For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest,
Ver. 13. For now should I have lain still and been quiet] Why, but is it not better to be preserved in salt than to putrefy in sugar? to be emptied from vessel to vessel, than to be at ease, and so to settle on the lees? Jeremiah 48:11; to be tumbled up and down, as fishes are in the streams of Jordan, than to perish in the Dead Sea? It is not always (if at all) a happiness to lie still and be quiet. Life consists in action; and in all these things is the life of my spirit, saith good Hezekiah, who had been in death's hands (where Job so much desired to be), and could therefore make a better judgment, Isaiah 38:16. What haste, then, was there of his lying still, and being quiet; say that he were assured of his salvation (for else death had been but a trap door to eternal torments), was there nothing more to be done, but taking present possession? nothing to be suffered with Christ, or ere we come to be glorified with him? Romans 8:17. Ought not he himself first to have suffered and then to have entered into his glory? Luke 24:26. And ought not we to be conformed to his image (in sufferings also) that he might be the firstborn among many brethren? Romans 8:29. Let us run with patience (running is active, and patience passive) the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, &c., and looking off our present troubles (as the word αφορωντες, Hebrews 1:12, importeth), which while Job beheld too wishtly, and was more sensible of than was meet, he brake out in this sort, and showed himself too much a man. Let us do up our work, and then God will send us to bed all in good time, Isaiah 57:1,21 : 2 Kings 16:13 .