Job 9:30,31 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

If I wash myself with snow-water, &c. If I clear myself from all imputations, and fully prove my innocence before men; yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch That is, in miry and puddle water, whereby I shall become most filthy. As Job's washing himself is to be understood only of his clearing himself judicially, and showing that he was innocent of the things laid to his charge, so God's plunging him, &c., is not to be understood of his making him sinful and guilty, but of his proving him to be so, notwithstanding all the professions and evidences of his purity before men. And mine own clothes shall abhor me I shall be so filthy, that my own clothes, if they had any sense in them, would abhor to touch me. Job saw that his afflictions, coming from the hand of God, were the things that blackened him in the eyes of his friends, and caused them to think him a wicked man; and therefore, on that account, as well as because of the pain and torment they gave him, he complained of them, and of the continuance of them. Observe, reader, if we be ever so industrious to justify ourselves before men, and to preserve our credit with them; if we keep our hands ever so clean from the pollutions of gross sin; yet God, who knows our hearts, can charge us with so much secret iniquity, and internal depravity, as must for ever cut us off from all hopes of ever being able to justify ourselves before him. Paul, while a Pharisee, had made his hands, as he thought, very clean, but when the commandment came, and discovered to him that his inward parts were very wickedness, he found himself plunged in the ditch.