Is not destruction to the wicked? - That is, Job says that he was well aware that destruction would overtake the wicked, and that if he had given indulgence to impure desires he could have looked for nothing else. Well knowing this, he says, he had guarded himself in the most careful manner from sin, and had labored with the greatest assiduity to keep his eyes and his heart pure.
And a strange punishment - - ונכר weneker. The word used here, means literally strangeness - a strange thing, something with which we were unacquainted. It is used here evidently in the sense of a strange or unusual punishment; something which does not occur in the ordinary course of events. The sense is, that for the sin here particularly referred to, God would interpose to inflict vengeance in a manner such as did not occur in the ordinary dealings of his providence. There would be some punishment adopted especially to this sin, and which would mark it with his special displeasure. Has it not been so in all ages? The Vulgate renders it, alienatio, and the Septuagint translates it in a similar manner - ἀπαλλοτρίωσις apallotriōsis - and they seem to have understood it as followed by entire alienation from God; an idea which would be every where sustained by a reference to the history of the sin referred to by Job. There is no sin that so much poisons all the fountains of pure feeling in the soul, and none that will so certainly terminate in the entire wreck of character.