For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters.
Ver. 24. For my sighing cometh before I eat] It cometh unsent for, as evil weather useth to do, and most unseasonably surpriseth me at my repast. I mingle my meat with my tears, with every bit of bread I have a morsel of sorrows; and I mingle my drink with weeping, Psalms 102:9, though indeed Job's was not so much a shower of tears as a storm of sighs, and a volley of roarings, betokening extremity of grief, such as was beyond tears, and vented itself as the noise of many waters; for my roarings, saith he, are poured out like water. I am as hungry as a lion roaring on his prey, and as violent as the torrents ranging the fields; and yet I neither have leisure nor list to eat my bread; as loth to prolong such a troublesome life, but that I must, or be guilty of self murder. Mr Fox reports of Mr John Glover, that not long after his conversion, upon a mistake of the sense of that text, Hebrews 6:5,6, he was strongly concerned that he had fallen into the unpardonable sin, and must necessarily therefore be damned; and in that intolerable grief of mind, although he neither had nor could have any joy of his meat, yet was he compelled to eat against his appetite, to the end to defer the time of his damnation so long as he might (Acts & Mon. 1 552). Now who can tell how near Job's case might come to this, since the devil was both author and actor in a great part of both these tragic comedies?