(1) В¶ But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock. (2) Yea, whereto might the strength of their hands profit me, in whom old age was perished? (3) For want and famine they were solitary; fleeing into the wilderness in former time desolate and waste. (4) Who cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper roots for their meat. (5) They were driven forth from among men, (they cried after them as after a thief;) (6) To dwell in the clifts of the valleys, in caves of the earth, and in the rocks. (7) Among the bushes they brayed; under the nettles they were gathered together. (8) They were children of fools, yea, children of base men: they were viler than the earth. (9) And now am I their song, yea, I am their byword. (10) They abhor me, they flee far from me, and spare not to spit in my face. (11) Because he hath loosed my cord, and afflicted me, they have also let loose the bridle before me. (12) Upon my right hand rise the youth; they push away my feet, and they raise up against me the ways of their destruction. (13) They mar my path, they set forward my calamity, they have no helper. (14) They came upon me as a wide breaking in of waters: in the desolation they rolled themselves upon me. (15) В¶ Terrors are turned upon me: they pursue my soul as the wind: and my welfare passeth away as a cloud. (16) And now my soul is poured out upon me; the days of affliction have taken hold upon me. (17) My bones are pierced in me in the night season: and my sinews take no rest. (18) By the great force of my disease is my garment changed: it bindeth me about as the collar of my coat.
I include the complaint of Job through all these verses in one point of view, not only for shortness sake, but also because general observations upon them will equally suit the whole. In this lamentation, the patriarch is reasoning with his three friends. Having taken a view, in the preceding chapter, of his high exaltation, what he once was, he now directs them to behold, what he now is. And from both, the Patriarch desired to make an appeal to their feelings and compassion. But I hope that the reader hath not failed, while perusing those verses, to look beyond Job, and to have had his mind led out, in contemplating an infinitely greater than Job, concerning whom many of the expressions here made use of can hardly, I should think, be read, without beholding him in them. Indeed so strikingly do they set forth the LORD JESUS, in several parts of his humiliation in the days of his flesh, that one might be led to think, even if not found in the word of GOD, that the several expressions were intended principally to point to him. Was not JESUS, when he had left the realms of glory, and condescended to tabernacle in our flesh, for the redemption of our nature, was he not held in derision, and made the drunkard's song? Doth Job complain of want and famine, and solitary places; and can the believer overlook Him, who in the very moment he had been baptized with the fulness of the SPIRIT, was led up into the wilderness, to dwell with wild beasts, and to be tempted of the devil? Did Job complain of being spit upon, of being abhorred and forsaken; and can we forget how JESUS was buffeted, and thus treated, and how all his disciples forsook him, and fled? Was Job's soul pursued, terrors turned upon him; his soul poured out, and his bones pierced; and can anyone omit to call to mind, how the LAMB of GOD was overwhelmed with terrors in the garden, and on the cross, when he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors; his hands and his side pierced; and, as was said of him by the spirit of prophecy, he was poured out like water, and all his bones were out of joint; his heart, like wax, melted in the midst of his bowels? Oh, thou bleeding, dying, reviled Saviour! never may my soul forget thy sufferings, nor lose sight of thee, and thine unequalled sorrows, while reading the sorrows of thy people. Thou hast thyself, dearest JESUS, marked the vast difference: when speaking of the afflictions of thine afflicted, thou pointedst to their deliverance in GOD. Our fathers trusted in GOD; they trusted, and thou didst deliver them: But I am a worm, and no man, a reproach of men, and despised of the people. Psalms 22:4-6.