My eye has grown dim from vexation, and all my members are like a shadow.
Job 17:7 sits in the middle of Job's reply to friends who have come to comfort him and ended up accusing him. He describes what grief has done to his body: failing sight and a wasted frame. The question the verse raises is whether such ruin proves the sufferer is guilty.
What the words describe
Was Job describing real physical damage, or painting a picture of himself?
Leslie M. GrantIf this was not true in the literal sense, it was true as a picture. His sorrow had affected his eyesight, and he felt the parts of his body were like shadows.
Sorrow traced back to God
Who did Job hold responsible for his ruin? His answer explains why the trial stayed so dark to him.
William KellyHe acknowledged the truth. He does not blame his ruin on the Chaldeans, or on any other secondary cause. He does not explain it away by the means that were used. He saw God's hand in it, yet he did not enter in the least into God's mind about the trial, still less into His love. That was the very reason why it was all so unexplainable to him at the time. He holds fast to his integrity, completely sure that there was nothing of what they imagined against him — no dreadful secret, no crushing sin, that God was punishing in this way.
So the dim eye is not the mark of a guilty man paying for hidden sin. Job's conscience stays clear while his body falls apart.
Mockery he could not look away from
What kept the wound open was the company. His friends kept pressing a dying man to confess something he knew was untrue, and his eye could settle on nothing else.
William KellyHowever he himself might now be a bye-word, and openly an object of insult, his eye dim through grief and his whole frame a shadow, upright men should yet be amazed at this, and the guiltless roused against the ungodly, but the righteous should hold fast on their way, and the man of clean hands increase in strength.
The scorn was not limited to the three men sitting with him. Their verdict was the ordinary verdict of the neighbourhood — the natural conclusion of a mind that assumes God settles every account now.
The turn inside the complaint
Job's complaint does not end in the dark. One writer marks the exact line where it turns.
William Kelly"The righteous" — you see it is turned for good — "holds to his way." That is what he looked forward to. His record was on high; his witness was in heaven; he clung to God. "Though He slay me, I will hope in Him." That was Job's language; that was his spirit. He had far more faith than any one of the three.
Did Job feel any stronger while it was happening? One writer puts that question to the same verse.
Leslie M. GrantJob would hold to his way despite the opposition. As he says, "he who has clean hands grows stronger and stronger." This is true, but at the time did Job feel stronger and stronger? Thank God his experience would certainly end with him being strengthened.
Where the testimony is marred
Commentators differ in emphasis here. Alongside the faith, another reading notes a fault in the very sentence about his dimmed eye: Job lays his misery at God's door as well as man's, and there is a tone in his words that does not fit a lowly man.
Samuel RidoutAgain he spoils his testimony. He charges his misery on God as well as on man, and says that upright people are tripped up by his sufferings. Yet despite it all, Job keeps on his steady way. In answer to the attack of his friends, though, there is a tone of self-satisfaction that does not really suit a truly humble man.
The lesson for a sufferer
Long pain can shrink a man's world down to his own case. One writer names the danger in that.
The Christian's FriendSatan is always trying to occupy me with myself. That never leads to a true judgment of myself, though moaning over my inconsistencies may look pious and humble to some. The true object is outside myself... But Satan can get a good man taken up with himself. Job is an example of this, and he expresses it through twenty chapters; but God had to empty him of all that.
Summary
- Shadow. Grief had weakened Job's sight and left his whole body like a shadow.
- Source. Job refused to blame raiders or bad luck. He said God's hand was in it. He could not yet see God's mind or His love in the trial, so the whole thing stayed unexplainable to him.
- Suspicion. His friends read his ruin as proof of hidden sin. Job held his integrity. There was no dreadful secret for God to punish.
- Steadiness. He does not end at the shadow. The righteous holds to his way, and the man with clean hands grows stronger. Job's record was on high, and one writer finds more faith in him than in all three friends. Job did not feel stronger at the time, but his trial ended with him strengthened.
- Self. The same chapter shows the risk in long suffering: blaming God, self-satisfaction, a man taken up with his own case. God had to empty Job of that. An eye fixed on self never reaches a true judgment of self.