Job 5:7 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Yet man is born to trouble, &c. He is so commonly exposed to various troubles, as if he were born to no other end: affliction is become natural to man, and is transmitted from parents to children, as their constant inheritance; God having allotted this portion to mankind for their sins. And therefore thou takest a wrong course in complaining so bitterly of that which thou shouldst patiently bear, as the common lot of mankind. As As naturally, and as generally, as the sparks of fire fly upward Why then should we be surprised at our afflictions, as strange, or quarrel with them, as hard? This last clause, literally translated from the Hebrew, is, As the sons of the burning coal raise themselves up to fly. Instead, however, of sparks, or the sons of the coal, the author of the Vulgate writes, Homo nascitur ad laborem, et avis ad volatum, man is born for labour, (or trouble,) and the bird for flying; reading, עו Š, gnoph, a bird, for gnuph, to fly. To the same purpose is the interpretation of the LXX., Syr. and Arab.