Job 7:13,14 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

My couch shall ease my complaint By giving me sweet and quiet sleep, which may take off my sense of pain for that time. Then thou scarest me with dreams With sad and frightful dreams. And terrifiest me with visions With horrid apparitions; so that I am afraid to go to sleep, and my remedy proves as bad as my disease. This contributed no little to render the night so unwelcome and wearisome to him. How easily can God, when he pleases, meet us with terror there where we promised ourselves ease and repose. Nay, he can make us a terror to ourselves; and, as we have often contracted guilt, by the rovings of an unsanctified fancy, he can likewise, by the power of our imagination, create us a great deal of grief, and so make that our punishment which has often been our sin. Job's dreams might probably arise, in part, from his distemper, but, no doubt, Satan also had a hand in them. We have reason to pray, that our dreams may neither defile nor disquiet us; neither tempt us to sin, nor torment us with fear; that he who keeps Israel, who neither slumbers nor sleeps, would keep us when we slumber and sleep. And we ought to bless God if we lie down and our sleep is sweet, and we are not thus scared.