Job 6:4 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The arrows of the Almighty are within me, &c. The sublimity of style, and beautiful vein of poetry, which run through this verse, are well deserving of the reader's particular attention. He fitly terms his afflictions arrows, because, like arrows, they came upon him swiftly and suddenly, one after another, and that from on high, and wounded him deeply. And he calls them arrows of the Almighty, not only, generally speaking, because all afflictions come from him, but particularly, because God's hand was in a singular manner visible and eminent in his sufferings, and especially because they were immediately shot by God into his spirit, so that they were within him, as it follows, not like the external evils mentioned chap. 1., which were passed, but fixed and constant in his very nature, producing sharp pains in his body, and dismal horrors in his mind. The poison whereof drinketh up my spirit Or, as the Hebrew may be rendered, The poison whereof my spirit drinketh up: which is the construction of Pagninus and the Targum. But our translation is more poetical, and quite agreeable to Moses's sublime expression, Deuteronomy 32:42, where he represents God as taking vengeance on his enemies, and saying, I will make mine arrows drunk with blood. The words imply, that these arrows were more keen and pernicious than ordinary, being dipped in God's wrath, as the barbarous nations used to dip their arrows in poison, that they might not only pierce, but burn up and consume the vital parts. Thus did the poison of God's arrows drink up his spirit, that is, exhaust and consume his life and soul. The terrors of God do set themselves in array They are like a numerous army invading me on every side. Houbigant renders it, The terrors of the Lord confound me. This was the sorest part of his calamity, wherein he was an eminent type of Christ, who complained most of the sufferings of his soul. Indeed, trouble of mind is the sorest trouble. A wounded spirit, who can bear? “He had patience enough,” says Lord Clarendon, “for the oppression and rapine of his enemies, for the unkindness and reproach of his friends, and for the cunning and malice of the devil; but he was so transported with the sense of God's anger against him, he could not bear that with temper: the apprehension that all those miseries, of so piercing and destroying a nature in themselves, fell upon him, not only by God's permission, to try and humble him, but proceeded directly from his indignation and resolution to destroy him, almost confounded him. When they appeared no more the arrows of his enemies levelled and shot at his greatness and prosperity, the enterprises and designs of evil men, suborned by the devil against him; but the artillery which God himself discharged upon him in his greatest displeasure and fury, he was able to stand the shock no longer, and thought he had some reason to pour out his complaints and lamentations with a little more earnestness; and that the grief and trouble of his mind might excuse the want of that order, and method, and deliberation, which the ease, and calm condition, and disputing humour of his friends, who were only healthy spectators of what he suffered, reproachfully required from him.”