For thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth.
Ver. 26. For thou writest bitter things against me] As it were by a judicial rescript thou decreest my doom; and accordingly thou inflictest hard and heavy things upon me, as is most elegantly described in the following verses by metaphor fetched from the course of courts, Humanitus dictum ex usu forensi (Jun.). Sin is an evil and a bitter thing, Jer 2:19 Hebrews 12:15 Acts 8:23; and hath bitter effects, Ruth 1:20 Exodus 1:14. This made that holy man, Mr Paul Baine, say, The sweet ways of my youth did breed such worms in my soul, as that my heavenly Father will have me yet a little while continue my bitter worm seed, because they cannot otherwise be throughly killed. I thank God, saith he in another place, sustentation I have, but sweet spirituals I taste not any (Mr Clark in his Life). It is reported of this good man that, when he came first to Cambridge, his conversation was so irregular, that his father, being grieved at it, before his death left with a friend forty pounds by the year, desiring that his son might have it if he amended his manners, else not: he afterwards had it, as he well deserved, as proving a notable instrument of much good to many, and particularly to that Reverend Dr Sibbs, whom he converted; howbeit, in his last sickness he had many fears and doubts, and God letting Satan loose upon him, he went out of this world with far less comfort than many weaker Christians enjoy; his case being not unlike his who saith in the next words,
And makest me to possess (or to inherit) the iniquities of my youth] Which I took for pardoned long since (and so no doubt but they were); but Job's affliction renewed the remembrance of them to his conscience, as it is the best art of memory. Satan also made him believe that now he was punished for the new and the old, as we say, and that God meant to make him answer for all the sins of his life at once, having watched a time to be revenged on him for all together. Youth is a slippery age, and soon slips into sin. There is great cause that a young man should cleanse his ways, Psalms 119:9, where the word Nagnar, signifying a lad, or stripling, comes from a root signifying to shake off, or to be tossed to and fro. And the other word, rendered cleanse, signifieth to be clean as glass, which will soon gather a new dustiness. Such must cleanse their ways, by cleaving to the word; or otherwise, they may one day groan as much under the sins then committed as many do under the blows and bruises then received. See the former note.