Job 17:1 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

My breath is corrupt Is offensive to those around me, through my disease. But, as the word חבלה, chubbalah, here rendered corrupt, may signify bound, straitened, or distressed with pain, as a woman in travail, Chappelow thinks the phrase had better be rendered: Spiritus meus constringitur, vel, cum dolore emititur; that is, I have such an oppression, that I can hardly breathe. The reading of the margin, however, is not to be overlooked, My spirit is spent, or lost, that is, my vital spirits and animal powers are wasted; my soul is ready to leave the body: I am a gone man. My days are extinct The lamp of my life is far spent, and upon the point of going out. The graves are ready for me That is, the grave; the plural number being put for the singular. Or, he speaks of the sepulchres of his fathers, to which he was to be gathered. Sol. Jarchi's comment is, “I am ready for the grave.” The text is only קברים לי, kebarim li, sepulchra mihi: The grave for me, or, I have the grave. Any addition seems to spoil that elegancy of expression which consists in a sudden, quick turn of thought; as if Job had said, My breath is gone; my days extinct; I have a grave. Thus the Vulgate, Solum mihi superest sepulchrum, The grave only remains for me. Wherever we go there is but a step between us and the grave. The sepulchres where our fathers are laid are ready for us also. Whatever is unready, the grave is ready. It is a bed soon made. And, if the grave be ready for us, it concerns us to be ready for the grave.