a foot (as used in walking) · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix
held
אָחֲזָ֣ה'a.cha.Zah
H270
to seize (often with the accessory idea of holding in p… · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person feminine singular
steps
בַּ֭אֲשֻׁרוֹba.'a.shu.ro
H838
a step · preposition + noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
way
דַּרְכּ֖וֹdar.Ko
H1870
a road (as trodden) · noun, common both genders singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
kept
שָׁמַ֣רְתִּיsha.Mar.ti
H8104
properly · verb, qal perfect, 1st person common singular
declined
אָֽט'At
H5186
to stretch or spread out · verb, hiphil imperfect, 1st person common singular
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
Psalms 44:18 Our heart is not turned back, neither have our steps declined from thy way;
Psalms 17:5 Hold up my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not.
2 Peter 2:20-22 For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entang…
Job 17:9 The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger.
Psalms 125:5 As for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways, the LORD shall lead them forth with the workers of iniquity: but peace shall be upon Isra…
Romans 2:7 To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life:
Psalms 18:20-24 The LORD rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed me.
Luke 8:13-15 They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Job 23:8-12
Here, I. Job complains that he cannot understand the meaning of God's providences concerning him, but is quite at a loss about them (Job 23:8, Job 23:9): I go forward, but he is not there, etc. Eliphaz had bid him acquaint himself with God. "So I would, with all my heart," says Job, "If I knew how to get acquainted with him." He had himself a great desire to appear before God, and get a hearing of his case, but the Judge was not to be found. Look which way he would, he could see no sign of God's appearing for him to clear up his innocency. Job, no doubt, believed that God is every where present; but three things he seems to complain of here: - 1. That he could not fix his thoughts, nor form…
held--fast by His steps. The law is in Old Testament poetry regarded as a way, God going before us as our guide, in whose footsteps we must tread (Psa 17:5).
declined-- (Psa 125:5).
John Gill on Job 23:11
My foot hath held his steps,.... Trod in the steps he has walked in; he followed God closely, imitated him in acts of holiness and righteousness, of mercy, kindness, and beneficence; and he continued therein; as he set his foot in the steps of God, which were to him for an example, he persisted therein; as he followed on to know him, so to imitate him, and walk worthy of him:
his way have I kept; the way he prescribed him, and directed him to walk in, the way of his commandments, which he observed constantly, and kept; though not perfectly, yet with great delight and pleasure, and so as not to be chargeable with any gross neglect of them, but in some sense to walk in all of them blameless,…
10 For He knoweth the way that is with me:
If He should prove me, I should come forth as gold.
11 My foot held firm to His steps;
His way I kept, and turned not aside.
12 The command of His lips - I departed not from it;
More than my own determination I kept the words of His mouth.
13 Yet He remaineth by one thing, and who can turn Him?
And He accomplisheth what His soul desireth.
That which is not merely outwardly, but inwardly with (אם) any one, is that which he thinks and knows (his consciousness), Job 9:35; Job 15:9, or his willing and acting, Job 10:13; Job 27:11 : he is conscious of it, he intends to do it; here, Job 23:10, עם is intended in the former sense, in Job 23:14 in the latter…
The Church Fathers
"I will go out in his commandments. I will come out of my darkness, but faithful to His commandments.
My foot hath held His steps. His way have I kept, and not declined. For as a kind of footsteps of God are His doings which we see, by which doings both the good and bad man is governed, by which the righteous and unrighteous are arranged in their classes, whereto both everyone that is subject is led on day by day to better things, and he that is in rebellion against them is borne with going headlong into worse. Concerning which same footsteps the Prophet said, Thy goings have been seen, O God. And so we, when we behold the efficacy of His long-suffering and pitifulness, and upon so beholding strive to imitate the same, what else do we but follow the 'footsteps of His goings,' in that we imitate some outskirts of His method of proceeding. Thus these footsteps of His Father 'Truth' gave it in charge to imitate when He said, Pray for them which persecute you and falsely accuse you; that ye may be the children of your Father Which is in heaven. For He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good. It may be too that blessed Job who had already said with assured faith, I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that I shall arise at the latter day from the earth; so dwelt on the future working of Wisdom Incarnate to be, in like manner as we behold by faith the works of that Wisdom now past, how that the Mediator between God and man should be kind to give, humble to bear, patient to afford an example. Whose life while blessed Job, filled with the Spirit from above, regarded with heedful intentness, foreseeing the future lowliness of His mild character, he refers as it were to a pattern set before him, so that whatever he did in this life he might bind fast to His footsteps in imitating, that so he who was incapable of seeing the high things of His secret ordering, as it were looking on the ground, might keep His footsteps for imitation. Of which same 'footsteps' of Him it is said by Peter, Because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His footsteps. For he 'keeps the way and does not decline,' who practises the thing whereon his mind is bent. Since to 'keep' in the bent is 'not to decline' in the practice. For this is the anxiety of the righteous, that day by day they should try their actions by the ways of truth, and proposing these as a rule to themselves, they should not decline from the track of their right course. Thus day…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
tests me: Job did not want the kind of chastising that would cleanse him like a refiner’s fire (Prov 17:3; Zech 13:9; Mal 3:2-3). He wanted an examination that would prove that he had been as pure as gold and did not need to amend his life (Job 22:23).
Rashi on Job 23:11
to His path Heb. באשרו, to His path, like (below 31:7), “If my foot (אשרי) has turned away from the road”; (Ps. 40:3), “He has established my paths (אשרי).”
and do not turn away I am not accustomed to turn away.
