If he cut off - Margin, "Make a change." But neither of these phrases properly expresses the sense of the original. The whole image here is probably that of arresting a criminal and bringing him to trial, and the language is taken from the mode of conducting a prosecution. The word rendered "cut off" - יחלף yachâlop, from חלף châlaph - means properly to pass along; to pass on; then to pass against anyone, to rush on, to assail; and in a remote sense in the Piel and the Hiphil, to cause to pass on or away, that is, to change. This is the sense expressed in the margin. The idea is not that of cutting off, but is that of making a rush upon a man, for the purpose of arresting him and bringing him to trial. There are frequent references to such trials in the book of Job. The Chaldee renders this, "if he pass on and shut up the heavens with clouds" - but the paraphrasist evidently did not understand the passage.
And shut up - That is, imprison or detain with a view to trial. Some such detention is always practiced of necessity before trial.
Or gather together - Gather together the parties for trial; or rather call the individual into court for trial. The word קהל qâhal means properly to call together, to convoke, as a people; and is used to denote the custom of assembling the people for a trial - or, as we would say, to "call the court," which is now the office of a crier.
Then who can hinder him? - Margin, "Who can turn him away?" He has all power, and no one can resist him. No one can deliver the criminal from his hands. Zophar here is in fact repeating in another form what Job had himself said (Job 9:3 ff), and the sentiment seems to be proverbial. The idea here is, that if God should call a man into judgment, and hold him guilty, he could neither answer nor resist him. God is so great; he so intimately knows the human heart; he has so thorough an acquaintance with all our past sins, that we cannot hope to answer him or escape. Zophar argues on this principle: "God holds you to be guilty. He is punishing you accordingly. You do not feel it so, or suppose that you deserve all this. But he sees your heart, and knows all your life. If he holds you to be guilty, it is so. You cannot answer him, and you should so regard it, and submit."

If he cut off - As he is unlimited and almighty, he cannot be controlled. He will do whatsoever he pleases; and he is pleased with nothing but what is right. Who then will dare to find fault? Perhaps Zophar may refer to Job's former state, his losses and afflictions. If he cut off, as he has done, thy children; if he shut up, as he has done, thyself by this sore disease; or gather together hostile bands to invade thy territories and carry away thy property; who can hinder him? He is sovereign, and has a right to dispose of his own property as he pleases.

If he cut off, and (e) shut up, or gather together, then who can hinder him?
(e) If God should turn the state of things and establish a new order in nature, who could control him?

If he cut off,.... The horns, power, dominion, and authority of the wicked; or the spirits of princes, or kingdoms and states, whole nations, as he did the seven nations of Canaan; or families, as Job's, his servants, and his children; or particular persons, by diseases, or by judgments, by famine, sword, and pestilence; there is none can hinder him; he will do what he pleases: or, as others render it, "if he changes" (l); if he makes revolutions in governments, changes in families, and in the estates of men, as in Job's; or changes men's countenances by death, and sends them out of time into eternity, there is no opposing him: or, "if he passes through" (m), as the word is sometimes used; see Isaiah 8:8; if he comes out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth, and goes through a kingdom and nation, making or suffering to be made devastations everywhere, as he went through the land of Egypt and smote all the firstborn in it, there is no stopping him: or, "if he passes on" (n), or "from" hence, or goes away; see 1-Samuel 11:3; or departs from a people or particular person, even his own people, and hides his face from them, and is long, at least as they think, before he returns; who can behold him, or find him out, or cause him to show himself? see Job 23:3; or, "if he subverts" (o) and overturns things, or should reduce the world and all things in it to a chaos, as at the deluge, or as he overturned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, or should set on fire the whole course of nature, and burn up the whole world and all in it, and reduce it to ashes, as he will; there is none can stay his hand, and obstruct him in his designs and measures:
and shut up; should he do so; shut up in a civil sense, either in a prison, as Gersom, or in the hands of an enemy, by giving them unto them, to be enclosed and straitened by them, there is none can deliver; Psalm 31:8; or to shut them up as he did Noah in the ark, by protecting them by his power and providence, and so appear to be on their side, and for them; who then can be against them? or what does it signify if any are, if the Lord shuts them up and keeps them close? or in a spiritual sense, if he concludes men in sin, and shuts them up in unbelief, and under the law; who but himself can set them free? or, if good men are shut up in their frames, and straitened in their souls, that they cannot come forth in the lively exercise of grace, and free discharge of duty; there is no opening for them till he pleases, Psalm 88:8,
or gather together, then who can hinder him? either gathers them into one place, in a civil sense; or in a gracious manner, with great mercies and everlasting kindness to himself, to have communion with him; to his son, to participate of the blessings of his grace, and to his church and people, to enjoy all spiritual privileges with them; or, gathers men at and by death; see Job 34:14; and as he will gather them at the last day, even all nations, before him, the tares, and burn them and his wheat, and put them into his garner; and when he does any and every of these things, who can hinder him or turn him back from doing what he pleases: Job says much the same in Job 9:12; the Targum is,
"if he passes through and shuts up the heavens with clouds, and gathers armies, who can turn him back?"
(l) "si permutet proprie", Mercerus, Hebrews. "si mutabit locum", Piscator. (m) "Si transmeabit", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator; "si pervadat", Cocceius; "si transiverit", Michaelis. (n) "Si abierit", Schmidt. (o) "Si subverterit omnia", V. L.

cut off--Rather, as in Job 9:11, "pass over," as a storm; namely, rush upon in anger.
shut up--in prison, with a view to trial.
gather together--the parties for judgment: hold a judicial assembly; to pass sentence on the prisoners.

