Job 31:22

Then let mine arm fall from my shoulder blade ,.... With which the upper part of it is connected; let it be disjointed from it, or rot and drop off from it; a dreadful calamity this, to lose an arm and the use of it, to have it full off immediately, as a judgment from God, and in just retaliation for lifting up an hand or arm against the fatherless; as Jeroboam's arm withered when he put it forth from the altar, and ordered hands to be laid upon the prophet for crying against the altar, 1 Kings 13:4 ; and mine arm be broken from the bone; from the channel bone, as the margin of our Bibles, or rather from the elbow, the lower part of the arm and so may be rendered, "or mine arm", &c.; Eliphaz had brought a charge against Job, that the arms of the fatherless had been broken, and suggests that they had been broken by him, or by his orders, Job 22:9 ; and Job here wishes, that if that was the case, that his own arm was broken: such imprecations are not to be made in common, or frequently, and only when a man's innocence cannot be vindicated but by an appeal to the omniscient God; an instance somewhat like this, see in Psalm 137:5 .