Job 16:14

He breaketh me with breach upon breach, he runneth upon me like a giant.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

16:6-16 Here is a doleful representation of Job's grievances. What reason we have to bless God, that we are not making such complaints! Even good men, when in great troubles, have much ado not to entertain hard thoughts of God. Eliphaz had represented Job as unhumbled under his affliction: No, says Job, I know better things; the dust is now the fittest place for me. In this he reminds us of Christ, who was a man of sorrows, and pronounced those blessed that mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

He breaketh me - He crushes me.

With breach upon breach - He renews and repeats the attack, and thus completely overwhelms me. One blow follows another in such quick succession, that he does not give me time to recover.

He runneth upon me like a giant - With great and irresistible force - as some strong and mighty warrior whom his adversary cannot resist. The Hebrew is גבור gı̂bbôr - "a mighty one." Septuagint, "The mighty - δυνάμενοι dunamenoi - run upon me." Vulgate, "gigas" - a giant.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

14. The image is from storming a fortress by making breaches in the walls (2Ki 14:13).

a giant—a mighty warrior.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

My calamities have no interruption, but one immediately succeeds another, as it did Job 1.

Like a giant, who falls upon his enemy with all his might, that he may overthrow and kill him.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

He breaketh me with breach upon breach,.... Upon his substance, his family, and the health of his body, which came thick and fast, one after another; referring to the report of those things brought by one messenger upon the back of another, see Ezekiel 7:26;

he runneth upon me like a giant; with great fury and fierceness, with great strength and courage, with great speed and swiftness, causing great terror and distress; he not being able to resist him, any more than a dwarf a giant, and no more, nor so much, a match for him; see Isaiah 42:13.

Geneva Study Bible

He breaketh me with breach upon breach, he runneth upon me like a giant.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

14. Another figure, that of an edifice or fort overthrown by repeated breaches, and stormed by warriors. Giant is a mighty man, or warrior, Isaiah 42:13.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 14. - He breaketh me with breach upon breach. As an enemy, when he besieges a town, crushes its resistance by means of "breach upon breach." so is Job crushed by one attack after another. He runneth upon me like a giant; i.e. with overwhelming force - a force that is quite irresistible. Job 16:14

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

12 I was at ease, but He hath broken me in pieces;

And He hath taken me by the neck and shaken me to pieces,

And set me up for a mark for himself.

13 His arrows whistled about me;

He pierced my reins without sparing;

He poured out my gall upon the ground.

14 He brake through me breach upon breach,

He ran upon me like a mighty warrior.

He was prosperous and contented, when all at once God began to be enraged against him; the intensive form פּרפּר (Arab. farfara) signifies to break up entirely, crush, crumble in pieces (Hithpo. to become fragile, Isaiah 24:19); the corresponding intensive form פּצפּץ (from פּצץ, Arab. fḍḍ, cogn. נפץ), to beat in pieces (Polel of a hammer, Jeremiah 23:29), to dash to pieces: taking him by the neck, God raised him on high in order to dash him to the ground with all His might. מטּרה (from נטר, τηρεῖν, like σκοπός from σκέπτισθαι) is the target, as in the similar passage, Lamentations 3:12, distinct from מפגּע, Job 7:20, object of attack and point of attack: God has set me up for a target for himself, in order as it were to try what He and His arrows can do. Accordingly רבּיו (from רבב equals רבה, רמה, jacere) signifies not: His archers (although this figure would be admissible after Job 10:17; Job 19:12, and the form after the analogy of רב, רע, etc., is naturally taken as a substantival adj.), but, especially since God appears directly as the actor: His arrows ( equals הצּיו, Job 6:4), from רב, formed after the analogy of בּז, מס, etc., according to which it is translated by lxx, Targ., Jer., while most of the Jewish expositors, referring to Jeremiah 50:29 (where we need not, with Bttch., point רבים, and here רביו), interpret by מורי החצים. On all sides, whichever way he might turn himself, the arrows of God flew about him, mercilessly piercing his reins, so that his gall-bladder became empty (comp. Lamentations 2:11, and vid., Psychol. S. 268). It is difficult to conceive what is here said;

(Note: The emptying of the gall takes place if the gall-bladder or any of its ducts are torn; but how the gall itself (without assuming some morbid condition) can flow outwardly, even with a severe wound, is a difficult question, with which only those who have no appreciation of the standpoint of imagery and poetry will distress themselves. [On the "spilling of the gall" or "bursting of the gall-bladder" among the Arabs, as the working of violent and painful emotions, vid., Zeitschr. der deutschen morgenlnd. Gesellsch. Bd. xvi. S. 586, Z. 16ff. - Fl.])

it is, moreover, not meant to be understood strictly according to the sense: the divine arrows, which are only an image for divinely decreed sufferings, pressed into his inward parts, and wounded the noblest organs of his nature. In Job 16:14 follows another figure. He was as a wall which was again and again broken through by the missiles or battering-rams of God, and against which He ran after the manner of besiegers when storming. פּרץ is the proper word for such breaches and holes in a wall generally; here it is connected as obj. with its own verb, according to Ges. 138, rem. 1. The second פרץ (פּרץ with Kametz) has Ssade minusculum, for some reason unknown to us.

The next strophe says what change took place in his own conduct in consequence of this incomprehensible wrathful disposition of God which had vented itself on him.