Job 17:4

For thou hast hid their heart from understanding: therefore shalt thou not exalt them.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(4) Their heart.—i.e., the heart of his friends.

Benson Commentary

Job 17:4. Thou hast hid their heart from understanding — Rather, thou hast hid understanding from their heart. The minds of my friends are so blinded, that they cannot see those truths which are most plain and evident to all men of sense and experience. Hence, I desire a more wise and able judge. Therefore shalt thou not exalt them — Thou wilt not give them the victory over me in this contest, but wilt give sentence for me, and make them ashamed of their confidence in affirming falsehoods of thee, and wilt punish them severely for their misconduct.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

17:1-9 Job reflects upon the harsh censures his friends had passed upon him, and, looking on himself as a dying man, he appeals to God. Our time is ending. It concerns us carefully to redeem the days of time, and to spend them in getting ready for eternity. We see the good use the righteous should make of Job's afflictions from God, from enemies, and from friends. Instead of being discouraged in the service of God, by the hard usage this faithful servant of God met with, they should be made bold to proceed and persevere therein. Those who keep their eye upon heaven as their end, will keep their feet in the paths of religion as their way, whatever difficulties and discouragements they may meet with.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

For thou hast hid their heart from understanding - That is, the heart of his professed friends. Job says that they were blind and perverse, and indisposed to render him justice; and he therefore pleads that he may carry his cause directly before God. He attributes their want of understanding to the agency of God in accordance with the doctrine which prevailed in early times, and which is so often expressed in the Scriptures, that God is the source of light and truth, and that when people are blinded it is in accordance with his wise purposes; see Isaiah 6:9-10. It is "because" they were thus blind and perverse, that he asks the privilege of carrying the cause at once up to God - and who could blame him for such a desire?

Therefore thou shalt not exalt them - By the honor of deciding a case like this, or by the reputation of wisdom. The name of sage or "wise" man was among the most valued in those times; but Job says that that would not be awarded to his friends. God would not exalt or honor people thus devoid of wisdom.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

4. their heart—The intellect of his friends.

shalt … exalt—Rather imperative, "exalt them not"; allow them not to conquer [Umbreit], (Isa 6:9, 10).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Thou hast blinded the minds of my friends, that they can not see those truths which are most plain and evident to all men of sense and experience; therefore I desire a more wise and able judge.

Therefore shalt thou not exalt them, i.e. thou wilt not give them the victory over me in this contest, but wilt give sentence for me, and discharge them, and make them ashamed of their confidence in affirming falsehoods of thee, and punish them severely for their miscarriage. It is a usual figure, whereby much more is understood than is expressed.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

For thou hast hid their heart from understanding,.... That is, the hearts of his friends, and therefore they were unfit to undertake his cause, or be sureties for him, or be judges in it. It is the same thing as to hide understanding from their hearts, which God sometimes does in a natural sense; when men like not the knowledge of him, as attainable by the light of nature, he gives them up to reprobate minds, minds void of knowledge and judgment in things natural; and sometimes, in a spiritual sense, he hides men's hearts from the knowledge of things divine and evangelical, and even this he does from the wise and prudent of this world; yea, sometimes he hides the knowledge of his providential dealings with men from his own people, as he did from Asaph, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, and others; and, as it seems, from Job's friends, who therefore mistook his case, and were very unfit and insufficient to determine it:

therefore shalt thou not exalt them; to such honour and dignity, to be umpires, arbitrators, or judges in the case of Job; this God had reserved for another, Elihu, or rather himself, who decided the controversy between Job and his friends, and declared in his favour, and that they had not spoken the thing that was right of him, as his servant Job had done, Job 42:7;

Geneva Study Bible

For thou hast hid their heart from {e} understanding: therefore shalt thou not exalt them.

