I have sinned; what shall I do unto thee, O thou preserver of men? why hast thou set me as a mark against thee, so that I am a burden to myself?
Ver. 20. I have sinned] Or, Have I sinned? Have I fallen into any foul offence, as these men charge me? Am I guilty of anything more than involuntary failings, unavoidable infirmities? although I know that these also are downright sins, fruits of the flesh properly so called, missings of the mark, as the word here signifieth, and for such I humbly confess them, I put myself into the hands of thy justice in hope of thy mercy; and what wilt thou more of thy poor creature?
What shall I do unto thee] No sooner had Job confessed his sin, but he is desirous to know a remedy. Reprobates can cry Peccavi, I have sinned; but then they proceed not to say, as here, What shall I do? They open their wound, but lay not on a plaster, and so the wounds made by sin are more putrefied, and grow more dangerous. Job would be directed what to do for remedy; he would have pardoning grace and prevailing grace upon any terms; and more than this, what can I do unto thee? δυνησομαι πραξαι, as the Septuagint render this text.
O thou preserver of men?] Of all men, but especially of them that believe, 1 Timothy 4:10. The Grecians called their Jupiter ελευθεριος, the deliverer or preserver of their persons; and again, ερκειος, from ερκος, a wall, as if he were the watch and defender of their houses. Some render it, O thou observer of men. But these are praises proper to the true God, the keeper of his Israel, Psalms 121:4. The preserver of the faithful, Psalms 31:23. Whom he keepeth as the apple of his eye, Psalms 17:8, that tenderest piece of the tenderest part, most diligently and strongly guarded by nature with tunicles. It is the wisdom of a Christian in his addresses unto God to make choice of fit and appropiate titles and attributes; for the strengthening of his faith, and increasing of his fervency.
Why hast thou set me as a mark against thee] As a bulwark, as an object, or as a rock of offence, against which thou mayest always dash; so Vatablus rendereth it; to the same sense Job asketh, Job 19:11; Job 13:24. Wherefore holdest thou me for thine enemy? So Lam 3:12 Job 16:13. Job conceived that God dealt with him in no other way than the Turks did with the great crucifix of Constantinople, upon the head whereof they put a Turk's cap, and so setting it up in derision, shot at it with their arrows, calling it the God of the Christians: or, as the same Turks at the taking of Tripoli, in Barbary, dealt with one John de Chabas, a Frenchman, who in the time of the siege had shot off the hand of the clerk general of the army. They brought him into the town, saith the story, and when they had cut off his hands and nose, they put him quick into the ground to the waist, and there for their pleasure shot at him with their arrows, and afterwards cut his throat.
So that I am a burden to myself?] How can he be otherwise who is a butt mark for Almighty God, who cleft his very reins asunder, and poured out his gall upon the ground, Job 16:13. Job had once before complained that the poison of God's arrows had drunk up his spirits, Job 6:4 Neither did anything lie so heavy upon him, or was so burdensome to him, as this, that God seemed to frown upon him, and to fight against him with his own hand. The Septuagint and Talmudists read thus, So that I am a burden unto thee, viz. with my complaints and expostulations; this, say they, was the ancient reading.