And if thou deal thus with me,.... Let the whole weight of government lie upon me, and leave the alone to bear it:
kill me, I pray thee, out of hand; take me out of the world at once, or "kill me now, in killing" n; dispatch me immediately, and make a thorough end of me directly:
if I have found favour in thy sight; if thou hast any love for me, or art willing to show me a kindness, to remove me by death, I shall take as one:
and let me not see my wretchedness; or live to be the unhappy man I shall be; pressed with such a weight of government, affected and afflicted with the wants of a people I cannot relieve, or seeing them bore down with judgments and punishments inflicted on them for their sins and transgressions I am not able to prevail upon them to abstain from: so the Targum of Jerusalem,
"that I may not see their evil, who are thy people;''
so Abendana, and in the margin of some Hebrew copies, it is read,
"this is one of the eighteen words, the correction of the scribes;''
who, instead of "my wretchedness" or evil, corrected it, "their wretchedness" or evil; but Aben Ezra says there is no need of this correction.
n הרגני נא הרג "occide me nunc occidendo", Drusius; "occide me jam, occide", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator.