4 For the arrows of the Almighty are within me. My spirit drinks up their poison. The terrors of God set themselves in array against me.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
For the arrows of the Almighty are within me - That is, it is not a light affliction that I endure. I am wounded in a manner which could not be caused by man - called to endure a severity of suffering which shows that it proceeds from the Almighty. Thus called to suffer what man could not cause, he maintains that it is right for him to complain, and that the words which he employed were not an improper expression of the extent of the grief.
The poison whereof drinketh up my spirit - Takes away my rigor, my comfort, my life. He here compares his afflictions with being wounded with poisoned arrows. Such arrows were not unfrequently used among the ancients. The object was to secure certain death, even where the wound caused by the arrow itself would not produce it. Poison was made so concentrated, that the smallest quantity conveyed by the point of an arrow would render death inevitable. This practice contributed much to the barbarity of savage war. Thus, Virgil speaks of poisoned arrows:
Ungere tela manu, ferrumque armare veneno.
Aeneid ix. 773
And again, Aen x. 140:
Vulnera dirigere, et calamos armare veneno.
So Ovid, Lib. 1. de Ponto, Eleg. ii. of the Scythians:
Qui mortis saevo geminent ut vulnere causas,
Omnia vipereo spicula felle linunt.
Compare Justin, Lib. ii. c. 10. section 2; Grotius, de Jure Belli et Pacis; and Virgil, En. xii. 857. In the Odyssey, i. 260ff we read of Ulysses that he went to Ephyra, a city of Thessaly, to obtain from Ilus, the son of Mermer, deadly poison, that he might smear it over the iron point of his arrows. The pestilence which produced so great a destruction in the Grecian camp is also said by Homer (Iliad i. 48) to have been caused by arrows shot from the bow of Apollo. The phrase "drinketh up the spirit" is very expressive. We speak now of the sword thirsting for blood; but this language is more expressive and striking. The figure is not uncommon in the poetry of the East and of the ancients. In the poem of Zohair, the third of the Moallakat, or those transcribed in golden letters, and suspended in the temple of Mecca, the same image occurs. It is thus rendered by Sir William Jones:
Their javelins had no share in drinking the blood of Naufel.
A similar expression occurs in Sophocles in Trachinn, verse 1061, as quoted by Schultens, when describing the pestilence in which Hercules suffered:
ἐκ δὲ χλωρὸν αἵμα μου Πέπωκεν ἤδη -
ek de chlōron haima mou Pepōken ēdē -
This has been imitated by Cicero in Tusculan. Disp. ii. 8:
Haec me irretivit veste furiali inscium,
Quae lateri inhaerens morsu lacerat viscera,
Urgensque graviter, pulmonum haurit spiritus,
James decolorem sanguinem omnem exsorbuit.
So Lucan, Pharsa. ix. 741ff gives a similar description:
Ecce subit virus taciturn, carpitque medullas
Ignis edax calidaque iacendit viscera tabe.
Ebibit humorem circa vitalia fusum
Pestis, et in sicco linguan torrere palato Coepit.
Far more beautiful, however, than the expressions of any of the ancient Classics - more tender, more delicate, more full of pathos - is the description which the Christian poet Cowper gives of the arrow that pierces the side of the sinner. It is the account of his own conversion:
I was a stricken deer that left the herd
Long since. With many an artery deep infix'd
My panting side was charged when I withdrew
To seek a tranquil death in distant shades.
There I was found by one, who had himself
Been hurt by the archers. In his side he bore,
And in his hands and feet, the cruel scars.
Task, b. iii.
Of such wounding he did not complain. The arrow was extracted by the tender hand of him who alone had power to do it. Had Job known of him; had he been fully acquainted with the plan of mercy through him, and the comfort which a wounded sinner may find there, we should not have heard the bitter complaints which he uttered in his trials. Let us not judge him with the severity which we may use of one who is afflicted and complains under the full light of the gospel.
The terrors of God do set themselves in array against me - Those things which God uses to excite terror. The word which is rendered "set in array" (ערך ‛ârak) properly denotes the drawing up of a line for battle; and the sense is here, that all these terrors seem to be drawn up in battle array, as if on purpose to destroy him. No expression could more strikingly describe the condition of an awakened sinner, though it is not certain that Job used it precisely in this sense. The idea as he used it is, that all that God commonly employed to produce alarm seemed to be drawn up as in a line of battle against him.
The arrows of the Almighty - There is an evident reference here to wounds inflicted by poisoned arrows; and to the burning fever occasioned by such wounds, producing such an intense parching thirst as to dry up all the moisture in the system, stop all the salivary ducts, thicken and inflame the blood, induce putrescency, and terminate in raging mania, producing the most terrifying images, from which the patient is relieved only by death. This is strongly expressed in the fine figure: The Poison Drinketh Up my Spirit; the Terrors of God Set Themselves in Array against me. That calamities are represented among the Eastern writers as the arrows of the Almighty, we have abundant proofs. In reference to this, I shall adduce that fine saying attributed to Aaly, the son-in-law of Mohammed in the Toozuki Teemour; which I have spoken of elsewhere. "It was once demanded of the fourth califf (Aaly), 'If the canopy of heaven were a bow; and if the earth were the cord thereof; and if calamities were the arrows; if mankind were the mark for those arrows; and if Almighty God, the tremendous and glorious, were the unerring Archer; to whom could the sons of Adam flee for protection?' The califf answered, 'The sons of Adam must flee unto the Lord.'" This fine image Job keeps in view in the eighth and ninth verses, wishing that the unerring marksman may let fly these arrows, let loose his hand, to destroy and cut him off.