(e) That these my afflictions are your just judgments, though man does not know the reason.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

4. This verse answers the question in Job 17:3, Who (else) will strike hands with me? None else will, for the hearts of the three friends and all others have been blinded, and can take no true view of the sufferer’s cause.

exalt them] i. e. give them the upper hand or victory; cf. Job 42:7-8. To give the friends the upper hand would be to give an issue to Job’s cause such as answered their expectations. The connexion may be: give a pledge now, none else will, for thou hast blinded them, and having blinded them thou wilt not give an issue that meets their expectations.

4–9. These verses support the petition in Job 17:3. If God will not undertake for Job none else will, for the hearts of his friends have been blinded. This thought of the perverse obstinacy and cruelty of his friends leads Job again to a gloomy survey of his whole condition (cf. Job 16:22 to Job 17:2). He is become a public contempt to mankind and brought to the lowest ebb of mortal weakness and humiliation (Job 17:6-7). Such moral perversions on the earth astonish the righteous and rouse them to indignation against the wicked in their prosperity (Job 17:8). Yet they will not permit themselves to be misled by such things to err from the paths of rectitude. Full of moral terror as these perversions are the righteous will in spite of them cleave to his righteousness. He will feel that he is in possession of the only true good, and even because of them and though he sees the world under the rule of God given over to wrong, he will wax stronger and stronger in well doing (Job 17:9)—an astonishing passage.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 4. - For thou hast hid their heart from understanding. My so-called friends will certainly not undertake for me, since thou hast blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts against me. Therefore shalt thou not exalt them. God will not exalt those who are without understanding. Job 17:4

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

3 Lay down now, be bondsman for me with Thyself;

Who else should furnish surety to me?!

4 For Thou hast closed their heart from understanding,

Therefore wilt Thou not give authority to them.

5 He who giveth his friends for spoil,

The eyes of his children shall languish.

It is unnecessary, with Reiske and Olsh., to read ערבני (pone quaeso arrhabonem meum equals pro me) in order that שׂימה may not stand without an object; שׂימה has this meaning included in it, and the ארבני which follows shows that neither לבך (Ralbag) nor ידך (Carey) is to be supplied; accordingly שׂים here, like Arab. wḍ‛ (wâḍ‛), and in the classics both τιθέναι and ponere, signifies alone the laying down of a pledge. Treated by the friends as a criminal justly undergoing punishment, he seeks his refuge in God, who has set the mark of a horrible disease upon him contrary to his desert, as though he were guilty, and implores Him to confirm the reality of his innocence in some way or other by laying down a pledge for him (ὑποθήκη). The further prayer is ערבני, as word of entreaty which occurs also in Hezekiah's psalm, Isaiah 38:14, and Psalm 119:122; ערב seq. acc. signifies, as noted on the latter passage, to furnish surety for any one, and gen. to take the place of a mediator (comp. also on Hebrews 7:22, where ἔγγυος is a synon. of μεσίτης). Here, however, the significant עמּך is added: furnish security for me with Thyself; elsewhere the form is ל ערב, to furnish security for (Proverbs 6:1), or לפני before, any one, here with עם of the person by whom the security is to be accepted. The thought already expressed in Job 16:21 receives a still stronger expression here: God is conceived of as two persons, on the one side as a judge who treats Job as one deserving of punishment, on the other side as a bondsman who pledges himself for the innocence of the sufferer before the judge, and stands as it were as surety against the future. In the question, Job 17:3, the representation is again somewhat changed: Job appears here as the one to whom surety is given. נתקע, described by expositors as reciprocal, is rather reflexive: to give one's hand (the only instance of the med. form of כּף תּקע) equals to give surety by striking hands, dextera data sponsionem in se recipere (Hlgst.). And לידי is not to be explained after the analogy of the passive, as the usual ל of the agents: who would allow himself to be struck by my hand, i.e., who would accept the surety from me (Wolfson), which is unnatural both in representation and expression; but it is, according to Proverbs 6:1 (vid., Bertheau), intended of the hand of him who receives the stroke of the hand of him who gives the pledge. This is therefore the meaning of the question: who else (הוּא מי), if not God himself, should strike (his hand) to my hand, i.e., should furnish to me a pledge (viz., of my innocence) by joining hands? There is none but God alone who can intercede for him, as a guarantee of his innocence before himself and others. This negative answer: None but Thou alone, is established in Job 17:4. God has closed the heart of the friends against understanding, prop. concealed, i.e., He has fixed a curtain, a wall of partition, between their hearts and the right understanding of the matter; He has smitten them with blindness, therefore He will not (since they are suffering from a want of perception which He has ordained, and which is consequently known to Him) allow them to be exalted, i.e., to conquer and triumph. "The exaltation of the friends," observes Hirzel rightly, "would be, that God should openly justify their assertion of Job's guilt." Lwenthal translates: therefore art thou not honoured; but it is not pointed תּרמם equals תּתרמם, but תּרמם, whether it be that אתם is to be supplied, or that it is equivalent to תּרממם (Ew. 62, a, who, however, prefers to take is as n. Hithpa. like תּקמם in the unimproved signification: improvement, since he maintains this affords no right idea), according to the analogy of similar verb-forms (Job 31:15; Isaiah 64:6), by a resolving of the two similar consonants which occur together.

