Job 34:6 - Exposition

Should I lie against my right? This was an essential portion of Job's argument (see Job 27:4 ). Against the theory of his secret heinous wickedness put forward by his "comforters," he maintained consistently his freedom from conscious deliberate opposition to the will of God, and refused to make the confessions which they suggested or required, on the ground that they would have been untrue—in making them he would have "lied against his right." In this certainly Job "sinned not." But it was essential to the theory of Elihu, no less than to that of Eliphaz and his friends, that Job was suffering on account of past iniquity, whether he were being punished for it in anger or chastised for it in love (see Job 33:17 , Job 33:27 ). My wound (literally, my arrow ; comp. Job 6:4 ) is incurable without transgression ; i.e. without my having committed any transgression to account for it.