crushed him, as if by repeated blows.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

2. How long, &c.—retorting Bildad's words (Job 18:2). Admitting the punishment to be deserved, is it kind thus ever to be harping on this to the sufferer? And yet even this they have not yet proved.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

With mere empty words, void of sense or argument; with your impertinent and unedifying discourses, and bitter reproaches, as it followeth.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

How long will ye vex my soul,.... Which of all vexation is the worst; not only his bones were vexed, but his soul also, as David's was, Psalm 6:2. His body was vexed with boils from head to feet; but now his soul was vexed by his friends, and which denotes extreme vexation, a man's being vexed to his very heart: there are many things vexations to men, especially to good men; they are not only vexed with pains of the body, as others, and with loss of worldly substance; but even all things here below, and the highest enjoyment of them, as wealth, wisdom, honours, and pleasures, are all vanity and vexation of spirit, as they were to Solomon; but more especially truly good men are vexed with the corruptions of their hearts, which are as pricks in their eyes and thorns in their sides, and with the temptations of Satan, which are also thorns in the flesh and fiery darts, and with the conversation of wicked men, as was the soul of righteous Lot, and with the bad principles and practices of professors of religion; and sometimes, as Job was, they are vexed by their own friends, who should be their comforters, but prove miserable ones, as his did, and even vexations, and continued so to the wearing him out almost; and so some render the words, "how long will ye weary my soul" (c)? with repeating their insinuations that he was a wicked and hypocritical man, and therefore was afflicted of God in the manner he was; and which, knowing his own innocency, extremely vexed him:

and break me in pieces with words? not his body, but his spirit; which was broken, not by the word of God, which is like an hammer that breaks the rocky heart in pieces; for such a breaking is in mercy, and not an affliction to be complained of; and such as are thus broken are healed again, and bound up by the same hand that breaks; who has great, regard to broken spirits and contrite hearts; looks to them, and dwells with them, in order to revive and comfort them: but by the words of men; Job was smitten with the tongues of men; as Jeremiah was, and was beaten and bruised by them, as anything is beaten and bruised by a pestle in a mortar, as the word (d) signifies, and is sometimes rendered, Isaiah 53:5; these must be not soft but hard words, not gentle reproofs, which being given and taken in love, will not break the head, but calumnies and reproaches falsely cast, and with great severity, and frequently, which break the heart. See Psalm 69:20.

(c) "defatigabitis", Schmidt, Michaelis. (d) "obtundetis", Vatablus, Piscator, Schmidt; so Michaelis, Schultens.

Geneva Study Bible

How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words?

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

2. Job 19:13-22. Then even a more touching complaint of the alienation of men from him—which God has caused.

2. There is more than impatience expressed in the words vex (afflict) and “break in pieces”; the words suggest the crushing effect which the friends’ insinuations of wickedness had on Job’s spirit.

Job, forsaken of God and men, and without hope in this life, rises to the assurance that God will yet appear to vindicate him, and that his eyes shall see him on his side in joy

2–5. Job expresses his impatience of his friends’ words; and repudiates the inferences of his guilt which they draw from his calamities, declaring that his calamities are due to the unjust dealing of God.

Job 19:2

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

1 Then began Job, and said:

2 How long will ye vex my soul,

And crush me with your words?

3 These ten times have ye reproached me;

Without being ashamed ye astound me.

4 And if I have really erred,

My error rests with myself.

5 If ye will really magnify yourselves against me,

And prove my reproach to me:

6 Know then that Eloah hath wronged me,

And hath compassed me with His net.

This controversy is torture to Job's spirit; enduring in himself unutterable agony, both bodily and spiritually, and in addition stretched upon the rack by the three friends with their united strength, he begins his answer with a well-justified quousque tandem. תּגיוּן (Norzi: תּוגיוּן) is fut. energicum from הוּגה (יגה), with the retention of the third radical., Ges. 75, rem. 16. And in וּתדכּאוּנני (Norzi: וּתדכּוּנני with quiescent Aleph) the suff. is attached to the n of the fut. energicum, Ges. 60, rem. 3; the connecting vowel is a, and the suff. is ani, without epenthesis, not anni or aneni, Ges. 58, 5. In Job 19:3 Job establishes his How long? Ten times is not to be taken strictly (Saad.), but it is a round number; ten, from being the number of the fingers on the human hand, is the number of human possibility, and from its position at the end of the row of numbers (in the decimal system) is the number of that which is perfected (vid., Genesis, S. 640f.); as not only the Sanskrit daan is traceable to the radical notion "to seize, embrace," but also the Semitic עשר is traceable to the radical notion "to bind, gather together" (cogn. קשׁר). They have already exhausted what is possible in reproaches, they have done their utmost. Renan, in accordance with the Hebr. expression, transl.: Voil (זה, as e.g., Genesis 27:36) la dixime fois que vous m'insultez. The ἅπ. γεγρ. תּהכּרוּ is connected by the Targ. with הכּיר (of respect of persons equals partiality), by the Syr. with כּרא (to pain, of crvecoeur), by Raschi and Parchon with נכּר (to mistake) or התנכּר (to alienate one's self), by Saadia (vid., Ewald's Beitr. S. 99) with עכר (to dim, grieve);

(Note: Reiske interprets according to the Arabic ‛kr, denso et turbido agmine cum impetu ruitis in me.)

he, however, compares the Arab. hkr, stupere (which he erroneously regards as differing only in sound from Arab. qhr, to overpower, oppress); and Abulwalid (vid., Rdiger in Thes. p. 84 suppl.) explains Arab. thkrûn mn-nı̂, ye gaze at me, since at the same time he mentions as possible that הכר may be equals Arab. khr, to treat indignantly, insultingly (which is only a different shade in sound of Arab. hkr,

continued...