Job 23:16 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

For God maketh my heart soft. — That is, “He has made it full of apprehension and fear, and the Almighty hath troubled me in these two respects: that He did not cut me off before the darkness, so that I had never been born, or that He did not hide darkness from mine eyes after giving me life.” (Comp. Job 3:11; Job 3:20, &c.) We may understand this of the physical suffering to which he was subjected, or of the mental distress and perplexity under which he laboured.