Job 31:38

If my land cry against me,.... Some think that this verse and Job 31:39 stand out of their place, and should rather follow after Job 31:34; and some place them after Job 31:25; and others after Job

If my land cry against me, or that the furrows likewise thereof complain; Personification. The complaints of the unjustly ousted proprietors are transferred to the lands themselves (Job 31:20; Genesis 4:10; Habakkuk 2:11).

To wit, to God for revenge, as the like phrase is used, , because I have gotten it from the right owners by fraud or violence, as my friends charge me, and as is implied in the next verse.

Job 31:38 If my land cry against me, or that the furrows likewise thereof complain;Ver. 38. If my land cry against me] As unjustly gotten; where we have an elegant personification not unlike that of the prophet, Habakkuk 2:11-12, where the stone out of the wall cries out against the oppressor, and the tignum e ligno, the beam out of the timber, answereth it by a woeful antiphony. It hath been noted before, that Goropius will have the English to be called Angli, because they were good anglers, and had skill to lay various baits when they fished for other men’ s livings. May it be our care to disprove him, and to show ourselves angels rather (as Gregory the Great derived us), and our land to be Regnum Dei, the kingdom of God, as it was anciently counted and called, by the holiness and righteousness exercised among us (Polydore Virgil). These two make up one perfect pair of compasses, which can take the true latitude of an upright heart (such as Job’ s was, witness this whole chapter). The first, like the top of Jacob’ s ladder, reacheth up to heaven; the second, like the foot of the ladder, resteth on the earth, or rather walketh about in a perfect circle of all such duties as one man oweth to another. Job was famous for both, whatever his friends surmised or suggested to the contrary. He was righteously religious and religiously righteous; exercising the first table of the law in the second, and caring to keep always a conscience void of offence toward God and toward men, Acts 24:16. Or that the furrows thereof likewise complain] Si plorant porcae. Heb. Weep, sc. As it were, out of a desire after their own right owner, from whom they are detained, as was Naboth’ s vineyard.

(38) Or that the furrows likewise thereof complain.—Rather, Or if the furrows thereof weep together—a strong impersonation to express the consequence of oppression and wrong-doing. It is to be observed that throughout this defence Job has far more than traversed the indictment of his friends. He has shown that he has not only not broken the moral law, as they insinuated, but, much more, has shown himself exemplary in all the relations of life, so that, according to the narrator of the history, he was not only one that feared God and eschewed evil (Job 1:1), but also was perfect, i.e., of sincere and consistent conduct and upright.

Verse 38. If my land cry] The most careless reader may see that the introduction of this and the two following verses here, disturbs the connection, and that they are most evidently out of their place. Job seems here to refer to that law, Leviticus 25:1-7, by which the Israelites were obliged to give the land rest every seventh year, that the soil might not be too much exhausted by perpetual cultivation, especially in a country which afforded so few advantages to improve the arable ground by manure. He, conscious that he had acted according to this law, states that his land could not cry out against him, nor its furrows complain. He had not broken the law, nor exhausted the soil.

38–40. Job resumes his protestations, imprecating a curse upon his lands if he have acquired them unjustly, and wishing that they may bring forth weeds instead of grain. 38. If my land cry out against me, And the furrows thereof weep together; 39. If I have eaten the fruits thereof without money, And caused the soul of its owners to expire: 40. Let thistles, &c.

If my land cry against me - This is a new specification of an offence, and an imprecation of an appropriate punishment if he had been guilty of it.

38. Complain — Weep. The rabbinical proverb embodies a similar figure, “The altar of God weeps over him who separates himself from the wife of his youth.” Comp. Habakkuk 2:11.