I am clean without transgression, I [am] innocent; neither [is there] iniquity in me.
Ver. 9. I am clean without transgression] Clear as the picked glass, without defection.
I am innocent] Heb. Neat and compt, not a hair out of order; as it was objected to Pompey the Great, Nitidus ego, הפ a Syriaca voce חפפ pectere.
Neither is there iniquity in me] Nothing crooked or dishonest. But had Elihu ever heard Job saying thus? Or did not he rather misinterpret his words? Some proud monk hath been heard to say, Non habeo, Domino, quod mihi ignoscas, I have not done anything, Lord, that needeth thy pardon. The reporter of Bellarmine's life and death telleth us, that when the priest came to absolve him, he could not remember any particular sin he had to confess; till he went back in his thoughts as far as his youth. But good Job had no such conceit of himself, as may appear by many passages of his, as Job 9:2; Job 9:20,21; Job 14:4; &c. Only out of the greatness of his grief, and the unkind usage of his friends (who spared not without all reason to revile him as a most wicked and ungodly liver), he did soon cast out some rash and harsh words against God, see Job 10:7 ; Job 16:17 ; Job 23:10,11 ; Job 27:5 and hence this accusation here laid against him as a perfectist, or self-justiciary.