Attributed commentary excerpt
Barnes' Notes on Job 13:26
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Notes on the Whole Bible
Albert Barnes (1798–1870) · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
For thou writest bitter things against me - Charges or accusations of severity. We use the word “bitter” now in a somewhat similar sense. We speak of bitter sorrow, bitter cold, etc. The language here is all taken from courts of justice, and Job is carrying cut the train of thought on which he had entered in regard to a trial before God. He says that the accusations which God had brought against him were of a bitter and severe character; charging him with aggravated offences, and recalling the sins of his youth, and holding him responsible for them. Rosenmuller remarks that the word “write” here is a judicial term, referring to the custom of writing the sentence of a person condemned (as in Psalms 149:9; Jeremiah 22:30); that is, decreeing the punishment. So the Greeks used the expression γράφεσθαι δίκην graphesthai dikēn, meaning to declare a judicial sentence. So the Arabs use the word “kitab,” writing, to denote a judicial sentence. And makest me to possess - Hebrew Causest me to inherit - ותורישׁני vetôrı̂yshēnı̂y. He was heir to them; or they were now his as a possession or an inheritance. The Vulgate renders it, consumere me vis, etc. “thou wishest to consume me with the sins of my youth.” The Septuagint, “and thou dost charge against me” - περιέφηκας perithēkas. The iniquities of my youth - The offences which I committed when young. He complains now that God recalled all those offences; that he went into days that were past, and raked up what Job had forgotten; that, not satisfied with charging on him what he had done as a man, he went back and collected all that could be found in the days when he was under the influence of youthful passions, and when, like other young men, he might have gone astray. But why should he not do it? What impropriety could there be in God in thus recalling the memory of long-forgotten sins, and causing the results to meet him now that he was a man? We may remark here, (1) That this is often done. The sins and follies of youth seem often to be passed over or to be unnoticed by God. Long intervals of time or long tracts of land or ocean may intervene between the time when sin was committed in youth, and when it shall be punished in age. The man may himself have forgotten it, and after a youth of dissipation and folly he may perhaps have a life of prosperity for many years. But those sins are not forgotten by God. Far on in life the results of early dissipation, licentiousness, folly, will meet the offender, and overwhelm him in disgrace or calamity. (2) God has power to recall all the offences of early life. He has access to the soul. He knows all its secret springs. With infinite ease he can reach the memory of a long-forgotten deed of guilt; and he can overwhelm the mind with the recollection of crimes that have not been thought of for years. He can fix the attention with painful intensity on some slight deed of past criminality; or he can recall forgotten sins in groups; or he can make the remembrance of one sin suggest a host of others. No man who has passed a guilty youth can be certain that his mind will not be overwhelmed with painful recollections, and however calm and secure he may now be, he may in a moment be harassed with the consciousness of deep criminality, and with most gloomy apprehensions of the wrath to come. (3) A young man should be pure. He has otherwise no security of respectability in future life, or of pleasant recollections of the past, should he reach old age. He who…
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