Job 23:2

(2) Even to day. —Or, Still is my complaint bitter or accounted rebellion; yet is my stroke heavier than my groaning: my complaint is no just measure of my suffering.Benson CommentaryJob 23:2. Even to-day is my complaint bitter — Even at this time notwithstanding all your promises and pretended consolations. For your discourses give me neither relief nor satisfaction. Hence in this and the following chapter Job seldom applies his discourse to his friends, but either addresses his speech to God, or bewails his misery. My stroke is heavier than my groaning — The hand or stroke of God upon me exceeds my complaints.Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary23:1-7 Job appeals from his friends to the just judgement of God. He wants to have his cause tried quickly. Blessed be God, we may know where to find him. He is in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself; and upon a mercy-seat, waiting to be gracious. Thither the sinner may go; and there the believer may order his cause before Him, with arguments taken from his promises, his covenant, and his glory. A patient waiting for death and judgment is our wisdom and duty, and it cannot be without a holy fear and trembling. A passionate wishing for death or judgement is our sin and folly, and ill becomes us, as it did Job.Barnes' Notes on the BibleEven to-day - At the present time. I am not relieved. You afford me no consolation.

All that you say only aggravates my woes.My complaint - See the notes at Job 21:3.Bitter - Sad, melancholy, distressing. The meaning is, not that he made bitter complaints in the sense which those words would naturally convey, or that he meant to find fault with God, but that his case was a hard one. His friends furnished him no relief, and he had in vain endeavored to bring his cause before God. This is now, as he proceeds to state, the principal cause of his difficulty. He knows not where to find God; he cannot get his cause before him.My stroke - Margin, as in Hebrew "hand;" that is, the hand that is upon me, or the calamity that is inflicted upon me. The hand is represented as the instrument of inflicting punishment, or causing affliction; see the notes at Job 19:21.Heavier than my groaning - My sighs bear no proportion to my sufferings. They are no adequate expression of my woes. If you think I complain; if I am heard to groan, yet the sufferings which I endure are far beyond what these would secm to indicate. Sighs and groans are not improper. They are prompted by nature, and they furnish "some" relief to a sufferer. But they should not be:(1) with a spirit of murmuring or complaining;(2) they should not be beyond what our sufferings demand, or the proper expression of our sufferings.

Job 23:2 . Even to-day is my complaint bitter — Even at this time notwithstanding all your promises and pretended consolations. For your discourses give me neither relief nor satisfaction. Hence in this and the following chapter Job seldom applies his discourse to his friends, but either addresses his speech to God, or bewails his misery. My stroke is heavier than my groaning — The hand or stroke of God upon me exceeds my complaints.

Even to day is my complaint {a} bitter: my stroke is heavier than my groaning. (a) He shows the just cause of his complaining and concerning that Eliphaz had exhorted him to return to God, Job 22:21 he declares that he desires nothing more, but it seems that God would not be found of him.

2 . The A. V. is almost certainly wrong in its rendering of this verse, though a more satisfactory rendering is hard to give. The text is probably faulty. Literally tendered according to the usual meaning of the words the verse reads, even to-day is my complaint rebellion, my hand is heavy upon my groaning . The A. V. has assumed, after the Vulgate, that the word usually meaning “rebellion” ( mri ) is a form of the word “bitter” ( mar ), or that the latter word should be read. It has also assumed that “my hand” may mean the hand (of God) upon me , i. e. “my stroke.” But this is scarcely possible; “my arrow,” ch. Job 34:6 , being no true parallel. Further, it has assumed that the well-known phrase “to be heavy upon,” e.g. Psalm 32:4 , may mean “to be heavy above,” i. e. heavier than my groaning. This also is scarcely to be believed. On the other hand it is difficult to extract sense from the literal rendering given above. The expression “my complaint is rebellion” may be used from the point of view of the three friends: even to-day (still) is my complaint accounted rebellion , though my hand lies heavy upon my groaning , i. e. represses it; the meaning being, that Job was accounted rebellious by his friends, while in fact his complaint and groaning in no way came up to the terrible weight of his calamities—the same idea as in ch. Job 6:2 . Then the following verses proceed to describe the cause he has for complaint.

Or the words “my complaint is rebellion” may express Job’s own feeling: “I refuse to submit to my afflictions, or acknowledge that they are just.” In this case the next words: “my hand lies heavy on my groaning” must mean “my hand presses out my groaning in a continual stream.” But this is an extraordinary sense to put on the phrase “to lie heavy upon.” Others, assuming that the text is corrupt, make alterations more or less serious in words, as “ His hand” for “ my hand” in the second clause. So already the Sept. Job 23:2