Job 7:8

7:7-16 Plain truths as to the shortness and vanity of man's life, and the certainty of death, do us good, when we think and speak of them with application to ourselves. Dying is done but once, and therefore it had need be well done. An error here is past retrieve. Other clouds arise, but the same cloud never returns: so a new generation of men is raised up, but the former generation vanishes away. Glorified saints shall return no more to the cares and sorrows of their houses; nor condemned sinners to the gaieties and pleasures of their houses. It concerns us to secure a better place when we die. From these reasons Job might have drawn a better conclusion than this, I will complain. When we have but a few breaths to draw, we should spend them in the holy, gracious breathings of faith and prayer; not in the noisome, noxious breathings of sin and corruption. We have much reason to pray, that He who keeps Israel, and neither slumbers nor sleeps, may keep us when we slumber and sleep. Job covets to rest in his grave. Doubtless, this was his infirmity; for though a good man would choose death rather than sin, yet he should be content to live as long as God pleases, because life is our opportunity of glorifying him, and preparing for heaven.

Broughton renders it, "the quick eye" (f): this is to be understood as "after" (g) death, that then the sharpest eye should not see him, he would be out of the reach of it; which must be taken with a limitation; for men after death are seen by the eyes of the omniscient God, their souls, be they in heaven or in hell, and their bodies in the grave; and as for good men, such as Job, they are at once with him in his immediate presence, beholding and beheld by him; and they are seen by angels, whose care and charge their souls become immediately upon death, and are carried by them into heaven, where they are fellow worshippers with them; and they are seen by glorified saints, to whose company they are joined; for if the rich man in hell could see Abraham, and Lazarus in his bosom, Luke 16:23 , then much more do the saints see one another: but the meaning is, that when a man is dead, he is seen no more by men on earth, by his relations, friends, and acquaintance; the consideration of which is a cutting stroke at parting, see Acts 20:25 ; the state of the dead is an invisible state, and therefore called in the Greek tongue "Hades", "unseen"; so the dead will remain, with respect to the inhabitants of this world, till the resurrection, and then they shall see and be seen again in the same bodies they now have; for this is no denial of the resurrection of the dead, as some Jewish writers charge Job with, and infer from this and some following passages: thine eyes are upon me, and I a

Verse 8. - The eye of him that hath seen me shall see me no more ; that is, I shall go down to the grave, and be no more seen upon earth. Neither friend nor enemy shall behold me after that. Thine eyes . God's eyes. God still sees him and watches him; this is a certain consolation; but will it last? Are upon me, and I am not. I am on the point of disappearing. Even now I scarcely exist. Job 7:8

8. The eye of him who beholds me (present, not past), that is, in the very act of beholding me, seeth me no more. Thine eyes are upon me, and I am not—He disappears, even while God is looking upon him. Job cannot survive the gaze of Jehovah (Ps 104:32; Re 20:11). Not, "Thine eyes seek me and I am not to be found"; for God's eye penetrates even to the unseen world (Ps 139:8). Umbreit unnaturally takes "thine" to refer to one of the three friends.

Shall see me no more in this mortal state; I shall never return to this life again. Thine eyes are upon me, and I am not: either, 1. If thou dost but east one angry look upon me, I am not , i.e. I am a dead man. So that phrase is used Genesis 5:24 42:13 44:20 Psa 103 16 Jer 31:15 . Or, 2. When thine eyes shall be upon me (i.e. when thou shalt look for me to do me good, thou wilt find that) I am not , that I am dead and gone, and uncapable of that bounty and goodness which thou givest to men in this world. Compare Job 7:21 Psalm 10:15 Jeremiah 50:20 .

The eye of him that hath seen me shall see me no more - I shall be cut off from all my friends - one of the things which most distresses people when they come to die. Thine eyes are upon me, and I am not - see Job 7:21. Dr. Good renders this, "let thine eye be upon me, and I am nothing." Herder, "thine eye will seek me, but I am no more." According to this the sense is, that he was soon to be removed from the place where he had dwelt, and that should he be sought there he could not be found. He would seem to represent God as looking for him, and not finding him; see Job 7:21. The margin has," I can live no longer." It may be possible that this is the meaning, that God had fixed an intense gaze upon him, and that he could not survive it. If this is the sense, then it accords with the descriptions given of the majesty of God everywhere in the Scriptures - that nothing could endure His presence, that even the earth trembles, and the mountains melt away, at his touch. Thus, in Psalm 104:32 : He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth; He toucheth the hills, and they smoke. Compare the representation of the power of the eye in Job 16:9 : He teareth me in his wrath who hateth me; He gnasheth upon me with his teeth Mine enemy sharpeneth his eyes upon me. On the whole, I think it probable that this is the sense here. There is an energy in the original which is greatly enfeebled in the common translation.