Job 7:12 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Am I a sea Am I as fierce and unruly as the sea, which, if thou didst not set bounds to it, would overwhelm the earth? Or a whale? Am I a vast and ungovernable sea-monster? that thou settest a watch over me? That thou must restrain me by thy powerful providence; must shut me up and confine me under such heavy, unexampled, and insupportable sufferings, as these creatures are confined by the shore? “To set a watch over a whale,” says Dr. Dodd, “is certainly a very improper and absurd idea. Hence Houbigant, by a very slight alteration, reads it, Am I a sea, or a whale, that thou raisest a tempest against me? an idea which very well suits with that storm of troubles, wherewith Job was nearly overwhelmed.” We are apt in affliction to complain of God, as if he laid more upon us than there is occasion for: whereas we are never in heaviness but when there is need, nor more than there is need.