If my land cry against me, or that the furrows likewise thereof complain;
Ver. 38. If my land cry against me] As unjustly gotten; where we have an elegant personification not unlike that of the prophet, Habakkuk 2:11,12, where the stone out of the wall cries out against the oppressor, and the tignum e ligno, the beam out of the timber, answereth it by a woeful antiphony. It hath been noted before, that Goropius will have the English to be called Angli, because they were good anglers, and had skill to lay various baits when they fished for other men's livings. May it be our care to disprove him, and to show ourselves angels rather (as Gregory the Great derived us), and our land to be Regnum Dei, the kingdom of God, as it was anciently counted and called, by the holiness and righteousness exercised among us (Polydore Virgil). These two make up one perfect pair of compasses, which can take the true latitude of an upright heart (such as Job's was, witness this whole chapter). The first, like the top of Jacob's ladder, reacheth up to heaven; the second, like the foot of the ladder, resteth on the earth, or rather walketh about in a perfect circle of all such duties as one man oweth to another. Job was famous for both, whatever his friends surmised or suggested to the contrary. He was righteously religious and religiously righteous; exercising the first table of the law in the second, and caring to keep always a conscience void of offence toward God and toward men, Acts 24:16 .
Or that the furrows thereof likewise complain] Si plorant porcae. Heb. Weep, sc. As it were, out of a desire after their own right owner, from whom they are detained, as was Naboth's vineyard.