If I have walked with vanity, or if my foot hath hasted to deceit;
Ver. 5. If I have walked with vanity] As they do who disquiet themselves in vain, in heaping up riches by evil arts, by deceits and covin in bargaining; by getting other men's means fraudulently, &c. "The getting of treasures by a lying tongue" (or any the like indirect course) "is a vanity tossed to and fro for them who seek death," Proverbs 21:6. Eventually such do seek death, though not intentionally; they spin a fair thread to strangle themselves, both temporally and eternally. Such vain and vile ways, therefore, Job carefully declined; for he knew them to be both base and bootless, Furtum a Virg. vocatur inane (Aeneid 6). Ephraim fed upon the wind, the balances of deceit were in his hand; if, thereby, he filled his purse with coin, yet he had emptiness in his soul; Lucrum in arca, damnum in conscientia: filled he was with air, and that air was pestilential too; his breath and death he drew in together. Job would have none of that.
Or if my foot hath hasted to deceit] If I have been nimble and active to go beyond and defraud another in any matter, 1 Thessalonians 4:6, which, what is it else but crimea stellionatus, the very sin of deception? and this not only acted, but arted, after long trading in it, as the words of walking and hasting seem to import.