Job 30:17 Commentary and Bible Study

Through all this mental and spiritual anguish Job experienced terrible physical pain. Usually troubles come in just one area, but Job was assault from all directions at once, for Satan coordinated this attack in order to try to break God’s servant. He suffered particularly in the night when he was deprived of healing sleep and when he was left alone with fewer distractions than during the day to take his mind off his pains. Though his body longed for rest his agonies prevented him from finding it. The word ‘gnaw’ suggests that his pains were like the incessant devouring of some savage animal.Verse 18 is obscure as evidenced by the great variety of translations it has received. ‘By or with much strength or power or force’ – the idea is that something is done violently. Some assume that ‘my garment’, or my clothing is the subject since it is not preceded by the direct object marker, others assume that God is the subject and insert the word ‘God’ and assume that ‘my clothing’ is the object and that the direct object marker has been left out as is sometimes the case; the verb basically means ‘to search’ but the particular verb pattern used modifies the meaning to ‘to let oneself be searched’ hence ‘to disguise oneself’ – ‘my garment or my clothing is disguised (or with slight adjustment of meaning, is disfigured)’ or ‘God disguises himself as (becomes like) my garment’. The second half of the verse is literally, ‘as a mouth of my tunic he or it girds me’ – the phrase mouth of a tunic is understood as the collar, so ‘as the collar of my coat it girds me’ – some change the verb to ‘it binds about me’. Others have understood the word garment to refer to Job’s skin.Barnes says that the prevailing interpretation seems to be that by the strength of his disease his garment was changed in its appearance so as to become offensive, and yet, he says, this is a somewhat feeble sense to give to the passage. The general subject is certainly the extreme nature of Job’s suffering and the change brought about by his suffering and sickness. It is not clear whether he is talking about his clothing literally or whether he is using clothing as a metaphor for his general appearance or his health, though the latter is more likely. The great force referred to is surely a reference to the severity of his afflictions and the verse means perhaps that his illness had so altered him that it was like an offensive garment with which he was clothed and which was as tightly wound around him as the collar of his coat.