Job 31:3

Job 31:3 [Is] not destruction to the wicked? and a strange [punishment] to the workers of iniquity?

Ver. 3. Is not destruction to the wicked?] Yes, that is their portion, their inheritance; and so Job makes answer to his own question proposed in the preceding verse. The ruin of impure souls is infallible, unsupportable, unavoidable; if God hath aversion from all other sinners, he hath hatred and horror for the unchaste; such stinking goats shall be set on the left hand, and sent to hell; where they shall have so much the more of punishment as they had here of sensual and sinful pleasure, as sour sauce to their sweet meats, Rev 18:7. Not to speak of the miseries they meet with here, which are not a few: in their souls, hardness of heart, or horror of conscience: in their bodies, foul and loathsome diseases, such as will stick to them when their best friends forsake them: in their names, indelible reproach and infamy; like an iron mole, which nothing can fetch out; like the leprosy, which could never be scraped out of the walls: in their estates, poverty, even to a piece of bread, Pro 6:26. Harlots are poscinummia, crumenimulgae, suck purses, Luk 15:14. In their posterity, as Jericho was built, so is uncleanness plagued, both in the eldest and youngest; it goes through the race, till it have wasted all.

Corpus, opes, animam, famam, vim, lumina, Scortum

Debilitat, perdit, necat, aufert, eripit, orbat.

And a strange punishment to the workers of iniquity?] Even such as is unusual and extraordinary; as upon the Sodomites, who, going after strange flesh, were thrown forth for an example, as Jude hath it, Jdg 1:7. So those Benjamites, Jdg 20:12-15; Jdg 20:43-48; the Trojans; the Lacedemonians at Leuctra; Zimri and Cozbi; Zedekiah and Ahab, Jer 29:22; Eli’s two sons; Heraclius, the emperor; Muleasses, king of Tunis, in Barbary, bereft by his own son Amida (another Absalom), not of his kingdom only, but of his eyes too, put out with a burning hot iron; those eyes of his that had been full of adultery, and could not cease to sin. In Hebrew the same word signifieth both an eye and a fountain; to show, saith one, that from the eye, as a fountain, floweth both sin and misery.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Job 31:3-4. Is not destruction to the wicked? — Destruction is their portion. And a strange punishment — Some extraordinary and dreadful judgment, which of right belongs to them. Hebrew, ונכר, venecher, an alienation, or estrangement, namely, from God and his favour: had I been such a one, I neither should nor could have expected any kindness or mercy from God in a future world, as now I do. Doth not he see my ways? — That is, all my counsels and courses. This was another reason why he was so circumspect and exact in restraining his thoughts, and senses, and whole man from sinful practices, because he knew that God would discern them, and therefore punish them, as he said, Job 31:3.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Is not destruction to the wicked? The inheritance of the wicked is "destruction ruin both of soul and body. This is what I should have to expect if I yielded myself to the bondage of lust and concupiscence. And a strange punishment to the workers of iniquity? The rare word neker (rkg), translated here by "strange punishment," seems to mean "alienation from God being turned from God"s friend into his enemy (comp. Buxtorf, "Lexicon Hebraicum et Chaldaicum," who explains rkg by "alienatio;" and the comment of Schultens on Job_31:3, "Necer, a Deo alienatio").

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Job declareth that the fear of God was a bridle to stay him from all wickedness.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Answer to the question in Job 31:2.

strange--extraordinary.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 3. Is not destruction to the wicked] If I had been guilty of such secret hypocritical proceedings, professing faith in the true God while in eye and heart an idolater, would not such a worker of iniquity be distinguished by a strange and unheard-of punishment?

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(3) Is not—i.e., Is not this the portion of Job_31:2?

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Is not destruction to the wicked?.... It is even to such wicked men, who live in the sin of fornication, and make it their business to ensnare and corrupt virgins; and which is another reason why Job was careful to avoid that sin; wickedness of every sort is the cause of destruction, destruction and misery are in the ways of wicked men, and their wicked ways lead unto it, and issue in it, even destruction of soul and body in hell, which is swift and sudden, and will be everlasting: this is laid up for wicked men among the treasures of God's wrath, and they are reserved that, and there is no way of deliverance from it but by Christ:

and a strange punishment to the workers of iniquity; the iniquity of fornication and whoredom, Pro 30:20; who make it their business to commit it, and live in a continued course of uncleanness and other sins; a punishment, something strange, unusual, and uncommon, as the filthy venereal disease in this world, and everlasting burnings in another; or "alienation" (y), a state of estrangement and banishment from the presence of God and Christ, and from the society of the saints, to all eternity; see Mat 25:46.

(y) "et abalienatio", Munster; "et alienatio", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Mercerus, Drusius, Schmidt.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Is not destruction to the wicked? - That is, Job says that he was well aware that destruction would overtake the wicked, and that if he had given indulgence to impure desires he could have looked for nothing else. Well knowing this, he says, he had guarded himself in the most careful manner from sin, and had labored with the greatest assiduity to keep his eyes and his heart pure.

And a strange punishment - - ונכר weneker. The word used here, means literally strangeness - a strange thing, something with which we were unacquainted. It is used here evidently in the sense of a strange or unusual punishment; something which does not occur in the ordinary course of events. The sense is, that for the sin here particularly referred to, God would interpose to inflict vengeance in a manner such as did not occur in the ordinary dealings of his providence. There would be some punishment adopted especially to this sin, and which would mark it with his special displeasure. Has it not been so in all ages? The Vulgate renders it, alienatio, and the Septuagint translates it in a similar manner - ἀπαλλοτρίωσις apallotriōsis - and they seem to have understood it as followed by entire alienation from God; an idea which would be every where sustained by a reference to the history of the sin referred to by Job. There is no sin that so much poisons all the fountains of pure feeling in the soul, and none that will so certainly terminate in the entire wreck of character.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Aversion of God. Hebrew "strange punishment." (Protestants) Incontinence is a source of much mischief, and of the most dreadful punishments, as the deluge and fate of Sodom evince. (Haydock)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Destruction is their portion, and a strange punishment, some extraordinary and dreadful judgment, which of right and course belongs to them, and only to such as they are, although it hath pleased God out of his sovereign power to inflict it upon me, who have lived in all good conscience before him. Heb. an alienation or estrangement, to wit, from God and from his favour. Had I been such a one, I neither could nor should have expected any kindness or mercy from God, as now I do.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

3. A strange punishment — נכר. The word bears a similar meaning in the Arabic. Thus Mohammed: “He shall visit him with a strange, (nukran,) or awful, penalty.” The punishment of such “workers of iniquity” is strange, extraordinary. The diseases and the remorse that spring from a life of licentiousness are markedly exceptional, and argue peculiar punishment in the next life.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

General Information:

Job continues speaking.

Does not God see my ways and count all my steps?

Here "my ways" and "my steps" are metaphors for Job's behavior. Here "see my ways" and "count all my steps" are metaphors for knowing everything Job does. Job uses this question to emphasize that God does know all he does. AT: "Certainly God watches me and knows everything that I do." (See: Metaphor and Rhetorical Question)

Does not God see my ways and count all my steps?

Job may be implying that God should know that Job is righteous and does not deserve calamity and disaster. (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

translationWords

righteous

evil

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

Is not misfortune, for the unjust He deserves it, not I.

and deliverance Heb. ונכר, after the pattern of (Obadiah 1:12) “[And] you should not have looked on the day of your brother on the day of his being delivered (נכרו).”

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.