wind · noun, common both genders singular construct + pronominal suffix, 1st person feminine singular
corrupt
חֻ֭בָּלָהChu.ba.lah
H2254
to wind tightly (as a rope) · verb, pual perfect, 3rd person feminine singular
days
יָמַ֥יya.Mai
H3117
a day (as the warm hours) · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix
extinct
נִזְעָ֗כוּniz.'A.khu
H2193
to extinguish · verb, niphal perfect, 3rd person common plural
graves
קְבָרִ֥יםke.va.Rim
H6913
a sepulchre · noun, common masculine plural absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Isaiah 38:10-14 I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave: I am deprived of the residue of my years.
Psalms 88:3-5 For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave.
Job 6:11 What is my strength, that I should hope? and what is mine end, that I should prolong my life?
Job 17:13-14 If I wait, the grave is mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness.
Job 19:17 My breath is strange to my wife, though I intreated for the children’s sake of mine own body.
Job 42:16 After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, even four generations.
Isaiah 57:16 For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth: for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have made.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Job 17:1-9
Job's discourse is here somewhat broken and interrupted, and he passes suddenly from one thing to another, as is usual with men in trouble; but we may reduce what is here said to three heads: -
I. The deplorable condition which poor Job was now in, which he describes, to aggravate the great unkindness of his friends to him and to justify his own complaints. Let us see what his case was.
1. He was a dying man, Job 17:1. He had said (Job 16:22), "When a few years have come, I shall go that long journey." But here he corrects himself. "Why do I talk of years to come? Alas! I am just setting out on that journey, am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. My breath is a…
My breath is corrupt,.... Through the force of his disease, which made it have an ill smell, so that it was strange and disagreeable to his wife, Job 19:17; 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 (n) 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 an asthma do, or dying persons in the hiccups, or just fetching their last breath; or "my spirit" (o), as it may be rendered, that is, his vital spirits which were exhausted and spent, there were scarce…
1 My breath is corrupt,
My days are extinct,
The graves are ready for me.
2 Truly mockery surrounds me,
And mine eye shall loiter over their disputings.
Hirz., Hlgst., and others, wrongly consider the division of the chapter here to be incorrect. The thought in Job 16:22 is really a concluding thought, like Job 10:20., Job 7:21. Then in Job 17:1 another strain is taken up; and as Job 16:22 is related, as a confirmation, to the request expressed in Job 16:19-21, so Job 17:1, Job 17:2 are related to that expressed in Job 17:3. The connection with the conclusion of Job 16 is none the less close: the thoughts move on somewhat crosswise (chiastisch). We do not translate with Ewald: "My spirit is…
The Church Fathers
"My spirit is broken" in bitterness and pain, because my ulcers torture me, or, on the other hand, because of my friends, who are ready to burst out against their friend.
"Defeci agitatus spiritu. Here is the order of this sentence: the spirit in me has been extinguished: Defeci spiritu; broken that I was talking about work, laboribus concussus. "I desire to be put to the grave, and I am not heard; So that death may be destroyed by life. We groan under the weight of this body, not wanting to be stripped of it, but receive over a new garment (3): that is to say, we prefer to change rather than to die; but in vain the man feels this desire, death is for him a debt to which sin has condemned him.
Chap. xvii. Ver. 1. My spirit shall be wasted to thinness. 'My spirit is wasted to thinness,' by the fear of judgment; in that the minds of the Elect, the more they feel themselves to be approaching the final Judgment, tremble so much the more fearfully in the searching of their own selves; and if they ever find in themselves any carnal thoughts, they consume them by the fervour of their penance; nor do they suffer their thoughts to expand with carnal delight, in that they pass sentence and inflict punishment on themselves more rigorously in proportion as they are awaiting the strict Judge close at hand; whence it comes to pass, that they look upon their departure as always near. For the minds of the lost do many things wickedly on this account, because they suppose themselves living here for long; and so 'the spirit of the righteous is wasted to thinness,' but the spirit of the wicked is thickened. For in proportion as they swell out in self-elation, they have not the wearing down of the spirit: but the righteous, whilst they consider the shortness of their life, eschew the sins of pride and impurity. And hence it is added; My days shall be shortened, and the grave only is left me. For he that bethinks himself what he will be in death, is always rendered fearful in practice, and from the very cause that henceforth he does not as it were live in his own eyes, he does genuinely live in the eyes of his Creator; he goes after nothing of a nature to pass away, he withstands all the desire of the present life, and views himself as almost dead, in that he is not unaware that he is destined to die. For a perfect life is an imitation of death, which while the righteous diligently enact, they escape the snares of sins. Whence it is written, Whatsoever thou takest in hand, remember thy latter end, and thou shalt never do amiss. And hence blessed Job, because he sees that his 'days are shortened,' and reflects that 'the grave only is left him,' fitly subjoins, I have not sinned, and mine eye abideth in bitternesses. As if he expressed himself in plain words; 'I have not been guilty of sin, and I have undergone scourges.' But on this point, seeing that in many passages of this history he confesses himself to have been guilty of sinning, is the mind moved by the thought with what reason he now denies himself to have committed sin? But with reference to this the reason…
Dictionary and topics
Life · BREVITY AND UNCERTAINTY OF — BREVITY AND UNCERTAINTY OF
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
