My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are spent without hope.
Ver. 6. My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle] Which is of a very swift and sudden motion. Nights and days pass the shuttle of man's life forward and backward, to and again. The night casts it to the day, and the day to the night; between these two time quickly wears off the thread of life. I have cut off, like a weaver, my life, saith good Hezekiah, Isaiah 38:12. And the heathens hammered at this in their fiction of the three sister destinies, whereof the poet saith,
Clotho colum baiulat, Lachesis trahit, Atropos occat.
You that are weavers, saith Lavater, or lookers on them at their work, think of this text, and learn to live holy.
And they are spent without hope] Heb. In not hope. I cannot conceive that I shall ever recover, or be recruited, whatever thou, O Eliphaz, hast gone about to put me in hope. All Job's desire was death, which he looked upon as the readiest remedy of all.