Job 31:12

For it is a fire that consumeth to destruction, and would root out all mine increase.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

31:9-15 All the defilements of the life come from a deceived heart. Lust is a fire in the soul: those that indulge it, are said to burn. It consumes all that is good there, and lays the conscience waste. It kindles the fire of God's wrath, which, if not quenched by the blood of Christ, will consume even to eternal destruction. It consumes the body; it consumes the substance. Burning lusts bring burning judgments. Job had a numerous household, and he managed it well. He considered that he had a Master in heaven; and as we are undone if God should be severe with us, we ought to be mild and gentle towards all with whom we have to do.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

For it is a fire that consumeth to destruction - This may mean that such an offence would be a crime that would provoke God to send destruction, like a consuming fire upon the offender (Rosenmuller and Noyes), or more likely it is designed to be descriptive of the nature of the sin itself. According to this, the meaning is, that indulgence in this sin tends wholly to ruin and destroy a man. It is like a consuming fire, which sweeps away everything before it. It is destructive to the body, the morals, the soul. Accordingly, it may be remarked that there is no one vice which pours such desolation through the soul as licentiousness. See Rush on the Diseases of the Mind. It corrupts and taints all the fountains of morals, and utterly annihilates all purity of the heart. An intelligent gentleman, and a careful observer of the state of things in society, once remarked to me, that on coming to the city of Philadelphia, it was his fortune to be in the same boarding-house with a number of young men, nearly all of whom were known to him to be of licentious habits. He has lived to watch their course of life; and he remarked, that there was not one of them who did not ultimately show that he was essentially corrupt and unprincipled in every department of morals. There is not any one propensity of man that spreads such a withering influence over the soul as this; and, however it may be accounted for, it is certain that indulgence in this vice is a certain evidence that the whole soul is corrupt, and that no reliance is to be placed on the man's virtue in any respect, or in reference to any relation of life.

And would root out all mine increase - By its desolating effects on my heart and life. The meaning is, that it would utterly ruin him; compare Luke 15:13, Luke 15:30. How many a wretched sensualist can bear testimony to the truth of this statement! How many a young man has been wholly ruined in reference to his worldly interests, as well as in reference to his soul, by this vice compare Proverbs 7:No young man could do a better service to himself than to commit the whole of that chapter to memory, and so engrave it on his soul that it never could be forgotten.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

12. (Pr 6:27-35; 8:6-23, 26, 27). No crime more provokes God to send destruction as a consuming fire; none so desolates the soul.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

For this sin would be as a secret but consuming fire, wasting my estate and reputation, and body and soul too, provoking God and enraging the husband, and bringing down some extraordinary vengeance upon me; and therefore the fear of God kept me from this and such-like wickedness.

All mine increase, i.e. all my estate: compare Proverbs 6:27.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

For it is a fire that consumeth to destruction,.... Referring either to the nature of the sin of uncleanness; it is inflammatory, a burning lust, a fire burning in the breast; see 1 Corinthians 7:9; or to the effect of it, either the rage of jealousy in the injured person, which is exceeding fierce, furious, and cruel, like devouring fire, not to be appeased or mitigated, Proverbs 6:34; or else it may respect the punishment of this sin in the times of Job, and which we find was practised among the Gentiles, as the Canaanites, Job's neighbours, burning such delinquents with fire; see Genesis 38:24; or rather the wrath of God for it, which is poured forth as fire, and burns to the lowest hell, and into which lake of fire all such impure persons will be cast, unless the grace of God prevents; and which will be a fire that will consume and destroy both soul and body, and so be an utter and everlasting destruction, Revelation 21:8;

and would root out all my increase; even in this world; adultery is a sin that not only ruins a man's character, fixes an indelible blot upon him, a reproach that shall not be wiped off, and consumes a man's body, and destroys the health of it, but his substance also, the increase of his fields, and of his fruits, and by means of it a man is brought to a piece of bread, to beg it, and to be glad of it, Proverbs 6:26.