The hope thus expressed Job establishes (Job 17:5) by a principle from general experience, that he who offers his friends as spoil for distribution will be punished most severely for the same upon his children: he shall not escape the divine retribution which visits him, upon his own children, for the wrong done to his friends. Almost all modern expositors are agreed in this rendering of לחלק as regards Job 17:5; but חלק must not be translated "lot" (Ewald), which it never means; it signifies a share of spoil, as e.g., Numbers 31:36 (Jerome praedam), or even with a verbal force: plundering (from חלק, 2 Chronicles 28:21), or even in antithesis to entering into bond for a friend with all that one possesses (Stick., Schlottm.), a dividing (of one's property) equals distraining, as a result of the surrender to the creditor, to which the verb הגּיד is appropriate, which would then denote denouncing before a court of justice, as Jeremiah 20:10, not merely proclaiming openly, as Isaiah 3:9. We have translated "spoil," which admits of all these modifications and excludes none; the general meaning is certainly: one deserts (instead of shielding as an intercessor) his friends and delivers them up; יגּיד with a general subj., as Job 4:2 (if any one attempts), Job 15:3; Job 27:23. With respect to the other half of the verse, Job 17:5, the optative rendering: may they languish (Vaih.), to the adoption of which the old expositors have been misled by parallels like Psalm 109:9., is to be rejected; it is contrary to the character of Job (Job 31:30). We agree with Mercerus: Nequaquam hoc per imprecationem, sed ut consequentis justissimae poenae denunciationem ab Iobo dictum putamus. For v. 5b is also not to be taken as a circumstantial clause: even if the eyes of his children languish (Ew., Hlgst. Stick., Hahn, Schl.). It is not רעהוּ, but רעים; and before supposing here a Synallage num. so liable to be misunderstood, one must try to get over the difficulty without it, which is here easy enough. Hence Job is made, in the intended application of the general principle, to allude to his own children, and Ewald really considers him the father of infant children, which, however, as may be seen from the prologue, is nothing but an invention unsupported by the history. Since it is בניו and not בניהם, we refer the suff. to the subj. of יגיד. The Waw of ועיני Mich. calls Waw consecutivum; it, however, rather combines things that are inseparable (certainly as cause and effect, sin and punishment). And it is יגיד, not הגיד, because the perf. would describe the fact as past, while the fut. places us in the midst of this faithless conduct. Job says God cannot possibly allow these, his three friends, the upper hand. One proclaims his friends as spoil (comp. Job 6:27), and the eyes of his children languish (comp. Job 11:20), i.e., he who so faithlessly disowns the claims of affection, is punished for it on that which he holds most dear. But this uncharitableness which he experiences is also a visitation of God. In the next strophe he refers all that he meets with from man to Him as the final cause, but not without a presage of the purpose for which it is designed.