For the arrows of the Almighty [are] within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit: the terrors of God do (c) set themselves in array against me.
(c) Which declares that he was not only afflicted in body, but wounded in conscience, which is the greatest battle that the faithful can have.
For the arrows of the Almighty are within me,.... Which are a reason proving the weight and heaviness of his affliction, and also of his hot and passionate expressions he broke out into; which designs not so much outward calamities, as famine, pestilence, thunder and lightning, which are called the arrows of God, Deuteronomy 32:23; all which had attended Job, and were his case; being reduced to extreme poverty, had malignant and pestilential ulcers upon him, and his sheep destroyed by thunder and lightning; and which were like arrows, that came upon him suddenly, secretly, and at unawares, and very swiftly; these arrows flew thick and first about, him, and stuck in him, and were sharp and painful, and wounded and slew him; for he was now under slaying circumstances of Providence; but rather these mean, together with his afflictions, the inward distresses, grief, and anguish of his mind arising from them, being attended with a keen sense of the divine displeasure, which was the case of David, and is expressed in much the same language, Psalm 38:1; Job here considers his afflictions as coming from God, as arrows shot from his bow; and as coming from him, not as a father, in a way of paternal chastisement, and love, dealing with him as a child of his, but accounting him as an enemy, and setting him up as a mark or butt to shoot at, see Job 7:20; yea, not only as the arrows of a strong and mighty man, expert in archery, who shoots his arrows with great strength and skill, so that they miss not, and return not in vain, see Psalm 120:4; but as being the arrows of the Almighty, which come with force irresistible, with the stretching and lighting down of his arm, and with the indignation of his anger intolerable:
the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit; alluding to the custom of some people, that used to dip their arrows in poison, or besmear them with it; so the Persians, as Jarchi observes, and Heliodorus (c) reports of the Ethiopians, that they dipped their arrows in the poison of dragons, and which made them inflammatory, and raised such an heat, and such burning pains, as were intolerable; and now, as such poison presently infected the blood, and penetrated into and seized the animal spirits, and inflamed and soon exhausted them; so the heat of divine wrath, and a sense of it, which attended the arrows of God, his afflictions on Job, so affected him, as not only to take away his breath, that he could not speak, as in Job 6:3, or rather, as to cause those warm and hot expressions to break out from him, but even to eat up his vital spirits, and leave him spiritless and lifeless; which was Heman's case, and similar to Job's, Psalm 88:3,
the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me; the Lord is sometimes compared to a man of war in arms, stirring up his wrath and jealousy, Exodus 15:3; and in this light he was viewed by Job, and so he apprehended him, as coming forth against him, and which was terrible; and his terrors were like an army of soldiers set in battle array, in rank and file, ready to discharge, or discharging their artillery upon him; and which sometimes design the inward terrors of mind, of a guilty conscience, the terrors of God's judgment here, or of a future judgment hereafter, of death and hell, and eternal damnation, through the menaces and curses of the law of God transgressed and broken; but here afflictive providences, or terrible things in righteousness, which surrounded him, attacked him in great numbers, and in a hostile military way, with great order and regularity, and which were frightful to behold; perhaps regard may be also had to those scaring dreams and terrifying visions he sometimes had, see Job 7:14.
(c) Ethiopic. l. 9. c. 19.
arrows . . . within me--have pierced me. A poetic image representing the avenging Almighty armed with bow and arrows (Psalm 38:2-3). Here the arrows are poisoned. Peculiarly appropriate, in reference to the burning pains which penetrated, like poison, into the inmost parts--("spirit"; as contrasted with mere surface flesh wounds) of Job's body.
set themselves in array--a military image (Judges 20:33). All the terrors which the divine wrath can muster are set in array against me (Isaiah 42:13).
Arrows - So he fitly calls his afflictions, because, like arrows, they came upon him swiftly and suddenly one after another, immediately shot by God into his spirit. Poison - Implying that these arrows were more keen than ordinary, being dipped in God's wrath, as the barbarous nations used to dip their arrows in poison, that they might not only pierce, but burn up and consume the vital parts. Drinketh - Exhausteth and consumeth my soul. In array - They are like a numerous army, who invade me on every side. This was the sorest part of his calamity, wherein he was an eminent type of Christ, who complained most of the sufferings of his soul. Now is my soul troubled. My soul is exceeding sorrowful. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Indeed trouble of mind is the sorest trouble. A wounded spirit who can bear.
*More commentary available at chapter level.