Job 30:16-23
‘And now, my soul is poured out!… The days of affliction have taken hold of me! My bones have pierced into me!… My sinews get no rest!… By the great force of my disease, my clothes have altered — binding me about, like the collar of my coat! He has cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes!… I know that You will bring me to death!’ Job 30:16-23.
The soul is poured out within a man — when, yielding itself without resistance to sadness, it is dejected to the very bottom, and all its organization flows together. The life of the soul flows in the blood, and the anguish of the soul in tears and lamentations.
Since the outward man is as it were dissolved in tears, his soul flows away as it were in itself. For the outward incident is but the manifestation and result of an inward action.
Note the condition of despondency to which Job had now been reduced. And his tormenting pains. Especially at night, his bones seemed pierced, and his limbs to be wrenched from him.
Leprosy terminates with an eating away of the limbs. The disease feeds on the bones, and destroys the body in such a way that single limbs get completely detached. And worms were produced in the wounds. On the terrible wasting away in elephantiasis, compare Job 7:15 & 19:20.
His awful disease had also disfigured his clothes. They clung round his neck, even like a closely-fitting or strangling tunic. Job writhed under his pains, until his clothes got twisted tightly round him.
Job said too that the Lord had cast him into the mire. This probably refers to the appearance which Job’s body presented, in its leprous condition.
The skin of a sufferer with elephantiasis, first becomes an intense red. Then it assumes a black colour. Next, scales like those of a fish are formed on it. And finally, the brittle and dark-coloured surface of the body looks like a lump of earth.
Job (30:22) felt God was dissolving his substance. He thought God was unbinding him in a tempest, in the roar of a storm. God had lifted him up, and hurled him forth. Job felt he was being carried away and dissipated in a whirlwind. For he felt that his very life was then vanishing away from him.
He felt that in the storm itself, which was increasing in fury to the howling of a tempest, Job was dissolving away. Job thought his affliction could end in nothing but his death.
‘I know You will bring me to death’ or dust! Job felt he was being carried to the grave as the place of the dead appointed for all living human beings. But not — to a place of non-existence!
