to say (used with great latitude) · verb, qal infinitive construct + pronominal suffix
forget
אֶשְׁכְּחָ֣ה'esh.ke.Chah
H7911
to mislay · verb, qal infinitive construct, 1st person common singular
complaint
שִׂיחִ֑יsi.Chi
H7879
a contemplation · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix
off
אֶעֶזְבָ֖ה'e.'ez.Vah
H5800
to loosen · verb, qal infinitive construct, 1st person common singular
heaviness
פָנַ֣יfa.Nai
H6440
the face (as the part that turns) · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix
comfort
וְאַבְלִֽיגָהve.'av.Li.gah
H1082
to break off or loose (in a favorable or unfavorable se… · conjunction + verb, hiphil infinitive construct, 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
Job 7:13 When I say, My bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint;
Job 7:11 Therefore I will not refrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
Psalms 77:2-3 In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord: my sore ran in the night, and ceased not: my soul refused to be comforted.
Jeremiah 8:18 When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint in me.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Job 9:25–end
Job here grows more and more querulous, and does not conclude this chapter with such reverent expressions of God's wisdom and justice as he began with. Those that indulge a complaining humour know not to what indecencies, nay, to what impieties, it will hurry them. The beginning of that strife with God is as the letting forth of water; therefore leave it off before it be meddled with. When we are in trouble we are allowed to complain to God, as the Psalmist often, but must by no means complain of God, as Job here.
I. His complaint here of the passing away of the days of his prosperity is proper enough (Job 9:25, Job 9:26): "My days (that is, all my good days) are gone, never to return, gone…
swift ships--rather, canoes of reeds or papyrus skiffs, used on the Nile, swift from their lightness (Isa 18:2).
John Gill on Job 9:27
If I say, I will forget my complaint,.... The cause of it, the loss of his children, servants, substance, and health, and endeavour to think no more of these things, and cease complaining about them, and attempt to bury them in oblivion, and change his note:
I will leave off my heaviness; his melancholy thoughts, words, airs, and looks; or "forsake my face" (h), put on another countenance, a more pleasent and cheerful one; the Jewish commentators generally interpret it, "my anger", either at the dispensations of Providence, or at his friends:
and comfort myself; that things were not worse with him than they were; or strengthen (i) himself, as the word is rendered in Amos 5:9; against his f…
25 My days were swifter than a runner,
They fled away without seeing prosperity,
26 They shot by as ships of reeds,
As an eagle which dasheth upon its prey.
27 If my thought is: I will forget my complaint,
I will give up my dark looks and look cheerful;
28 I shudder at all my pains,
I feel that Thou dost not pronounce me innocent.
Such, as described in the preceding strophe, is the lot of the innocent in general, and such (this is the connection) is also Job's lot: his swiftly passing life comes to an end amidst suffering, as that of an evil-doer whom God cuts off in judgment. In the midst of his present sufferings he has entirely forgotten his former prosperity; it is no happiness to him, b…
The Church Fathers
"If I want to raise my voice, I forget as I speak. Just as the word is addressed only to external objects, so the soul occurring outside, and seduced by the bait of the creature, forgets its Creator within itself. "I lower my head, and only have to moan. These falls indeed her followed by pains.
If I say, I will never speak thus; I change my countenance, and am tormented with grief. For the Jewish People would not speak as before, in that it denied Him, Whom it had foretold; but with changed countenance it is tormented with grief, in that while it defiled with the foulness of unbelief the aspect of its inward man, by which it might have been known by the Creator, setting out with present evils, it brought itself under the sentence of everlasting vengeance. For its face being as it were changed, it is not known by the Creator, in that upon faith in a good conscience being gone, it is condemned. But doubtless it remains for her, that the pain of punishment torment her, whom her Creator knowing not disowns. Seeing, then, that we have gone through these points under the signification of our Redeemer, now let us go over them again, to make them out in a moral sense. But when we revolve such things in our mind by continual reflection, we are silently pressed with the hard questions, why did Almighty God create one, who He foresaw would perish? Why was He, Who is chief in power and chief in goodness, not so minded as to make man such that he could not perish? But when the mind silently asks these questions, it fears lest, by its very audacity in questioning thus, it should break out into pride, and holds itself in with humility, and restrains the thoughts of the heart. But it is the more distressed, that amid the ills that it suffers it is over and above tormented concerning the secret meaning of its condition. Hence here too it is fitly added; If I shall say, I will never speak thus; I change my countenance, and am tormented with grief. For we say, that 'we never ought to speak thus,' when transgressing the limit of our frail nature in pushing our enquiries, we reproach ourselves in dread, and are withheld by bethinking ourselves of heavenly awe, in which same withholding, the face of our mind is altered, in that the mind, which in the first instance, failing to comprehend them, boldly investigated things above, afterwards, finding out its own infirmity, begins to entertain awe for what it is ignorant of. But in this very change there is pain, for the mind is very greatly afflicted that, in recompense of the first sin, she is blinded to the understanding of things touching her own self. All that she undergoes she sees to be just. She dreads lest in her…
Job was indeed innocent (1:1, 7; 2:3), and he maintained this claim throughout the debate (23:11-12; 27:5; 31:1-40).
Rashi on Job 9:27
my speech The words of my pain.
my anger Heb. פני, lit. my face.
and [I will] restrain myself Heb. ואבליגה, I will strengthen myself, like (Amos 5:9), “Who strengthens (המבליג) the robbed upon the strong.”