10 When He passes by and arrests
And calls to judgment, who will oppose Him?
11 For He knoweth the men devoid of principle,
And seeth wickedness without observing it.
12 But before an empty head gaineth understanding,
A wild ass would become a man.
In יחלף God is conceived as one who manifests himself by passing to and fro in the powers of nature (in the whirlwind, Isaiah 21:1). Should He meet with one who is guilty, and seize and bring him to judgment, who then (waw apod.) will turn Him back, i.e., restrain Him? הקהיל is used of bringing to judgment, with reference to the ancient form of trial which was in public, and in which the carrying out of the sentence was partly incumbent on the people (1-Kings 21:9; Ezekiel 16:40; Ezekiel 23:46). One might almost imagine that Zophar looks upon himself and the other two friends as forming such an "assembly:" they cannot justify him in opposition to God, since He accounts him guilty. God's mode of trial is summary, because infallible: He knows altogether שׁוא מתי, people who hypocritically disguise their moral nothingness (on this idea, vid., on Psalm 26:4); and sees (looks through) און (from the root n, to breathe), otherwise grief, with which one pants, in a moral sense worthlessness, without any trace whatever of worth or substance. He knows and sees this moral wretchedness at once, and need not first of all reflect upon it: non opus habet, as Abenezra has correctly explained, ut diu consideret (comp. the like thought, Job 34:23).
Job 11:12 has been variously misinterpreted. Gesenius in his Handwrterbuch
(Note: Vid., Lexicon, Engl. edition, s.v. לבב Niphal. - Tr.)
translates: but man is empty and void of understanding; but this is contrary to the accentuation, according to which נבוב אישׁ together form the subject. Olshausen translates better: an empty man, on the other hand, is without heart; but the fut. cannot be exactly so used, and if we consider that Piel has never properly a privative meaning, though sometimes a privative idea (as e.g., סקּל, operam consumere in lapidos, scil. ejiciendos), we must regard a privative Niphal as likewise inadmissible. Stickel translates peculiarly: the man devoid of understanding is enraged against God; but this is opposed to the manifest correlation of נבוב and ילּבב, which does not indicate the antithesis of an empty and sulky person (Bttcher): the former rather signifies empty, and the latter to acquire heart or marrow (Heidenheim, לב יקנה), so that לב fills up the hollow space. Hirzel's rendering partly bears out the requirement of this correlation: man has understanding like a hollow pate; but this explanation, like that of Gesenius, violates the accentuation, and produces an affected witticism. The explanation which regards Job 11:12 as descriptive of the wholesome effect of the discipline of the divine judgments (comp. Isaiah 26:9) is far better; it does not violate the accent, and moreover is more in accordance with the future form: the empty one becomes discerning thereby, the rough, humane (thus recently Ewald, Heiligst., Schlottm.); but according to this explanation, Job 11:12 is not connected with what immediately precedes, nor is the peculiarity of the expression fully brought out. Hupfeld opens up another way of interpreting the passage when he remarks, nil dicto facilius et simplicius; he understands Job 11:12 according to Job 11:12: But man is furnished with an empty heart, i.e., receives at his birth an empty undiscerning heart, and man is born as a wild ass's colt, i.e., as stupid and obstinate. This thought is satisfactorily connected with the preceding; but here also נבוב is taken as predicate in violation of the accentuation, nor is justice done to the correlation above referred to, and the whole sentence is referred to the portion of man at his birth, in opposition to the impression conveyed by the use of the fut. Oehler appears to us to have recognised the right sense: But an empty man is as little endowed with sense, as that a wild ass should ever be born as man - be, so to speak, born again and become a man.
(Note: Wetzstein explains: "But a man that barks like a dog (i.e., rages shamelessly) can become sensible, and a young wild ass (i.e., the wildest and roughest creature) be born again as a man (i.e., become gentle and civilised)," from נבב = נבח, since נבח is the commoner word for "barking" in the Syrian towns and villages, and נבב, on the other hand, is used among those who dwelt in tents. But we must then point it נבּוּב, and the antithesis ילּבב is more favourable the Hebrew meaning, "hollowed out, empty.")
The waw in ועיר is just like Job 5:7; Job 12:11, and brings into close connection the things that are to be compared, as in the form of emblematic proverbs (vid., Herzog's Real Encyklopdie, xiv. 696): the one will happen not earlier than, and as little as, the other. The Niphal נולד, which in Proverbs 17:17 signifies to become manifest, here borders on the notion of regenerari; a regeneration would be necessary if the wild ass should become human, - a regeneration which is inconceivable. It is by nature refractory, and especially when young (ועיר from Arab. ‛âr, fut. i in the signification vagari, huc illuc discurrere, of a young, restless, wild, frisking animal). Just so, says Zophar, the vacuum in an empty man is incapable of being filled up, - a side hit at Job, which rebounds on Zophar himself; for the dogma of the friends, which forms the sole contents of their hollowness, can indeed not fill with brightness and peace a heart that is passing through conflict. The peculiarity of the expression is no longer unintelligible; Zophar is the most impassioned of the three friends.

Cut off - A person or family. Shut - Its a prison, or in the hands of an enemy. Gather - Whether it pleaseth God to scatter a family, or to gather them together from their dispersions. Hinder - Or, who can contradict him, charge him with injustice in such proceedings?