Teks -- Job 31:38 (NET)

Job’s Final Solemn Oath

31:38 “If my land cried out against me and all its furrows wept together,

Tafsiran/Catatan -- Catatan Kata/Frasa (per frasa)

Wesley: Job 31:38 - Cry

Because I have gotten it by fraud or violence.

JFB: Job 31:38

Personification. The complaints of the unjustly ousted proprietors are transferred to the lands themselves (Job 31:20; Gen 4:10; Hab 2:11). If I have unjustly acquired lands (Job 24:2; Isa 5:8).

JFB: Job 31:38 - furrows

The specification of these makes it likely, he implies in this, "If I paid not the laborer for tillage"; as Job 31:39, "If I paid him not for gathering in the fruits." Thus of the four clauses in Job 31:38-39, the first refers to the same subject as the fourth, the second is connected with the third by introverted parallelism. Compare Jam 5:4, which plainly alludes to this passage: compare "Lord of Sabaoth" with Job 31:26 here.

Clarke: Job 31:38 - If my land cry

If my land cry - The most careless reader may see that the introduction of this and the two following verses here, disturbs the connection, and that they are most evidently out of their place. Job seems here to refer to that law, Lev 25:1-7, by which the Israelites were obliged to give the land rest every seventh year, that the soil might not be too much exhausted by perpetual cultivation, especially in a country which afforded so few advantages to improve the arable ground by manure. He, conscious that he had acted according to this law, states that his land could not cry out against him, nor its furrows complain. He had not broken the law, nor exhausted the soil.

TSK: Job 31:38 - cry // complain

cry : Job 20:27; Hab 2:11; Jam 5:4

complain : Heb. weep, Psa 65:13

Tafsiran/Catatan -- Catatan Kata/Frasa (per Ayat)

Poole: Job 31:38

To wit, to God for revenge, as the like phrase is used, Gen 4:10 Hab 2:11 , because I have gotten it from the right owners by fraud or violence, as my friends charge me, and as is implied in the next verse.

Haydock: Job 31:38 - Mourn

Mourn, as if I possessed the land unjustly, or had committed some crime.

Gill: Job 31:38 - If my land cry against me // or that the furrows likewise thereof complain

If my land cry against me,.... Some think that this verse and Job 31:39 stand out of their place, and should rather follow after Job 31:34; and some place them after Job 31:25; and others after Job 31:8; but this is the order of them in all copies and versions, as they stand in our Bibles; and here, after Job had expressed his desire to have a hearer and judge of his cause, and his charge exhibited in writing, and his confidence of the issue of it, should it be granted, returns to his former subject, to clear himself from any notorious vice he was suspected of or charged with; and as he had gone through what might respect him in private life, here he gives another instance in public life, with which he concludes; namely, purging himself from tyranny and oppression, with which his friends had charged him without any proof; and he denies that the land he lived on was possessed of, and of which he was the proprietor, cried against him as being unjustly gotten, either by fraud or by force, from others; or as being ill used by him either as being too much cultivated, having never any rest, or lying fallow; and so much weakened and drained of its strength, or neglected and overrun with weeds, thorns, and thistles; or on account of the dressers and tillers of it being badly dealt with, either overworked, or not having sufficiency of food, or their wages, detained from them; all which are crying sins, and by reason of which the land by a figure may be said to cry out as the stone out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber, because of the sins of spoil, violence, oppression, and covetousness, Hab 2:11;

or that the furrows likewise thereof complain; or "weep" ^a, on account of the like ill usage. Jarchi, and so the Midrash, interpret this of not allowing the forgotten sheaf and corner of the field to the poor, and detaining the tithes; and of ploughing and making furrows with an ox and an ass together; but the laws respecting these things were not yet in being; and if they had been, were only binding on Israelites, and not on Job, and the men of his country.