Job 7:7-11 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

That my life is wind— That my life is but empty breath. Houbigant. It is easy to observe, in almost all Job's speeches, the struggle which he laboured under, between an earnest desire of death, as a removal from a life of pain and misery, and a dread of it, as he must die in the ill opinion of his friends, and leave a blot and a reproach upon his memory, which he should never have the opportunity to wipe off again; for after death there was no return. Read with attention the following verses in this view; and you will see nothing in them which contradicts the doctrine of a future resurrection, and another state of life, as some would have us believe. The expressions, indeed, are strong; Thine eyes are upon me, and I am not; Job 7:8. He that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more, Job 7:9. But nevertheless the following verse shews the full importance of these phrases; that they mean just so much, and no more than this: He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more. Peters; who observes, that the expression, and I am not, is used by Homer's heroes for the dead; and yet no one questions their belief of a future state. Thus Telemachus says of his father Ulysses: "If I hear that he is dead, and is not any longer, [μηδ ετ εοντος] then I will celebrate his funeral, &c."