Job 19:28

7 Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud, but there is no judgment. Job's friends had passed a very severe censure upon him as a wicked man because he was so grievously afflicted; now here he tells them how ill he took it to be so censured.

Rather, "ye will then (when the Vindicator cometh) say, Why," &c. root . . . in me--The root of pious integrity, which was the matter at issue, whether it could be in one so afflicted, is found in me.

You will always understand a passage of Scripture better if you carefully attend to its connection. The habit of picking out portions from the Bible and separating them from their context may be carried a great deal too far and in the process the reader may miss the mind of the Spirit and force upon the words a meaning of his own. If we were to treat men's books as we do God's Book we would, probably, be judged to be insane! It is, indeed, a wonderful Book to bear such mangling!

You will always understand a passage of Scripture better if you carefully attend to its connection. The habit of picking out portions from the Bible and separating them from their context may be carried a great deal too far and in the process the reader may miss the mind of the Spirit and force upon the words a meaning of his own. If we were to treat men's books as we do God's Book we would, probably, be judged to be insane! It is, indeed, a wonderful Book to bear such mangling! Every sensible person will see that it must always be wise to study the context, for it is likely enough to cast a light upon the passage in hand. Job, in the verse before us, is answering Bildad the Shuhite. Now, this Bildad on two occasions had described Job as a hypocrite and accounted for his dire distress by the fact that, though hypocrites may flourish for a time, they will ultimately be destroyed. In the two bitter speeches which he made, he described the hypocrite under the figure of a tree which is torn up by the roots, or dim even down to the root. In his first address, in the 8th chapter and the 16th verse, he says of the hypocrite, "He is green before the sun and his branch shoots forth in his garden. His roots are wrapped about the heap and sees the place of stones. If he destroys him from his place, then it shall deny him, saying, I have not seen you." Even the very root of the hypocrite was to be pulled up, so that the garden in which he once flourished should not remember that he had ever been there! Being much pleased with his metaphor, Bildad, in the 18th chapter, uses it again. He says, in the 14th verse of the chapter, "His confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle, and it shall bring him to the king of terrors.

But ye should say - Noyes renders this, “Since ye say, ‘How may we persecute him, and find grounds of accusation against him?’” Dr. Good, Then shall ye say, “How did we persecute him?” When the root of the matter is disclosed in me. The Vulgate, “Why now do ye say, let us persecute him, and find ground of accusation - “radicem verbi” against him?” The Septuagint, “If you also say, What shall we say against him? and what ground of accusation - ῥίζαν λόγου rizan logou - shall we find in him?” Rosenmuller renders it, “When you say, let us persecute him, and see what ground of accusation we can find in him, then fear the sword.” Most critics concur in such an interpretation as implies that they had sought a ground of accusation against him, and that they would have occasion to fear the divine displeasure on account of it. It seems to me, however, that our translators have given substantially the fair sense of the Hebrew. A slight variation would, perhaps, better express the idea: “For you will yet say, Why did we persecute him? The root of the matter was found in him - and since this will be the case, fear now that justice will overtake you for it, for vengeance will not always slumber when a friend of God is wronged.” Seeing the root of the matter - Margin, “and” what “root of matter is found in me.” The word rendered “matter” (דבר dâbâr), “word or thing.” means, properly, word or thing - and may refer to “any” thing. Here it is used in one of the two opposite senses, “piety” or “guilt” - as being “the thing” under consideration. The interpretation to be adopted must depend on the view taken of the other words of the sentence. To me it seems that it denotes piety, and that the idea is, that the root of true piety was in him, or that he was not a hypocrite. The word root is so common as to need no explanation. […]