Job - 6:9



9 even that it would please God to crush me; that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off!

Verse In-Depth

Explanation and meaning of Job 6:9.

Differing Translations

Compare verses for better understanding.
Even that it would please God to destroy me; that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off!
And that he that hath begun may destroy me, that he may let loose his hand, and cut me off?
That God would please, and bruise me, Loose His hand and cut me off!
If only he would be pleased to put an end to me; and would let loose his hand, so that I might be cut off!
and that he who, at first, had crushed me, will let loose his hand and cut me down?

*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.


Historical Commentaries

Scholarly Analysis and Interpretation.

Even that it would please God to destroy me - To put me to death, and to release me from my sorrows; compare Job 3:20-21. The word rendered "destroy" here (דכא dâkâ') means properly to break in pieces, to crush, to trample under foot, to make small by bruising. Here the sense is, that Job wished that God would crush him, so as to take his life. The Septuagint renders it "wound" - τρωσάτω trōsatō. The Chaldee renders it, "Let God, who has begun to make me poor, loose his hand and make me rich."
That he would let loose his hand - Job here represents the hand of God as bound or confined. He wishes that that fettered hand were released, and were so free in its inflictions that he might be permitted to die.
And cut me off - This expression, says Gesenius (Lexicon on the word בצע betsa‛), is a metaphor derived from a weaver, who, when his web is finished, cuts it off from the thrum by which it is fastened to the loom; see the notes at Isaiah 38:12. The sense is, that Job wished that God would wholly finish his work, and that as he had begun to destroy him he would complete it.

Let loose his hand - A metaphor taken from an archer drawing his arrow to the head, and then loosing his hold, that the arrow may fly to the mark. See on Job 6:4 (note).

Even that it would please God to destroy me,.... Not with an everlasting destruction of body and soul; for destruction from the Almighty was a terror to him, Job 31:23; but with the destruction of the body only; not with an annihilation of it, but with the dissolution of it, or of that union there was between his soul and body: the word (n) used signifies to bruise and beat to pieces; his meaning is, that his body, his house of clay in which he dwelt, might be crushed to pieces, and beat to powder, and crumbled into dust; and perhaps he may have regard to his original, the dust of the earth, and his return to it, according to the divine threatening, Genesis 3:19; a phrase expressive of death; and so Mr. Broughton renders it, "to bring me to the dust", to "the dust of death", Psalm 22:15,
that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off! he had let loose his hand in some degree already; he had given his substance and his body into the hand of Satan; his own hand had touched him, but he had only gone skin deep, as it were; he had smote him in his estate, in his family, and in the outward parts of his body; but now he desires that he would stretch out his hand further, and lift it up, and give a heavier stroke, and pierce him more deeply; strike through his heart and liver, and "make an end" of him, as Mr. Broughton translates the word, and dispatch him at once; cut him off like the flower of the field by the scythe, or like a tree cut down to its root by the axe, or cut off the thread of his life, Isaiah 38:12.
(n) "me conterat", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Mercerus, Schmidt; so Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Michaelis, Schultens.

destroy--literally, "grind" or "crush" (Isaiah 3:15).
let loose his hand--God had put forth His hand only so far as to wound the surface of Job's flesh (Job 1:12; Job 2:6); he wishes that hand to be let loose, so as to wound deeply and vitally.
cut me off--metaphor from a weaver cutting off the web, when finished, from the thrum fastening it to the loom (Isaiah 38:12).

Destroy - To end my days and calamities together.

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