In Job, chapter seventeen, verse one, as a broken man, Job firmly believed he would die soon. He saw himself as a man deserted by God and an object of his companions’ scorn. Job could do nothing but persevere in his conviction about the rightness of his cause, as in verse nine of this chapter, maintaining confidence in God’s justice, all outward appearances to the contrary, as in chapter sixteen, verses nineteen through twenty-two.
Job reflects upon the harsh censures his friends had passed upon him, and, looking at himself as a dying man, he appeals to God. Our time is ending. It concerns us carefully to redeem the days and spend them in getting ready for eternity. We see the use the righteous should make of Job’s afflictions from God, enemies, and friends. Instead of being discouraged in the service of God by the hard usage this faithful servant of God met with, they should be bold enough to proceed and persevere therein. Those who keep their eye upon heaven as their end will keep their feet in the paths of religion as their way, whatever difficulties and discouragements they may meet.
Through the force of Job’s disease, which made it have an ill smell so that it was strange and disagreeable to his wife, as in chapter nineteen, verse seventeen, passing through his lungs, or other parts, which were affected with some disorder, or as frequently is the case of dying persons, and so Job thought himself to be. The word used has the signification of pain, even of the pains of a woman in travail. And so may signify, that Job drew his breath with great pain, as people troubled with asthma do, or dying persons in the hiccups, or just fetching their last breath; or “my spirit,” that is, his vital spirits which were exhausted and spent, there was scarce any left in him; or “my mind,” or soul, which was overwhelmed with grief, and so disturbed, that he was not himself, but in a manner distracted with the terrors of God, and the severity of his hand upon him.