Job 9:27

27 If I said, "I will forget my complaint, change my expression, and smile,"

Job 9:27 Meaning and Commentary

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" F8, 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 F9 himself, as the word is rendered in ( Amos 5:9 ) ; against his fears, and troubles, and dejection of mind, determining to take heart, and be of good courage, and not sink, and succumb, and faint under his burdens: none but God, Father, Son, and Spirit, can give comfort to distressed ones, whether on temporal or spiritual accounts; but good men may make use of means for comfort, such as hearing the word, reading the Scriptures, prayer, meditation, and conversation with good men.


FOOTNOTES:

F8 (ynp hbzea) "relinquam facies meas", Montanus, Bolducius, Schmidt.
F9 (hgylba) "confirmabo vel roborabo cor meum", Mercerus; so R. R.

Job 9:27 In-Context

25 My days fly by faster than a runner; they flee without seeing any good.
26 They sweep by like boats made of papyrus, like an eagle swooping down on [its] prey.
27 If I said, "I will forget my complaint, change my expression, and smile,"
28 I would still live in terror of all my pains. I know You will not acquit me.
29 Since I will be found guilty, why should I labor in vain?
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