Job 6:4
For the arrows of the Almighty [are] within me…
Which are
a reason proving the weight and heaviness of his affliction, and also
of his hot and passionate expressions he broke out into; which designs
not so much outward calamities, as famine, pestilence, thunder and
lightning, which are called the arrows of God, (Deuteronomy 32:23,24) (Ezekiel 5:16)
(Psalms 91:5,6) (18:13,14) ; all which had attended Job, and were his case;
being reduced to extreme poverty, had malignant and pestilential ulcers
upon him, and his sheep destroyed by thunder and lightning; and which
were like arrows, that came upon him suddenly, secretly, and at
unawares, and very swiftly; these arrows flew thick and first about,
him, and stuck in him, and were sharp and painful, and wounded and slew
him; for he was now under slaying circumstances of Providence; but
rather these mean, together with his afflictions, the inward
distresses, grief, and anguish of his mind arising from them, being
attended with a keen sense of the divine displeasure, which was the
case of David, and is expressed in much the same language, (Psalms 38:1,2) ;
Job here considers his afflictions as coming from God, as arrows shot
from his bow; and as coming from him, not as a father, in a way of
paternal chastisement, and love, dealing with him as a child of his,
but accounting him as an enemy, and setting him up as a mark or butt to
shoot at, see (Job 7:20) (16:12-14) ; yea, not only as the arrows of a
strong and mighty man, expert in archery, who shoots his arrows with
great strength and skill, so that they miss not, and return not in
vain, see (Psalms 120:4) (127:4) (Jeremiah 50:9) ; but as being the arrows of the
Almighty, which come with force irresistible, with the stretching and
lighting down of his arm, and with the indignation of his anger
intolerable:
the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit;
alluding to the custom of
some people, that used to dip their arrows in poison, or besmear them
with it; so the Persians, as Jarchi observes, and Heliodorus F3
reports of the Ethiopians, that they dipped their arrows in the poison
of dragons, and which made them inflammatory, and raised such an heat,
and such burning pains, as were intolerable; and now, as such poison
presently infected the blood, and penetrated into and seized the animal
spirits, and inflamed and soon exhausted them; so the heat of divine
wrath, and a sense of it, which attended the arrows of God, his
afflictions on Job, so affected him, as not only to take away his
breath, that he could not speak, as in (Job 6:3) , or rather, as to cause
those warm and hot expressions to break out from him, but even to eat
up his vital spirits, and leave him spiritless and lifeless; which was
Heman's case, and similar to Job's, (Psalms 88:3-5) ;
the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me;
the Lord is
sometimes compared to a man of war in arms, stirring up his wrath and
jealousy, (Exodus 15:3) (Isaiah 42:13) ; and in this light he was viewed by Job,
and so he apprehended him, as coming forth against him, and which was
terrible; and his terrors were like an army of soldiers set in battle
array, in rank and file, ready to discharge, or discharging their
artillery upon him; and which sometimes design the inward terrors of
mind, of a guilty conscience, the terrors of God's judgment here, or of
a future judgment hereafter, of death and hell, and eternal damnation,
through the menaces and curses of the law of God transgressed and
broken; but here afflictive providences, or terrible things in
righteousness, which surrounded him, attacked him in great numbers, and
in a hostile military way, with great order and regularity, and which
were frightful to behold; perhaps regard may be also had to those
scaring dreams and terrifying visions he sometimes had, see
(Job 7:14,15) .
FOOTNOTES:
F3 Ethiopic. l. 9. c. 19.
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