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This is one of the many censures that Job's friends passed upon him. He could not be convicted of the fact, without being convicted of sin. Prayer is most positively enjoined, as a primary duty of religion; a duty strictly in itself, as the proper manner of acknowledging the supremacy of God and our dependence. Prayer cannot be discountenanced on any principle which would not repress and condemn all earnest religious desires. Would it not be absurd to indulge these desires, if it be absurd to express them? And worse than absurd, for What are they less than impulses to control the Divine determinations and conduct? For these desires will absolutely ascend toward Him. Again, it is the grand object to augment these desires. Then here too is evidence in favour of prayer. For it must operate to make them more strong, more vivid, more solemn, more prolonged, and more definite as to their objects. Forming them into expressions to God will concentrate the soul in them, and upon these objects. As to the objection that we cannot alter the Divine determinations; it may well be supposed that it is according to the Divine determinations that good things shall not be given to those that will not petition for them; that there shall be this expression of dependence and acknowledgment of the Divine supremacy. Now for the manner in which men avail themselves of this most sublime circumstance in their condition. We might naturally have expected an universal prevalence of a devotional spirit. Alas! there are millions of the civilised portion of mankind that practise no worship, no prayer at all, in any manner; they are entirely "without God in the world," To say of such an one, "Thou restrainest prayer," is pronouncing on him an awful charge, is predicting an awful doom. We wish, however, to make a few admonitory observations on the great defectiveness of prayer in those who do feel its importance, and are not wholly strangers to its genuine exercise. How much of this exercise, in its genuine quality, has there been in the course of our life habitually? Is there a very frequent, or even a prevailing reluctance to it, so that the chief feeling regarding it is but a haunting sense of duty and of guilt in the neglect? This were a serious cause for alarm, lest all be wrong within. Is it in the course of our days left to uncertainties whether the exercise shall be attended to or not? Is there a habit of letting come first to be attended to any inferior thing that may offer itself? When this great duty is set aside for an indefinite time, the disposition lessens at every step, and perhaps the conscience too. Or, in the interval appropriate to this exercise, a man may defer it till very near what he knows must be the end of the allowed time. Again, an inconvenient situation for devotional exercise will often be one of the real evils of life. Sometimes the exercise is made very brief from real, unqualified want of interest. Or prayer is delayed from a sense of recent guilt. The charge in the text falls upon the state of feeling which forgets to recognise the value of prayer as an instrument in the transactions of life. And it falls, too, on the indulgence of cares, anxieties, and griefs, with little recourse to this great expedient.

(John Foster.)

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KJV: Yea, thou castest off fear, and restrainest prayer before God.

WEB: Yes, you do away with fear, and hinder devotion before God.