Job 10:7

Thou knowest that I am not wicked; and there is none that can deliver out of thine hand.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(7) That I am not wicked.—The meaning is rather, that I shall not be found guilty. It is not like the appeal of Peter (John 21:17). See the language borrowed by the Psalmist (Psalm 119:73).

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

10:1-7 Job, being weary of his life, resolves to complain, but he will not charge God with unrighteousness. Here is a prayer that he might be delivered from the sting of his afflictions, which is sin. When God afflicts us, he contends with us; when he contends with us, there is always a reason; and it is desirable to know the reason, that we may repent of and forsake the sin for which God has a controversy with us. But when, like Job, we speak in the bitterness of our souls, we increase guilt and vexation. Let us harbour no hard thoughts of God; we shall hereafter see there was no cause for them. Job is sure that God does not discover things, nor judge of them, as men do; therefore he thinks it strange that God continues him under affliction, as if he must take time to inquire into his sin.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Thou knowest that I am not wicked - That is, that I am not a hypocrite, or an impenitent sinner. Job did not claim perfection (see the note at Job 9:20), but he maintained through all this argument that he was not a wicked man, in the sense in which his friends regarded him as such, and for the truth of this he could boldly appeal to God. The margin is, "It is upon thy knowledge." This is a literal translation of the Hebrew, but the sense is well expressed in the text. The meaning of the verse is, "Why dost thou thus afflict me, when thou knowest that I am not wicked? Why am I treated as if I were the worst of men? Why is occasion thus furnished for my friends to construct an argument as if I were a man of singular depravity?"

There is none that can deliver out of thine hand - I have no power to release myself. Job felt hat God had almighty power; and he seems to have felt that his sufferings were rather the simple exertion of power, than the exercise of justice. It was this that laid the foundation for his complaint.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

7. "Although Thou (the Omniscient) knowest," &c. (connected with Job 10:6), "Thou searchest after my sin."

and … that none that can deliver out of thine hand—Therefore Thou hast no need to deal with me with the rapid violence which man would use (see Job 10:6).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

I am not wicked, i.e. a hypocrite, or an ungodly man, as my friends account me; and therefore deal not with me as such.

There is none that can deliver out of thine hand: the sense is, either,

1. Thou dost not need to keep me fast in thy prison, lest I should make an escape, or any should rescue me out of thy hands, which none can do; therefore take off thy hand from me. Or,

2. If thou dost not help and deliver me, none else can do it; therefore do not thou fail me; which, considering God’s merciful nature, is a good argument. If any man oppress another, he may have relief from thee, who art higher than his oppressor, Ecclesiastes 5:8; but thou art the supreme and uncontrollable Ruler of the world, and therefore thou must needs do right, Genesis 18:25; and therefore do not thou oppress me. See Poole "Job 10:3". above, Job 10:4.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Thou knowest that I am not wicked,.... Or "in", or "upon thy knowledge (a) it is that I am not wicked"; it is a thing well known, quite clear, and manifest, without making such a search and inquiry: not that he thought himself without sin, and could appeal to the omniscience of God for the truth of that; for he had confessed before that he was a sinner, and wicked, as to his nature and birth, and the many infirmities of life; see Job 7:20; but that he was not that wicked person, and an hypocrite, as his friends took him to be, and as might be concluded from the sore afflictions that were upon him; he did not live in sin, nor indulge himself in a vicious course of life; sin had not the dominion over him, and he had not secretly cherished any reigning iniquity, and lived in the commission of it: and for the truth of this he could appeal to the searcher of hearts; and yet he so closely pursued, and so strictly examined him, as if he suspected he was thus guilty:

and there is none that can deliver out of thine hand; that is, out of his afflicting hand, until he please to release him from it himself; for this is not to be understood of deliverance from the avenging hand of justice, from hell and wrath, and everlasting destruction; for there is one that can and does deliver his people from sin and Satan; from the world, the law, its curses and condemnation, and from wrath to come; and from the hands of justice, having made full satisfaction to it: but what Job observes that God knew was, that neither he himself, nor any angel, nor man, nor any creature, could take him out of his hand in which be was; and therefore suggests, not only that his condition was extremely bad, distressed, and miserable, but that there was no necessity for God to he so quick upon him, and so strict in his inquiry into him; nor of enclosing him about on all hands with afflictions, since, there was no danger of his escaping from him, or of others assisting him in and facilitating such an attempt: and this he full well knew; for so the words are connection with the preceding: "and thou knowest that there is none", &c. (b), as well as with what follows, as some think.