Geneva Study Bible

For it is a fire that consumeth {h} to destruction, and would root out all mine increase.

(h) He shows that although man neglects the punishment of adultery, yet the wrath of God will never cease till such are destroyed.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

12. to destruction] Heb. abaddon, i. e. Sheol or Death, as a place, ch. Job 26:6, Job 28:22. As to the complete ruin which this sin entailed comp. the passage Proverbs 6:24-35, particularly the last verses; see also Proverbs 5:8-14; Proverbs 7:26-27.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 12. - For it is a fire that consumeth to destruction; i.e. it is a thing which brings down the wrath of God upon a man, so that "a fire is kindled in his anger, which shall burn unto the lowest hell" (Deuteronomy 32:22). Compare the sentence on David for his great transgression (2 Samuel 12:9-12). And would root out all mine increase; i.e. "would destroy all my estate;" either by leading me to waste my substance upon my companion in sin, or by bringing down God's judgments upon me to my temporal ruin. Job 31:12

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

9 If my heart has been befooled about a woman,

And if I lay in wait at my neighbour's door:

10 Let my wife grind unto another,

And let others bow down over her.

11 For this is an infamous act,

And this is a crime to be brought before judges;

12 Yea, it is a fire that consumeth to the abyss,

And should root out all my increase.

As he has guarded himself against defiling virgin innocence by lascivious glances, so is he also conscious of having made no attempt to trespass upon the marriage relationship of his neighbour (רע as in the Decalogue, Exodus 20:17): his heart was not persuaded, or he did not allow his heart to be persuaded (נפתּה like πείθεσθαι), i.e., misled, on account of a woman (אשּׁה as אשׁת אישׁ, in post-bibl. usage, of another's wife), and he lay not in wait (according to the manner of adulterous lovers described at Job 24:15, which see) at his neighbour's door. We may here, with Wetzstein, compare the like-minded confession in a poem of Muhdi ibn-Muhammel: Arab. mâ nabb klb 'l-jâr mnâ ẇlâ ‛awâ, i.e., "The neighbour's dog never barked (נב, Beduin equivalent to נבח in the Syrian towns and villages) on our account (because we have gone by night with an evil design to his tent), and it never howled (being beaten by us, to make it cease its barking lest it should betray us)." In Job 31:10 follows the punishment which he wishes might overtake him in case he had acted thus: "may my wife grind to another," i.e., may she become his "maid behind the mill," Exodus 11:5, comp. Isaiah 47:2, who must allow herself to be used for everything; ἀλετρίς and a common low woman (comp. Plutarch, non posse suav. viv. c. 21, καὶ παχυσκελὴς ἀλετρὶς πρὸς μύλην κινουμένη) are almost one and the same. On the other hand, the Targ. (coeat cum alio), lxx (euphemistically ἀρέσαι ἑτέρῳ, not, as the Syr. Hexapl. shows, ἀλέσαι), and Jer. (scortum sit alterius), and in like manner Saad., Gecat., understand תּטחן directly of carnal surrender; and, in fact, according to the traditional opinion, b. Sota 10a: אין טחינה אלא לשׁון עבירה, i.e., "טחן everywhere in Scripture is intended of (carnal) trespass." With reference to Judges 16:21 and Lamentations 5:13 (where טחון, like Arab. ṭaḥûn, signifies the upper mill-stone, or in gen. the mill), this is certainly incorrect; the parallel, as well as Deuteronomy 28:30, favours this rendering of the word in the obscene sense of μύλλειν, molere, in this passage, which also is seen under the Arab. synon. of grinding, Arab. dahaka (trudere); according to which it would have to be interpreted: let her grind to another, i.e., serve him as it were as a nether mill-stone. The verb טחן, used elsewhere (in Talmud.) of the man, would here be transferred to the woman, like as it is used of the mill itself as that which grinds. This rendering is therefore not refuted by its being תּטחן and not תּטּחן. Moreover, the word thus understood is not unworthy of the poet, since he designedly makes Job seize the strongest expressions. Among moderns, תטחן is thus tropically explained by Ew., Umbr., Hahn, and a few others, but most expositors prefer the proper sense, in connection with which molat certainly, especially with respect to Job 31:9, is also equivalent to fiat pellex. It is hard to decide; nevertheless the preponderance of reasons seems to us to be on the side of the traditional tropical rendering, by the side of which Job 31:10 is not attached in progressive, but in synonymous parallelism: et super ea incurvent se alii, כּרע of the man, as in the phrase Arab. kr‛t 'l-mrât 'lâ 'l-rjl (curvat se mulier ad virum) of the acquiescence of the woman; אחרין is a poetical Aramaism, Ew. 177, a. The sin of adultery, in case he had committed it, ought to be punished by another taking possession of his own wife, for that (הוּא a neutral masc., Keri היא in accordance with the fem. of the following predicate, comp. Leviticus 18:17) is an infamous act, and that (היא referring back to זמּה, Keri הוּא in accordance with the masc. of the following predicate) is a crime for the judges. On this wavering between הוא and היא vid., Gesenius, Handwrterbuch, 1863, s. v. הוּא, S. 225. זמּה is the usual Thora-word for the shameless subtle encroachments of sensual desires (vid., Saalschtz, Mosaisches Recht, S. 791f.), and פּלילים עון (not עון), according to the usual view equivalent to crimen et crimen quidem judicum (however, on the form of connection intentionally avoided here, where the genitival relation might easily give an erroneous sense, vid., Ges. 116, rem.), signifies a crime which falls within the province of the penal code, for which in Job 31:28 it is less harshly עון פּלילי: a judicial, i.e., criminal offence. פּלילים is, moreover, not the plur. of פּלילי (Kimchi), but of פּליל, an arbitrator (root פל, findere, dirimere).

