soil (from its general redness) · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix
cry
תִזְעָ֑קtiz.'Ak
H2199
to shriek (from anguish or danger) · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person feminine singular
furrows
תְּלָמֶ֥יהָte.la.Mei.ha
H8525
a bank or terrace · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person feminine singular
likewise
וְ֝יַ֗חַדve.Ya.chad
H3162
properly · conjunction + noun, common masculine singular absolute
complain
יִבְכָּיֽוּןyiv.ka.Yun
H1058
to weep · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural + paragogic nun
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
Habakkuk 2:11 For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it.
Job 20:27 The heaven shall reveal his iniquity; and the earth shall rise up against him.
Psalms 65:13 The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered over with corn; they shout for joy, they also sing.
James 5:4 Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Job 31:33–end
We have here Job's protestation against three more sins, together with his general appeal to God's bar and his petition for a hearing there, which, it is likely, was intended to conclude his discourse (and therefore we will consider it last), but that another particular sin occurred, from which he thought it requisite to acquit himself. He clears himself from the charge,
I. Of dissimulation and hypocrisy. The general crime of which his friends accused him was that, under the cloak of a profession of religion, he had kept up secret haunts of sin, and that really he was as bad as other people, but had the art of concealing it. Zophar insinuated (Job 20:12) that he hid his iniquity under his to…
Personification. The complaints of the unjustly ousted proprietors are transferred to the lands themselves (Job 31:20; Gen 4:10; Hab 2:11). If I have unjustly acquired lands (Job 24:2; Isa 5:8).
furrows--The specification of these makes it likely, he implies in this, "If I paid not the laborer for tillage"; as Job 31:39, "If I paid him not for gathering in the fruits." Thus of the four clauses in Job 31:38-39, the first refers to the same subject as the fourth, the second is connected with the third by introverted parallelism. Compare Jam 5:4, which plainly alludes to this passage: compare "Lord of Sabaoth" with Job 31:26 here.
John Gill on Job 31:38
If my land cry against me,.... Some think that this verse and Job 31:39 stand out of their place, and should rather follow after Job 31:34; and some place them after Job 31:25; and others after Job 31:8; but this is the order of them in all copies and versions, as they stand in our Bibles; and here, after Job had expressed his desire to have a hearer and judge of his cause, and his charge exhibited in writing, and his confidence of the issue of it, should it be granted, returns to his former subject, to clear himself from any notorious vice he was suspected of or charged with; and as he had gone through what might respect him in private life, here he gives another instance in public life, wi…
"If ever the earth has groaned under my steps:" the servants of the Church, because I am bad. "If with her weep the furrows," where the seed is shed, and where the harvest is born, because I am bad and I have spread bad seeds; that's why it says, "with her. "
"If my land has ever cried out against me, or if its furrows have wept together." Therefore, neither the land cries out nor weeps. What does he mean? Certainly the land does not really groan, but inanimate beings perceive injustices. As the prophet asserts, "The earth stood up and shuddered." Now the earth moans every time we make an unjust use of its fruits.
Let us hear what is said in the voice of blessed Job: If my land cries out against me, and its furrows weep together with it, if I have eaten its fruits without payment. For the land cries out against its possessor when the Church justly murmurs against its pastor. Its furrows also weep if the hearts of hearers, which have been plowed by the preceding fathers with the voice of preaching and the vigor of rebuke, see something to mourn in the life of their pastor. The good possessor does not eat the fruit of this land without payment, because the discerning pastor invests the talent of the word, lest he take the payment of sustenance from the Church to his own damnation. For we eat the fruits of our land with payment when, receiving ecclesiastical support, we labor in preaching.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Integrity · 16:19,20; — 16:19,20;
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).
Keil & Delitzsch on Job 31:38–end
38 If my field cry out against me,
And all together its furrows weep;
39 If I have devoured its strength without payment,
And caused the soul of its possessor to expire:
40 May thistles spring up instead of wheat,
And darnel instead of barley.
The field which he tills has no reason to cry out on account of violent treatment, nor its furrows to weep over wrong done to them by their lord.
(Note: In a similar figure a Rabbinic proverb says (with reference to Mal 2:13), that the altar of God weeps over him who separates himself from the wife of his youth.)
אדמה, according to its radical signification, is the covering of earth which fits close upon the body of the earth as its skin, and is drawn…
The land was the chief witness to crimes committed upon it (20:27; see Gen 4:10; cp. Jas 5:4).
Rashi on Job 31:38
If my soil complains about me concerning the gleanings, the forgotten sheaves, and the end [of the field], as well as tithes, [claiming] that I did not extract tithes properly.
and its furrows weep together that I plowed with an ox and with a donkey together.
