For he breaketh me with a tempest
Which rises suddenly, comes powerfully, and carries all before it
irresistibly; hereby signifying the nature of his present sore
afflictions, which came upon him at once, pressed him down, and
utterly destroyed him, against which there was no standing:
perhaps he may have some reference to the storm of wind that blew
down the house, by which his children were destroyed. Schultens
renders it, "a burning tempest" F19, such as is common in the
eastern countries, which Thevenot F20 often makes mention of;
which kills a man at once, and his flesh becomes as black as a
coal, and comes off of his bones, and is plucked off by the hand
that would lift him up; with which a man is broken to pieces
indeed, to which Job may allude:
and multiplieth my wounds without cause;
referring, it may be, to the many boils and ulcers upon his body;
though it may also respect the multiplicity of ways in which he
had wounded or afflicted him, in his person, in his family, and
in his substance, and which he says was done "without cause"; not
without a cause or reason in God, who does nothing without one,
though it may not be known to men; particularly in afflicting
men, it is not without cause or reason; it he punishes men, it is
for sin; if he rebukes and chastises his people, it is for their
transgressions; to bring them to a sense of them, to humble them
for them, to bring them off from them, or to prevent them, or
purge them away, and to try their graces, wean them from the
world, and fit them for himself: but Job's afflictions were
without any such cause intimated by his friends; it was not
hypocrisy, nor any notorious sin or sins he had been guilty of,
and secretly lived and indulged himself in, as they imagined. Job
here suggests his innocence, which he always insisted upon, and
refers his afflictions to the sovereign will of God, and to some
hidden cause in his own breast, unknown to himself and others:
however, so long as he dealt with him after this manner, he could
not believe his prayers were heard by him.