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
1 Kings 19:4 But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he mi…
Jonah 4:3 Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.
Job 7:15-16 So that my soul chooseth strangling, and death rather than my life.
Isaiah 48:10-13 Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.
Jonah 4:8 And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainte…
Numbers 11:14-15 I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.
Job 3:20-22 Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul;
Job 14:13 O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set t…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Job 6:8-13
Ungoverned passion often grows more violent when it meets with some rebuke and check. The troubled sea rages most when it dashes against a rock. Job had been courting death, as that which would be the happy period of his miseries, ch. 3. For this Eliphaz had gravely reproved him, but he, instead of unsaying what he had said, says it here again with more vehemence than before; and it is as ill said as almost any thing we meet with in all his discourses, and is recorded for our admonition, not our imitation.
I. He is still most passionately desirous to die, as if it were not possible that he should ever see good days again in this world, or that, by the exercise of grace and devotion, he might…
destroy--literally, "grind" or "crush" (Isa 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 (Isa 38:12).
John Gill on Job 6:9
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…
8 Would that my request were fulfilled,
And that Eloah would grant my expectation,
9 That Eloah were willing and would crush me,
Let loose His hand and cut me off:
10 Then I should still have comfort -
(I should exult in unsparing pain) -
That I have not disowned the words of the Holy One.
His wish refers to the ending of his suffering by death. Hupfeld prefers to read ותאותי instead of ותקותי (Job 6:8); but death, which he desires, he even indeed expects. This is just the paradox, that not life, but death, is his expectation. "Cut me off," i.e., my soul or my life, my thread of life (Job 27:8; Isa 38:12). The optative יתּן מי (Ges. 136, 1) is followed by optative futt., partly of the so-c…
The Church Fathers
"He would let loose his hand and finish me!" That is, may he put an end to my life by his intervention. Again Job speaks, "I would be finished again with violence and no mercy." In a word, "I desire that God inflict death on me violently and mercilessly.
That He That hath begun would bruise me! For very often the Lord begins to work in us the bruising of our vicious habits, but when the mind is lifted up at the very first step of its progress, and when it already exalts itself as on the ground of its virtuous attainments, it opens an entrance to the adversary, that rages against it, who penetrating into the depths of the heart, dashes in pieces all that he may find therein springing from the earnestness of a good beginning, and shews himself the more violent in the breaking of it in proportion as he is the sorer grieved that it had made progress, though but a little way. Whence too, as the Gospel is witness, by the voice of 'Truth,' the unclean spirit, which went out alone, returns with seven other spirits to the neglected dwelling-place of the conscience. Lest then, after the beginnings of divine correction, the old adversary snatch him unawares, and drag him along for the breaking in pieces of his virtues, the holy man fitly beseeches, saying, That He That hath begun would bruise me. As if he said in plain words, 'That which He has begun in me may He not cease to perfect by smiting me, lest He deliver me over forsaken to the adversary to bruise me.' Hence it is fitly subjoined, That He would let loose His hand, and cut me off. For oftentimes being swoln with the confidence of lengthened prosperity, we are lifted up in a certain kind of frame of self-elation, and when our Creator sees that we are lifted up, but does not exercise His love towards us by stripes, He as it were keeps His hand hid, as to the smiting of our evil ways. Did He not tie the hand of His affection, when He said to the people, when guilty of transgression, I will not any more be wroth with thee; and, My jealousy is departed from thee. Therefore, 'That He would let loose His hand,' means, 'that He would exercise His affection.' And it is rightly added, 'and cut me off.' For whenever either the sudden pain of the scourge, or the trial of our weakness, falls upon us in a state of security, and elated with the abundance of our virtuous attainments, the pride of our hearts, being cut down, is precipitated from the height of its seat, so that it dares do nothing of itself, but levelled by the blow of its frailty, seeks the hand of one to lift it. Hence it is that, when holy men are looked upon with admiration on the grounds of the secret…
At one time, both Moses and Elijah wished that God would kill them (Num 11:15; 1 Kgs 19:4).
Rashi on Job 6:9
desire and may He want.
and crush me [This is] an expression of death.
enlarge his hand May He enlarge His hand with His plague like (Exod. 9:3), “Behold God’s hand is.”
and finish me off Heb. ויבצעני, and finish me off, as in (Lam. 2:17), “He has carried out (בצע) His word,” and (Zech. 4:9), “and his hands shall finish it (תבצענה).”