(a) "in notitia tua est", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Beza; so Michaelis. (b) So Bolducius, Drusius, Schmidt, Michaelis, and Bar Tzemach.

Geneva Study Bible

Thou knowest that I am not {i} wicked; and there is none that can deliver out of thine hand.

(i) By affliction you keep me as in a prison, and restrain me from doing evil, neither can any set me free.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

7. thou knowest] Rather, though thou knowest. All these suppositions are vain; for as to the first (Job 10:4), God knew that Job was guiltless, and as to the other, none could rescue from His hand. The suppositions are but a subtle mode of appealing from God to God Himself, from God’s dealing in providence to God’s inner heart and being.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 7. - Thou knowest that I am not wicked; rather, although thou knowest (see the Revised Version). Conscious of his own integrity and faithfulness, Job feels that God too must know them; wherefore it seems to him all the harder that he should be made to suffer as if he were a "chief sinner." And there is none that can deliver out of thine hand.

"'Tis excellent to have a giant's strength;
But tyrannous to use it like a giant." Job's last ground of appeal is, that he is wholly at God s mercy, can look for no other deliverer, no other support or stay. Will not God, then, have pity, and "spare him a little, that he may recover his strength before he goes hence, and is no more seen "? (see Psalm 39:15; and comp. below, ver. 20). Job 10:7

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

3 Doth it please Thee when Thou oppressest,

That Thou rejectest the work of Thy hands,

While Thou shinest upon the counsel of the wicked?

4 Hast Thou eyes of flesh,

Or seest Thou as a mortal seeth?

5 Are Thy days as the days of a mortal,

Or Thy years as man's days,

6 That Thou seekest after my iniquity,

And searchest after my sin?

7 Although Thou knowest that I am not a wicked man,

And there is none that can deliver out of Thy hand.

There are three questions by which Job seeks to exhaust every possible way of accounting for his sufferings as coming from God. These attempts at explanation, however, are at once destroyed, because they proceed upon conceptions which are unworthy of God, and opposed to His nature. Firstly, Whether it gives Him pleasure (טּוב, agreeable, as Job 13:9) when He oppresses, when He despises, i.e., keeps down forcibly or casts from Him as hateful (מאס, as Psalm 89:39; Isaiah 54:6) the work of His hand; while, on the contrary, He permits light to shine from above upon the design of the wicked, i.e., favours it? Man is called the יגיע of the divine hands, as though he were elaborated by them, because at his origin (Genesis 2:7), the continuation of which is the development in the womb (Psalm 139:15), he came into existence in a remarkable manner by the directly personal, careful, and, so to speak, skilful working of God. That it is the morally innocent which is here described, may be seen not only from the contrast (Job 10:3), but also from the fact that he only can be spoken of as oppressed and rejected. Moreover, "the work of Thy hands" involves a negative reply to the question. Such an unloving mood of self-satisfaction is contrary to the bounty and beneficence of that love to which man owes his existence. Secondly, Whether God has eyes of flesh, i.e., of sense, which regard only the outward appearance, without an insight into the inner nature, or whether He sees as mortals see, i.e., judges, κατὰ τῆν σάρκα (John 8:15)? Mercier correctly: num ex facie judicas, ut affectibus ducaris more hominum. This question also supplies its own negative; it is based upon the thought that God lookest on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). Thirdly, Whether His life is like to the brevity of man's life, so that He is not able to wait until a man's sin manifests itself, but must institute such a painful course of investigation with him, in order to extort from him as quickly as possible a confession of it? Suffering appears here to be a means of inquisition, which is followed by the final judgment when the guilt is proved. What is added in Job 10:7 puts this supposition aside also as inconceivable. Such a mode of proceeding may be conceived of in a mortal ruler, who, on account of his short-sightedness, seeks to bring about by severe measures that which was at first only conjecture, and who, from the apprehension that he may not witness that vengeance in which he delights, hastens forward the criminal process as much as possible, in order that his victim may not escape him. God, however, to whom belongs absolute knowledge and absolute power, would act thus, although, etc. על, although, notwithstanding (proceeding from the signification, besides, insuper), as Job 17:16 (Isaiah 53:9), Job 34:6. God knows even from the first that he (Job) will not appear as a guilty person (רשׁע, as in Job 9:29); and however that may be, He is at all events sure of him, for nothing escapes the hand of God.

That operation of the divine love which is first echoed in "the labour of Thy hands," is taken up in the following strophe, and, as Job contemplates it, his present lot seems to him quite incomprehensible.