Job 3:24

“For my sighing cometh before I eat, etc.] Or, “before my bread”, or “food” f131; before he sat down to eat, or had tasted of his food, there were nothing but sighing and sobbing, so that he had no appetite for his food, and could take no delight in it; and, while he was eating, his tears mingled with it, so that these were his meat and his drink continually, and he was fed with the bread and water of affliction; and therefore what were light and life to such a person, who could not have the pleasure of one comfortable meal? and my roarings are poured out like the waters; he not only wept privately and in secret, and cried more publicly both to God and in the presence of men, but such was the…”

“my sighing cometh before I eat--that is, prevents my eating [UMBREIT]; or, conscious that the effort to eat brought on the disease, Job must sigh before eating [ROSENMULLER]; or, sighing takes the place of good (Psa 42:3) [GOOD]. But the first explanation accords best with the text. my roarings are poured out like the waters--an image from the rushing sound of water streaming.”

“For my sighing cometh before I eat - Margin, “My meat.” Dr. Good renders this,” Behold! my sighing takes the place of my daily food, and refers to Psalms 42:3, as an illustration: My tears are my meat day and night. So substantially Schultens renders it, and explains it as meaning, “My sighing comes in the manner of my food,” “Suspirium ad modum panis veniens” - and supposes it to mean that his sighs and groans were like his daily food; or were constant and unceasing. Dr. Noyes explains it as meaning, “My sighing comes on when I begin to eat, and prevents my taking my daily nourishment;” and appeals to a similar expression in Juvenal. Sat. xiii. 211: Perpetua anxietas, nec mensae tempore…”

“Before, &c. - Heb. before the face of my bread, all the time I am eating, I fall into sighing and weeping, because I am obliged to eat, and to support this wretched life, and because of my uninterrupted pains of body and of mind, which do not afford me one quiet moment. Roarings - My loud outcries, more befitting a lion than a man. Poured out - With great abundance, and irresistible violence, and incessant continuance, as waters flow in a river, or as they break the banks, and overflow the ground. Job 3:25”

“my sighing: Job 7:19; Psa 80:5, Psa 102:9 I eat: Heb. my meat my roarings: Psa 22:1, Psa 22:2, Psa 32:3, Psa 38:8; Isa 59:11; Lam 3:8 Job 3:25”

“24 For instead of my food my sighing cometh, And my roarings pour themselves forth as water. 25 For I fear something terrible, and it cometh upon me, And that before which I shudder cometh to me. 26 I dwelt not in security, nor rested, nor refreshed myself: Then trouble cometh. That לפני may pass over from the local signification to the substitutionary, like the Lat. pro (e.g., pro praemio est), is seen from Job 4:19 (comp. Sa1 1:16): the parallelism, which is less favourable to the interpretation, before my bread (Hahn, Schlottm., and others), favours the signification pro here. The fut. consec. ויּתּכוּ (Kal of נתך) is to be translated, according to Ges. 129, 3, a, se effundunt (not…”