19:1-7 Job's friends blamed him as a wicked man, because he was so afflicted; here he describes their unkindness, showing that what they condemned was capable of excuse. Harsh language from friends, greatly adds to the weight of afflictions: yet it is best not to lay it to heart, lest we harbour resentment. Rather let us look to Him who endured the contradiction of sinners against himself, and was treated with far more cruelty than Job was, or we can be.

Verse 5. - If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me. If you have no sense of justice, and are disinclined to pay any heed to my expostulations; if you intend still to insist on magnifying yourselves against me, and bringing up against me my "reproach;" then let me make appeal to your pity. Consider my whole condition - how I stand with God, who persecutes me and "destroys" me (ver. 10); how I stand with my relatives and such other friends as I have beside yourselves, who disclaim and forsake me (vers. 13-19); and how I am conditioned with respect to my body, emaciated and on the verge of death (ver. 20); and then, if neither your friendship nor your sense of justice will induce you to abstain from persecuting me, abstain at any rate for pity's sake (ver. 21). And plead against me my reproach. Job's special "reproach" was that God had laid his hand upon him. This was a manifest fact, and could not be denied. His "comforters" concluded from it that he was a monster of wickedness.

If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me,.... Look and talk big, set up themselves for great folk, and resolve to run him down; open their mouths wide against him and speak great swelling words in a blustering manner; or magnify what they called an error in him, and set it out in the worst light they could:

and plead against me my reproach; his affliction which he was reproached with, and was pleaded against him as an argument of his being a wicked man; if therefore they were determined to go on after this manner, and insist on this kind of proof, then he would have them take what follows.

5. magnify, &c.—Speak proudly (Ob 12; Eze 35:13).

against me—emphatically repeated (Ps 38:16).

plead … reproach—English Version makes this part of the protasis, "if" being understood, and the apodosis beginning at Job 19:6. Better with Umbreit, If ye would become great heroes against me in truth, ye must prove (evince) against me my guilt, or shame, which you assert. In the English Version "reproach" will mean Job's calamities, which they "pleaded" against him as a "reproach," or proof of guilt.

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