You put my feet in the stocks and watch all my paths; you set a limit for the soles of my feet.
Job has stopped arguing with his friends and now speaks straight to God. What comes out is not a prayer but a charge: he feels shamed, watched and fenced in like a prisoner, by the very One he wants an answer from.
The image of the stocks
Job names a real device, not a vague picture. A Bible dictionary defines the word behind "stocks":
Morrish Bible Dictionarysad: stocks in which the feet were shut up. Job 13:27; Job 33:11; Acts 16:24.
So Job is not just saying God limits him. He is saying God has shamed him in public and left nothing about him unrecorded:
William Kelly"You put my feet also in the stocks" — you make me an object of shame before everybody — "and look closely at all my paths; you set a mark on the heels of my feet." Someone might think the heels were hidden. But no — everything is marked.
(Kelly follows an older reading, "you set a print upon the heels of my feet"; the ESV has "you set a limit for the soles of my feet.")
A man fixed in place for others to hit
A man locked in stocks cannot dodge what is thrown at him. Job felt the blows were more than he had earned:
F. B. HoleHe felt that the punishment he was suffering went beyond what he deserved. He was like a man with his feet in the stocks, and so an easy target for those who wanted to throw things at him.
What the complaint is really defending
Read on its own the verse sounds like a description of pain. In context, it is one of several charges Job brings against God. What he defends is his own record:
Samuel RidoutAnd yet at once he renews his charges against God. He is not yet ready to let God strip away the righteousness he imagines he has. God holds him as an enemy. He drives him like a withered leaf in the wind. He charges him with those almost forgotten sins of youth — ah, Job, it seems that even you must admit there have been sins. He watches him, and makes the robe of righteousness Job imagines he wears look like a moth-eaten garment. So Job charges his Maker, and does not pause to hear what He will reply.
The work Job could not yet name
The watching Job resents is doing something in him. It forces him to examine himself, and he reads that as hostility:
William KellyHe asked only for a break from suffering, and that God's dread would not overwhelm him. He wanted to find out everything that was wrong in himself. He did not yet know the grace that was giving him self-judgment. He sees only a record kept of bitter things: his feet put in the stocks, his ways watched, the very soles of his feet marked.
The words come back
This line is not left behind. Later in the book Elihu repeats it almost word for word (Job 33:11). Set beside Job's claim of innocence, it exposes a contradiction:
C. H. MackintoshHe was so clean, so innocent, so free from iniquity. And yet he says of God, "He finds occasions against me, He counts me for His enemy. He puts my feet in the stocks and watches all my paths." Here is an obvious contradiction. How could a holy, just, and righteous Being count a pure and innocent man His enemy? Impossible. Either Job was deceiving himself, or God was unrighteous.
The complaint was no slip of the tongue, so it could not be left alone:
Samuel RidoutElihu does not misrepresent Job, and he is not seizing on some chance expression. Such charges must be met, and Job convinced that they are false, or he could never have peace in his own soul, and a dark stain would rest on God's honour.
The same watching, seen from the other side
Job's facts are right: God does watch every path. His reading of God's motive is wrong:
Numerical Bible Notes"He never withdraws His eyes from the righteous." Even a Job might find this a painful trial rather than a gain in his time of distress. He cried out in his anguish, "What is man, that You make so much of him, and that You set Your heart on him, visit him every morning and test him every moment?" But Job, with all his outward perfection, had not yet seen God as he was to see Him... How blessed it is, once we have truly seen Him, to know that every step we take matters to Him!
Summary
- Watched — God marks every path, even the heels a man thinks no one sees. On the facts, Job is right.
- Misread — Job reads that attention as a jailer's watch. He says God has shamed him in public, like a prisoner in the stocks.
- Defended — behind the complaint sits a robe of righteousness Job is not yet willing to let go.
- Unrecognised — the very pressure forcing him to examine himself was grace at work, and he could not yet see it.
- Answered — Elihu quotes the line back to Job. The charge had to be met, or Job could never have peace and a stain would rest on God's honour.