Job 17:7

Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Benson Commentary

Job 17:7. Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow — Through excessive weeping and decay of spirits, which cause a dimness of the sight. And all my members are as a shadow — My body is so reduced, and I am grown so poor and thin, and my colour so wan and ghastly, that I look more like a ghost or a shadow than a man.

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

Mine eye is dim by reason of sorrow - Schultens supposes that this refers to his external appearance in general, as being worn down, exhausted, "defaced" by his many troubles; but it seems rather to mean that his eyes failed on account of weeping.

And all my members are as a shadow - "I am a mere skeleton, I am exhausted and emaciated by my sufferings." It is common to speak of persons who are emaciated by sickness or famine as mere shadows. Thus, Livy (L. 21:40) says, Effigies, imo, "umbrce hominum;" fame, frigore, illuvie, squalore enecti, contusi, debilitati inter saxa rupesque. So Aeschylus calls Oedipus - Οἰδίπου σκιαν Oidipou skian - the shadow of Oedipus.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

7. (Ps 6:7; 31:9; De 34:7).

members—literally, "figures"; all the individual members being peculiar forms of the body; opposed to "shadow," which looks like a figure without solidity.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

By reason of sorrow; through excessive weeping and decay of spirits, which cause a dimness in the sight.

All my members are as a shadow; my body is so consumed, and my colour so wan and ghastly, that I look more like a ghost, or a shadow, than like a man.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow,.... Through excessive weeping, and the abundance of tears he shed, so that he had almost lost his eyesight, or however it was greatly weakened and impaired by that means, which is often the case, see Psalm 6:7;

and all my members are as a shadow; his flesh was consumed off his bones, there were nothing left scarcely but skin and bone; he was a mere anatomy, and as thin as a lath, as we commonly say of a man that is quite worn away, as it were; is a walking shadow, has scarce any substance in him, but is the mere shadow of a man; the Targum interprets it of his form, splendour, and countenance, which were like a shadow; some interpret it "my thoughts" (t), and understand it of the formations of his mind, and not of his body, which were shadows, empty, fleeting, and having no consistence in them through that sorrow that possessed him.

(t) "cogitationes meae", Pagninus, Bolducius, Codurcus, so Ben Gersom.

Geneva Study Bible

Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

7. The sorrowful condition to which Job was reduced by his afflictions.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 7. - Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow (comp. Psalm 6:7; Psalm 31:9). Excessive weeping, such as stains the cheeks (Job 16:16), will also in most cases dim and dull the eyesight. And all my members are as a shadow. Weak, that is, worn out, unstable, fleeting, ready to pass away. Job 17:7

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

6 And He hath made me a proverb to the world,

And I became as one in whose face they spit.

7 Then mine eye became dim with grief,

And all my members were like a shadow.

8 The upright were astonished at it,

And the innocent is stirred up over the godless;

9 Nevertheless the righteous holdeth fast on his way,

And he that hath clean hands waxeth stronger and stronger.

Without a question, the subj. of Job 17:6 is God. It is the same thing whether משׁל is taken as inf. followed by the subject in the nominative (Ges. 133, 2), or as a subst. (lxx θρύλλημα; Aq., Symm., Theod., παραβολήν), like שׂחוק, Job 12:4, followed by the gen. subjectivus. משׁל is the usual word for ridicule, expressed in parables of a satirical character, e.g., Joel 2:17 (according to which, if משׁל were intended as inf., משׁל־בּי עמּים might have been expected); עמּים signifies both nations and races, and tribes or people, i.e., members of this and that nation, or in gen. of mankind (Job 12:2). We have intentionally chosen an ambiguous expression in the translation, for what Job says can be meant of a wide range of people (comp. on Job 2:11 ad fin.), as well as of those in the immediate neighbourhood; the friends themselves represent different tribes; and a perishable gipsy-like troglodyte race, to whom Job is become a derision, is specially described further on (Job 24, 30).

Job 17:6

By תּפת (translated by Jer. exemplum, and consequently mistaken for מופת) the older expositors are reminded of the name of the place where the sacrifices were offered to Moloch in the valley of the sons of Hinnom (whence גּיהנּם, γέεννα, hell), since they explain it by "the fire of hell," but only from want of a right perception; the לפנים standing with it, which nowhere signifies palam, and cannot here (where אהיה, although in the signification ἐγενόμην, follows) signify a multo tempore, shows that תפת here is to be derived from תּוּף, to spit out (as נפת, gum, from נוּף). This verb certainly cannot be supported in Hebr. and Aram. (since רקק is the commoner word), except two passages in the Talmud (Nidda 42a, comp. Sabbath 99b, and Chethuboth 61b); but it is confirmed by the Aethiopic and Coptic and an onomatopoetic origin, as the words πτύειν, ψύειν, spuere, Germ. speien, etc., show.

(Note: תוף is related to the Sanskrit root shttı̂v, as τέγη, τρύχους, τρύζω, and the like, to στέγη, στρύχνος, στρύζω,, vid., Kuhn's Zeitschrift, Bd. iv. Abh. i.((the falling away of s before mutes).)

Cognate is the Arabic taffafa, to treat with contempt, and the interjection tuffan, fie upon thee,

(Note: Almost all modern expositors repeat the remark here, that this tuffan is similar in meaning to ῥακά, Matthew 5:22, while they might learn from Lightfoot that it has nothing to do with רק, to spit, but is equivalent to ריקא, κενέ.)

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