Matthew Henry

For distress does not spring from the dust, and trouble does not sprout from the ground.

“We must not attribute our afflictions to fortune, for they are from God, nor our sins to fate, for they are from ourselves; so that, whatever trouble we are in, we must own that God sends it upon us and we procure it to ourselves…”

However, if I were you, I would appeal to God and lay my cause before Him—

“(1.) We must by prayer fetch in mercy and grace from God, seek to him as a Father and friend, though he contend with us, as one who is alone able to support and succour us.”

He sets the lowly on high, so that mourners are lifted to safety.

“Those whom proud men contrive to crush he raises from under their feet, and sets them in safety, Ps. xii. The lowly in heart, and those that mourn, he advances, comforts, and makes to dwell on high, in the munitions of rocks, Isa. xxxiii.”

He thwarts the schemes of the crafty, so that their hands find no success. He catches the wise in their craftiness, and sweeps away the plans of the cunning.

“There is a supreme power that manages and overrules men who think themselves free and absolute, and fulfils its own purposes in spite of their projects.”

Blessed indeed is the man whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.

“Nay, he is happy because he is afflicted; correction is an evidence of his sonship and a means of his sanctification; it mortifies his corruptions, weans his heart from the world, draws him nearer to God, brings him to his Bible, brings him to his…”

For He wounds, but He also binds; He strikes, but His hands also heal.

“All is well again; and he comforts them according to the time wherein he afflicted them. God's usual method is first to wound and then to heal, first to convince and then to comfort, first to humble and then to exalt; and (as Mr.”

He will rescue you from six calamities; no harm will touch you in seven.

“This intimates that,as long as we are here in this world, we must expect a succession of troubles, that the clouds will return after the rain.”

You will laugh at destruction and famine, and need not fear the beasts of the earth.

“Blessed Paul laughed at destruction when he said, O death! where is thy sting? when, in the name of all the saints, he defied all the calamities of this present time to separate us from the love of God, concluding that in all these things…”

For you will have a covenant with the stones of the field, and the wild animals will be at peace with you.

“18 , I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field. This implies that while man is at enmity with his Maker the inferior creatures are at war with him; but tranquillus Deus tranquillat omnia--a reconciled God reconciles all things.”

“If only my grief could be weighed and placed with my calamity on the scales.

“He excuses the passionate expressions he had used when he cursed his day. Though he could not himself justify all he had said, yet he thought his friends should not thus violently condemn it, for really the case was extraordinary, and that might be connived…”

For the arrows of the Almighty have pierced me; my spirit drinks in their poison; the terrors of God are arrayed against me.

“Herein he was a type of Christ, who, in his sufferings, complained most of the sufferings of his soul. Now is my soul troubled, John xii. My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, Matt. xxvi.”

Is tasteless food eaten without salt, or is there flavor in the white of an egg?

“He was forced to eat unsavoury meats, and was so poor that he had not a grain of salt wherewith to season them, nor to give a little taste to the white of an egg, which was now the choicest dish he had at his…”

My soul refuses to touch them; they are loathsome food to me.

“Note, It is wisdom not to use ourselves or our children to be nice and dainty about meat and drink, because we know not how we or they may be reduced, nor how that which we now disdain may be made acceptable by necessity.”

that God would be willing to crush me, to unleash His hand and cut me off!

“It was his sin so passionately to desire the hastening of his own death, and offering up that desire to God made it no better; nay, what looked ill in his wish looked worse in his prayer, for we ought not to ask any thing…”

But my brothers are as faithless as wadis, as seasonal streams that overflow,

“Note, It is fraud and deceit not only to violate our engagements to our friends, but to frustrate their just expectations from us, especially the expectations we have raised. Note, further, It is our wisdom to cease from man.”

Caravans turn aside from their routes; they go into the wasteland and perish.

“When those who are rich and high are sunk and impoverished, and stand in need of comfort, then those who before gathered about them stand aloof from them, those who before commended them are forward to run them down.”

My flesh is clothed with worms and encrusted with dirt; my skin is cracked and festering.

“His sores bred worms, the scabs were like clods of dust, and his skin was broken; so evil was the disease which cleaved fast to him.”

He never returns to his house; his place remembers him no more.

“The rich man in hell desired that Lazarus might be sent to his house, knowing it was to no purpose to ask that he might have leave to go himself.”

If I have sinned, what have I done to You, O watcher of mankind? Why have You made me Your target, so that I am a burden to You?

“(1.) He ingenuously owns himself guilty before God: I have sinned. God had said of him that he was a perfect and an upright man; yet he says of himself, I have sinned.”

“How long will you go on saying such things? The words of your mouth are a blustering wind.

“Thus (as Caryl observes) reproofs are often grounded upon mistakes. Men's meaning is not taken aright, and then they are gravely rebuked as if they were evil-doers.”

Does God pervert justice? Does the Almighty pervert what is right?

“Yet he is not fair and candid in the application. He takes it for granted that Job's children (the death of whom was one of the greatest of his afflictions) had been guilty of some notorious wickedness, and that the unhappy circumstances of their death…”

But if you would earnestly seek God and ask the Almighty for mercy, if you are pure and upright, even now He will rouse Himself on your behalf and restore…

“That it was a usual thing for Providence to extinguish the joys and hopes of wicked men as his were extinguished; and therefore that they had reason to suspect him for a hypocrite,”

Please inquire of past generations and consider the discoveries of their fathers.

“It is only the prayer of the upright that is the acceptable and prevailing prayer, Prov. xv. (2.) He gives him good hopes that he shall yet again see good days, secretly suspecting, however, that he was not qualified to see them.”

He will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with a shout of joy.

“Now it is true that God will not cast away an upright man; he may be cast down for a time, but he shall not be cast away for ever.”

Your enemies will be clothed in shame, and the tent of the wicked will be no more.”

“Sin brings ruin on persons and families. Yet to argue (as Bildad, I doubt, slyly does) that because Job's family was sunk, and he himself at present seemed helpless, therefore he certainly was an ungodly wicked man, was neither just nor charitable, as long as…”