Job 1:21 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

I brought none of these things which I have now lost with me, when I came out of my mother's womb into the world but I received them from the hand and favour of that God who hath now required his own again. I still have all that substance wherewith I was born, and have lost only things without and beside myself. Naked shall I return thither; I shall be as rich when I die as I was when I was born, and therefore have reason to be contented with my condition, which also is the common lot of all men. Thither, i.e. into my mother's womb, which in the former clause is understood properly, but in this figuratively, of the earth, which is our common mother, as it is called by many authors, out of whose belly we were taken, and into which we must return again, Genesis 3:19 Ecclesiastes 12:7. And as our mother's womb is called the lower parts of the earth, Psalms 139:15, so it is not harsh if reciprocally the lower parts of the earth be called our mother's womb. Nor is it strange that the same phrase should be taken both properly and metaphorically in the same verse; for so it is Matthew 8:22, let the dead spiritually bury the dead corporally. See also Leviticus 26:21,24 Psa 18:26, &c. The Lord hath taken away; he hath taken away nothing but his own, and what he so gave to me that he reserved the supreme dominion and disposal of in his own hand. So I have no cause to murmur or complain of him. Nor have I reason to fret and rage against the Chaldeans, and Sabeans, and other creatures, who were only God's instruments to execute his wise and holy counsel. The name of the Lord, i.e. the Lord; God's name being often put for God himself, as Psalms 44:5, Psalms 48:10 Psalms 72:18,19 Da 2:19,20; as names are put for men, Acts 1:15 Revelation 3:4. The sense is, I have no cause to quarrel with God, but much cause to bless and praise him that he did give me such blessings, and suffered me to enjoy them more and longer than I deserved; and that he hath vouchsafed to afflict me, which I greatly needed for my soul's good, and which I take as a token of his love and faithfulness to me, and therefore ministering more matter of comfort than grief to me; and that he hath left me the comfort of my wife, and yet is pleased to continue to me the health of my body, and a composed mind, and a heart to submit to his good pleasure; and that he hath reserved and prepared such a felicity for me, whom no Chaldeans or Sabeans, no men nor devils, can take away from me; of which see Job 19:25.