The confirmatory clause, Job 31:12, is co-ordinate with the preceding: for it (this criminal, adulterous enterprise) is a fire, a fire consuming him who allows the sparks of sinful desire to rise up within him (Proverbs 6:27.; Sir. 9:8), which devours even to the bottom of the abyss, not resting before it has dragged him whom it has seized down with it into the deepest depth of ruin, and as it were melted him away, and which ought to root out all my produce (all the fruit of my labour).

(Note: It is something characteristically Semitic to express the notion of destruction by the figure of burning up with fire [vid. supra, p. 449, note], and it is so much used in the present day as a natural inalienable form of thought, that in curses and imprecations everything, without distinction of the object, is to be burned; e.g., juhrik, may (God) burn up, or juhrak, ought to burn, bilâduh, his native country, bedenuh, his body, ‛ênuh, his eye, shawâribuh, his moustache (i.e., his honour), nefesuh, his breath, ‛omruh, his life, etc. - Wetzst.)

The function of ב is questionable. Ew. (217, f) explains it as local: in my whole revenue, i.e., throughout my whole domain. But it can also be Beth objecti, whether it be that the obj. is conceived as the means of the action (vid., on Job 16:4-5, Job 16:10; Job 20:20), or that, "corresponding to the Greek genitive, it does not express an entire full coincidence, but an action about and upon the object" (Ew. 217, S. 557). We take it as Beth obj. in the latter sense, after the analogy of the so-called pleonastic Arab. b (e.g., qaraa bi-suwari, he has practised the act of reading upon the Suras of the Koran); and which ought to undertake the act of outrooting upon my whole produce.

(Note: On this pleonastic Beth obj. (el-Bâ el-mezı̂de) vid., Samachschari's Mufassal, ed. Broch, pp. 125, 132 (according to which it serves "to give intensity and speciality"), and Beidhwi's observation on Sur. ii. 191. The most usual example for it is alqa bi-jedeihi ila et-tahlike, he has plunged his hands, i.e., himself, into ruin. The Bâ el-megâz (the metaphorical Beth obj.) is similar; it is used where the verb has not its most natural signification but a metaphorical one, e.g., ashada bidhikrihi, he has strengthened his memory: comp. De Sacy, Chrestomathie Arabe, i. 397.)