Did not he that made me in the womb make him?
&c.] And her also, both his manservant and maidservant: these
were made, by the Lord as Job was, and in a like place and manner
as he himself; though parents are the instruments of begetting
children, and of bringing them into the world, God is the Maker
of men, as at the beginning, and all are alike made by him, in
whatsoever rank, condition, and circumstance of life, whether
masters or servants; and they are all fabricated in the same shop
of nature, the womb of a woman:
and did not one fashion us in the womb?
that is, he who is the one God, according to ( Malachi 2:10
) ; God is one in nature and essence, though there are three
Persons in the unity of the Godhead; and this one God, Father,
Son, and Spirit, is the Creator of all men and things; hence we
read of "Creators", ( Ecclesiastes
12:1 ) ; and, though one God makes the bodies and creates the
souls of men now as at the first, and all are formed and
fashioned by him, high, low, rich and poor, bond and free; and
they have all the same rational powers and faculties of soul, (
Psalms
33:15 ) ; as well as the same curious art and skill are
employed in forming and fashioning their bodies and the members
of them, in the lower parts of the earth, in their mother's womb;
yea, they are fashioned "in one womb" F8, as the
words will better bear to be rendered according to the position
of them in the original and the accents; not indeed in the same
identical womb, but in a like one: there are two words in the
original here, both translated "womb"; the one signifies the
"ovarium", in which the conception is made; the other designs the
"secundine", in which the fetus is wrapped or covered; for so it
may be rendered, "did he not cover us?" &c. F9; though
Jarchi, Aben Ezra, Ben Gersom, and others, interpret it of the
one God as we do: Job's reasoning is, that seeing he and his
servants were equally the workmanship of God, and both made in
the womb by him, and curiously fashioned alike, and possessed of
the same rational powers, it would be unreasonable in him to use
them ill, who were his fellow creatures; and should he, he might
expect the Maker of them both would highly resent it. Macrobius
F11, an Heathen writer, gives a
remarkable instance of the care heaven, as he expresses it, has
of servants, and how much the contempt of it is resented thereby;
and reasons much in the same manner concerning them as Job does
here, that they are men, though servants; are of the same
original, breathe in the same air, live and die as other men.