Job 36:20,21 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Desire not the night The night of death, which Job had often desired, for then thou art irrecoverably gone: take heed of thy foolish and often-repeated desire of death, lest God inflict it upon thee in anger. When people are cut off in their place By which individuals, and even whole nations and bodies of people, are sometimes cut off in wrath, in their several places where they are: or, are suddenly taken away before they can remove out of the place where the stroke of God finds them; or, in the place where they are settled and surrounded with all manner of comforts and friends, all which cannot prevent their being cut off. Take heed, regard not iniquity Hebrew, אל תפן, al teepen, look not to it; namely, with an approving or desiring eye, as this expression is used Proverbs 23:31. This hast thou chosen rather than affliction Thou hast chosen rather to quarrel with God, and censure his judgments, than humbly and quietly, submit to them, and wait upon God by faith and prayer for deliverance in his due time and appointed way.