Let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know mine integrity.
Ver. 6. Let me be weighed in an even balance] Heb. Let him weigh me; Examine me, saith Tremellius. David, with the like confidence, Search me, O God, saith he, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, any course of sin that is grievous to God or man, wherein I have walked, or my foot hath hasted, Psalms 139:23,24. Job would not rest in his own heart's applause; neither would he be borne down by his friends' false charges; but puts himself into God's hands to be weighed, and then makes no question but his present sufferings will be found heavier than his former miscarriages, in his interdealings with men for matter of gain; and that there is some other cause (though what he knoweth not) for which God doth so grievously afflict him. See David doing the like, Psalms 7:4; Psalms 26:2 .
That God may know mine integrity] i.e. That he may make known mine innocence and upright heartedness in this particular of commerce with others; that I have not dealt deceitfully. Otherwise, if God should weigh the best that are in a balance, they would be found too light; if he mark iniquities no man living can be justified, Psalms 130:3; Psalms 143:2. If he turn up the bottom of the bag all our secret thefts will out, and come to reckoning. It is an idle conceit of some ignorant folk, that God will weigh their good deeds against their bad; and they shall well enough set off with him by the one for the other. This they have drawn (as they have not a few other fopperies) from that practice of Popish priests; to persuade people that when men are at point of death, St Michael, the archangel, bringeth a pair of balances, and putteth in one scale their good works, and in the other their sins; and that if those weigh down these, they are saved, as if otherwise, they are damned. But what saith an ancient, Vae hominum vitae etiamsi laudabili, &c., Woe to the best man alive if God should weigh him in a balance of justice; since his sins would be found heavier than the sands of the sea, Job 9:15; Job 10:15 .