(11) The ungodly and the wicked are the terms he retorts upon his friends, and they have certainly earned them. Now follows--

Verse 11. - God hath delivered me to the ungodly. All that Job had suffered at the hands of wicked men, the gibes of his "comforters," the insults and "derision ' of "base men" (Job 30:1, 8-10), the desertion of many who might have been expected to have come to his aid, being by God's per-minion, is attributed by Job to God himself, who has "delivered" him up to these "ungodly" ones, and permits them to add to and intensify his sufferings. He was not so ruthlessly treated as his great Anti-type; he was not bound with thongs, or crowned with thorns, or smitten with a reed, or scourged, or crucified - even the smiting on the cheek, spoken of in ver. 10, was probably metaphorical; but he suffered, no doubt, grievously, through the scorn and contumely that assailed him, through his friends' unkindness, and his enimies' insolent triumph, and the rude jeers of the "abjeets" who made him their "song" and their "byword" (Job 30:9). And turned me over into the hands of the wicked. Job speaks as if God had wholly given him up, made him over to the wicked, to deal with him exactly as they chose. This, of course, was not so. If the malevolence of Satan was limited by the Divine will (Job 1:12; Job 2:6); so, much more, would the malevolence of man be limited.

16:6-16 Here is a doleful representation of Job's grievances. What reason we have to bless God, that we are not making such complaints! Even good men, when in great troubles, have much ado not to entertain hard thoughts of God. Eliphaz had represented Job as unhumbled under his affliction: No, says Job, I know better things; the dust is now the fittest place for me. In this he reminds us of Christ, who was a man of sorrows, and pronounced those blessed that mourn, for they shall be comforted.God hath delivered me up to the ungodly,.... The evil or wicked one, for it is in the singular number; and designs either Satan, into whose hands God had not only delivered his substance, but his person, excepting his life; though it may be, and which is an objection to this sense, Job as yet knew it not; or else Eliphaz, or, the singular number being put for the plural, as the next clause explains it, all his friends, whom he in turn calls evil and wicked men, because of their treatment of him; or else the Sabeans and Chaldeans are intended, who were suffered to plunder him of his substance; the words are very applicable to Christ, who was delivered to the Gentiles, and into the hands of sinners and wicked men, and that by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, who with wicked hands took him, and crucified him, Matthew 20:19; or God "shut him up", or "delivered him bound" (d), as the word signifies; which was literally true of Christ, who was bound by the Jews, and delivered first to the high priest, and then to the Roman governor, in such circumstances, John 18:12;

and turned me over into the hands of the wicked; signifying the same as before, unless it should be rendered, "and caused me to decline", or "come down by the hands of the wicked" (e) that is, from his former state of prosperity and happiness, into the low circumstances in which he was, and which he was brought into by the means of wicked men, God suffering it so to be.

(d) "vinctum me tradidit", Grotius, Michaelis, Schultens. (e) "divertere fecit a vita", Pagninus; "declinare me facit", Beza, Drusius, Mercerus.