Job 6:9

Even that it would please God to destroy me; that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off!

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(9) Even that it would please God . . .—The sequence of thought in these verses is obscure and uncertain. The speaker may mean that, notwithstanding all that might befall him, his consolation would still be that he had never denied the words of the Holy One. The words “I would harden myself in sorrow” are the most doubtful, not occurring elsewhere in Scripture. Some render the two clauses, “I would exult, or rejoice, in pain that spareth not;” but “Let him not spare,” or “Though he spare not,” seems preferable. Others render, “Though I burn in sorrow.”

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

6:8-13 Job had desired death as the happy end of his miseries. For this, Eliphaz had reproved him, but he asks for it again with more vehemence than before. It was very rash to speak thus of God destroying him. Who, for one hour, could endure the wrath of the Almighty, if he let loose his hand against him? Let us rather say with David, O spare me a little. Job grounds his comfort upon the testimony of his conscience, that he had been, in some degree, serviceable to the glory of God. Those who have grace in them, who have the evidence of it, and have it in exercise, have wisdom in them, which will be their help in the worst of times.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Even that it would please God to destroy me - To put me to death, and to release me from my sorrows; compare Job 3:20-21. The word rendered "destroy" here (דכא dâkâ') means properly to break in pieces, to crush, to trample under foot, to make small by bruising. Here the sense is, that Job wished that God would crush him, so as to take his life. The Septuagint renders it "wound" - τρωσάτω trōsatō. The Chaldee renders it, "Let God, who has begun to make me poor, loose his hand and make me rich."

That he would let loose his hand - Job here represents the hand of God as bound or confined. He wishes that that fettered hand were released, and were so free in its inflictions that he might be permitted to die.

And cut me off - This expression, says Gesenius (Lexicon on the word בצע betsa‛), is a metaphor derived from a weaver, who, when his web is finished, cuts it off from the thrum by which it is fastened to the loom; see the notes at Isaiah 38:12. The sense is, that Job wished that God would wholly finish his work, and that as he had begun to destroy him he would complete it.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

9. destroy—literally, "grind" or "crush" (Isa 3:15).

let loose his hand—God had put forth His hand only so far as to wound the surface of Job's flesh (Job 1:12; 2:6); he wishes that hand to be let loose, so as to wound deeply and vitally.

cut me off—metaphor from a weaver cutting off the web, when finished, from the thrum fastening it to the loom (Isa 38:12).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

To destroy me; to end my days and calamities together. That he would let loose his hand; which is now as it were bound up or restrained from giving me that deadly blow which I desire. Oh that he would restrain himself and his hand no longer, but let it fall upon me with all its might, so as to

cut me off as it follows.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Even that it would please God to destroy me,.... Not with an everlasting destruction of body and soul; for destruction from the Almighty was a terror to him, Job 31:23; but with the destruction of the body only; not with an annihilation of it, but with the dissolution of it, or of that union there was between his soul and body: the word (n) used signifies to bruise and beat to pieces; his meaning is, that his body, his house of clay in which he dwelt, might be crushed to pieces, and beat to powder, and crumbled into dust; and perhaps he may have regard to his original, the dust of the earth, and his return to it, according to the divine threatening, Genesis 3:19; a phrase expressive of death; and so Mr. Broughton renders it, "to bring me to the dust", to "the dust of death", Psalm 22:15,

that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off! he had let loose his hand in some degree already; he had given his substance and his body into the hand of Satan; his own hand had touched him, but he had only gone skin deep, as it were; he had smote him in his estate, in his family, and in the outward parts of his body; but now he desires that he would stretch out his hand further, and lift it up, and give a heavier stroke, and pierce him more deeply; strike through his heart and liver, and "make an end" of him, as Mr. Broughton translates the word, and dispatch him at once; cut him off like the flower of the field by the scythe, or like a tree cut down to its root by the axe, or cut off the thread of his life, Isaiah 38:12.

(n) "me conterat", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Mercerus, Schmidt; so Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Michaelis, Schultens.

Geneva Study Bible

Even that it would please God to destroy me; that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off!

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 9. - Even that it would please God to destroy me; or, to crush me (Revised Version) - "to break me in pieces" (Lee). That he would let loose his hand; or, put forth his hand - stretch it out against me threateningly." And cut me off. "Cut me off bit by bit" (Lee); comp. Isaiah 38:12, where the same word is used of a weaver, who cuts the threads of his loom one by one, until the whole is liberated and comes away. Job 6:9

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

8 Would that my request were fulfilled,

And that Eloah would grant my expectation,

9 That Eloah were willing and would crush me,

Let loose His hand and cut me off:

10 Then I should still have comfort -

(I should exult in unsparing pain) -

That I have not disowned the words of the Holy One.

His wish refers to the ending of his suffering by death. Hupfeld prefers to read ותאותי instead of ותקותי (Job 6:8); but death, which he desires, he even indeed expects. This is just the paradox, that not life, but death, is his expectation. "Cut me off," i.e., my soul or my life, my thread of life (Job 27:8; Isaiah 38:12). The optative יתּן מי (Ges. 136, 1) is followed by optative futt., partly of the so-called jussive form, as יאל, velit (Hiph. from ואל, velle), and יתּר, solvat (Hiph. from נתר). In the phrase יד התּיר, the stretching out of the hand is regarded as the loosening of what was hitherto bound. The conclusion begins with וּתהי, just like Job 13:5. But it is to be asked whether by consolation speedy death is to be understood, and the clause with כּי gives the ground of his claim for the granting of the wish, - or whether he means that just this: not having disowned the words of the Holy One (comp. Job 23:11., and אמרי־אל in the mouth of Balaam, the non-Israelitish prophet, Numbers 24:4, Numbers 24:16), would be his consolation in the midst of death. With Hupfeld we decide in favour of the latter, with Psalm 119:50 in view: this consciousness of innocence is indeed throughout the whole book Job's shield and defence. If, however, נחמתי (with Kametz impurum) points towards כּי, quod, etc., the clause ואסלּדה is parenthetical. The cohortative is found thus parenthetical with a conjunctive sense also elsewhere (Psalm 40:6; Psalm 51:18). Accordingly: my comfort - I would exult, etc. - would be that I, etc. The meaning of סלד, tripudiare, is confirmed by the lxx ἡλλόμην, in connection with the Arabic ṣalada (of a galloping horse which stamps hard with its fore-feet), according to which the Targ. also translates ואבוּע (I will rejoice).

(Note: The primary meaning of סלד, according to the Arabic, is to be hard, then, to tread hard, firm, as in pulsanda tellus; whereas the poetry of the synagogue (Pijut) uses סלּד in the signification to supplicate, and סלד, litany (not: hymn, as Zunz gives it); and the Mishna-talmudic סלד signifies to singe, burn one's self, and to draw back affrighted.)

For יחמל לא, comp. Isaiah 30:14. (break in pieces unsparingly). יחמל לא certainly appears as though it must be referred to God (Ew., Hahn, Schlottm., and others), since חילה sounds feminine; but one can either pronounce חילה equals חיל as Milel (Hitz.), or take יחמל לא adverbially, and not as an elliptical dependent clause (as Ges. 147, rem. 1), but as virtually an adjective: in pain unsparing.