3 Think how you have instructed many, how you have strengthened feeble hands.
3 Behold, thou hast instructed many, and thou hast strengthened the weak hands.
3 Behold, you have instructed many, and you have strengthened the weak hands.
3 You yourself have done this plenty of times, spoken words that clarify, encouraged those who were about to quit.
3 Surely you have instructed many, And you have strengthened weak hands.
3 "In the past you have encouraged many people; you have strengthened those who were weak.
13 And make straight
13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.
13 Clear the path for long-distance runners so no one will trip and fall, so no one will step in a hole and sprain an ankle. Help each other out. And run for it!
13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed.
13 Mark out a straight path for your feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong.
(Read Hebrews 12:12-17)
A burden of affliction is apt to make the Christian's hands hang down, and his knees grow feeble, to dispirit him and discourage him; but against this he must strive, that he may better run his spiritual race and course. Faith and patience enable believers to follow peace and holiness, as a man follows his calling constantly, diligently, and with pleasure. Peace with men, of all sects and parties, will be favourable to our pursuit of holiness. But peace and holiness go together; there can be not right peace without holiness. Where persons fail of having the true grace of God, corruption will prevail and break forth; beware lest any unmortified lust in the heart, which seems to be dead, should spring up, to trouble and disturb the whole body. Falling away from Christ is the fruit of preferring the delights of the flesh, to the blessing of God, and the heavenly inheritance, as Esau did. But sinners will not always have such mean thoughts of the Divine blessing and inheritance as they now have. It agrees with the profane man's disposition, to desire the blessing, yet to despise the means whereby the blessing is to be gained. But God will neither sever the means from the blessing, nor join the blessing with the satisfying of man's lusts. God's mercy and blessing were never sought carefully and not obtained.
31 But Moses said, "Please do not leave us. You know where we should camp in the wilderness, and you can be our eyes.
31 And he said, Leave us not, I pray thee; forasmuch as thou knowest how we are to encamp in the wilderness, and thou mayest be to us instead of eyes.
31 And he said, "Please do not leave us, for you know where we should camp in the wilderness, and you will serve as eyes for us.
31 Moses countered, "Don't leave us. You know all the best places to camp in the wilderness. We need your eyes.
31 So Moses said, "Please do not leave, inasmuch as you know how we are to camp in the wilderness, and you can be our eyes.
31 "Please don't leave us," Moses pleaded. "You know the places in the wilderness where we should camp. Come, be our guide.
(Read Numbers 10:29-32)
Moses invites his kindred to go to Canaan. Those that are bound for the heavenly Canaan, should ask and encourage their friends to go with them: we shall have none the less of the joys of heaven, for others coming to share with us. It is good having fellowship with those who have fellowship with God. But the things of this world, which are seen, draw strongly from the pursuit of the things of the other world, which are not seen. Moses urges that Hobab might be serviceable to them. Not to show where they must encamp, nor what way they must march, the cloud was to direct that; but to show the conveniences of the place they marched through, and encamped in. It well consists with our trust in God's providence, to use the help of our friends.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Job 4:3
Commentary on Job 4:1-6
(Read Job 4:1-6)
Satan undertook to prove Job a hypocrite by afflicting him; and his friends concluded him to be one because he was so afflicted, and showed impatience. This we must keep in mind if we would understand what passed. Eliphaz speaks of Job, and his afflicted condition, with tenderness; but charges him with weakness and faint-heartedness. Men make few allowances for those who have taught others. Even pious friends will count that only a touch which we feel as a wound. Learn from hence to draw off the mind of a sufferer from brooding over the affliction, to look at the God of mercies in the affliction. And how can this be done so well as by looking to Christ Jesus, in whose unequalled sorrows every child of God soonest learns to forget his own?