So that my soul chooseth strangling, and death rather than my life.
My soul chooseth strangling. Umbreit translate, 'So that I could wish to strangle myself-dead by my own hands.' He softens this idea of Job's harbouring the thought of suicide, by representing it as entertained only in agonizing dreams, and immediately repudiated with horror next verse. 'Yet that (self-strangling) I loathe.' But the Hebrew х min (H4480)] does not signify the efficient cause 'by my bones' or 'hands' (Maurer). Therefore, as in the English version, the meaning is simply, "My soul chooses (even) strangling (or any violent) death rather than my life" - literally, my bones (Psalms 35:10); - i:e., rather than the wasted and diseased skeleton (Job 19:20) left to me. In elephantiasis sometimes death is caused by violent suffocation. In this view, "I loathe it" (Job 7:16) refers to his life.