Morning Bible Study: Job 17:1-9

17:1 My spirit is broken.
My days are extinguished.
A graveyard awaits me.
2 Surely mockers surround me,
and my eyes must gaze at their rebellion.
3 Accept my pledge! Put up security for me.
Who else will be my sponsor?
4 You have closed their minds to understanding,
therefore you will not honor them.
5 If a man denounces his friends for a price,
the eyes of his children will fail.
6 He has made me an object of scorn to the people;
I have become a man people spit at.
7 My eyes have grown dim from grief,
and my whole body has become but a shadow.
8 The upright are appalled at this,
and the innocent are roused against the godless.
9 Yet the righteous person will hold to his way,
and the one whose hands are clean will grow stronger.

Commentary
(the following is from Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary, 1706 -- www.christianity.com)
 
"Job reflects upon the harsh censures his friends had passed upon him, and, looking on himself as a dying man, he appeals to God. Our time is ending. It concerns us carefully to redeem the days of time, and to spend them in getting ready for eternity. We see the good use the righteous should make of Job's afflictions from God, from enemies, and from friends. Instead of being discouraged in the service of God, by the hard usage this faithful servant of God met with, they should be made bold to proceed and persevere therein. 

Those who keep their eye upon heaven as their end, will keep their feet in the paths of religion as their way, whatever difficulties and discouragements they may meet with."

Morning Bible Study: Job 16:17-22

17 although my hands are free from violence
and my prayer is pure.
18 Earth, do not cover my blood;
may my cry for help find no resting place.
19 Even now my witness is in heaven,
and my advocate is in the heights!
20 My friends scoff at me
as I weep before God.
21 I wish that someone might argue for a man with God
just as anyone would for a friend.
22 For only a few years will pass
before I go the way of no return.

Commentary
(the following is from Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary, 1706 -- www.christianity.com)

"Job's condition was very deplorable; but he had the testimony of his conscience for him, that he never allowed himself in any gross sin. No one was ever more ready to acknowledge sins of infirmity. 

Eliphaz had charged him with hypocrisy in religion, but he specifies prayer, the great act of religion, and professes that in this he was pure, though not from all infirmity. He had a God to go to, who he believed took full notice of all his sorrows. 

Those who pour out tears before God, though they cannot plead for themselves, by reason of their defects, have a Friend to plead for them, even the Son of man, and on him we must ground all our hopes of acceptance with God. 

To die, is to go the way from where we shall not return. We must all of us, very certainly, and very shortly, go this journey. Should not then the Savior be precious to our souls? And ought we not to be ready to obey and to suffer for his sake? If our consciences are sprinkled with his atoning blood, and testify that we are not living in sin or hypocrisy, when we go the way from where we shall not return, it will be a release from prison, and an entrance into everlasting happiness."