I should have been as though I had not been; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.
Ver. 19. I should have been as though I had not been] Here he sings the same song as Job 3:1-26 Job 4:1,21. It is hard to say how oft a child of God may discover the same infirmity. Our lives are fuller of sins than the firmament is of stars or the furnace of sparks.
I should have been carried from the womb to the grave] He makes mention of the grave as a desirable place, which yet in the two last verses he describeth as a place of darkness and disorder. Thus Job himself was in the dark, and in his passion he throweth out words without wisdom. Itaque solicite orandus est Deus, saith one here, God is therefore to be earnestly entreated, that when we are hard put to it with pain and misery, we may not give way to unruly passion, nor suffer our tongues to outlash, as they will be apt to do. See Psalms 39:1; confer Psa 22:1-31 Psalms 77:1,20 Psa 88:1-18 Psalms 89:1,52 ., and we shall see David well nigh as far out as Job in his complaints and wishes; but God can put a difference between the godly and sin in them, as between poison and the box that holdeth it. He can also pity them, as we do poison in a man, which yet we hate in a toad, &c.