Job 17:11

My days are past - Job seems to relapse here into his former state of gloom. These transitions are very frequent in this poem; and they strongly mark the struggle of piety and resignation with continued affliction, violent temptation, and gloomy providences.

The thoughts of my heart - All my purposes are interrupted; and all my schemes and plans, in relation to myself and family, are torn asunder, destroyed, and dissipated.

My days are past - "I am about to die." Job relapses again into sadness - as he often does. A sense of his miserable condition comes over him like a cloud, and he feels that he must die.

My purposes are broken off - All my plans fail, and my schemes of life come to an end. No matter what they could say now, it was all over with him, and he must die; compare Isaiah 38:12 :

"My habitation is taken away, and is removed from me

Like a shepherd's tent;

My life is cut off as by a weaver

Who severeth the web from the loom;

Between the morning and the night thou wilt make an end of me."

Even the thoughts of my heart - Margin, possessions. Noyes, "treasures." Dr. Good, "resolves." Dr. Stock, "the tenants of my heart." Vulgate, "torquen'es cor meum." Septuagint, τὰ ἄρθρα τῆς καρδίας μου ta arthra tēs kardias mou - the strings of my heart. The Hebrew word (מורשׁ môrâsh) means properly possession (from ירשׁ yârash, to inherit); and the word here means the dear possessions of his heart; his cherished plans and schemes; the delights of his soul - the purposes which he had hoped to accomplish. All these were now to be broken on by death. This is to man one of the most trying things in death. All his plans must be arrested. His projects of ambition and gain, of pleasure and of fame, of professional eminence and of learning, all are arrested midway. The farmer is compelled to leave his plow in the furrow; the mechanic, his work unfinished; the lawyer, his brief half prepared; the student, his books lying open; the man who is building a palace, leaves it incomplete; and he who is seeking a crown, is taken away when it seemed just within his grasp. How many unfinished plans are caused by death every day! How many unfinished books, sermons, houses, does it make! How many schemes of wickedness and of benevolence, of fraud and of kindness, of gain and of mercy, are daily broken in upon by death! Soon, reader, all your plans and mine will be ended - mine, perhaps, before these lines meet your eye; yours soon afterward. God grant that our purposes of life may be such that we shall be willing to have them broken in upon - all so subordinate to the GREAT PLAN of being prepared for heaven, that we may cheerfully surrender them at any moment, at the call of the Master summoning us into his awful presence!

17:11 My days - The days of my life. I am a dying man, and therefore the hopes you give me of the bettering of my condition, are vain.Purposes - Which I had in my prosperous days, concerning myself and children.