Job 6:7

Heb. As the sicknesses or sorrows of my meat, i.e. as my sorrowful meat, which I am constrained to eat with grief of heart. The particle as, either,

1. Notes not the similitude, but the truth of the thing, as it is oft used, as hath been formerly noted and proved. So the sense is, that such meat as formerly he should have abhorred to touch, either for the quality of it, or for his tears or ulcerous matter which mixed themselves with it, he was now forced by the necessities of nature, and his own poverty, to eat. Or,

2. Implies that the following words are not to be understood properly, but metaphorically. And so the sense may be this, Those grievous afflictions, which according to the principles and common inclinations of human nature I dreaded the very touch and thought of, they are now my daily, though sorrowful, bread; I am forced constantly to feed upon them; as other persons in great afflictions are said to be fed with bread of tears, Psalms 80:5, and to eat ashes like bread, Psalms 102:9. Others make this a censure of Eliphaz's words, as ungrateful and loathsome to him. But that sense seems neither to agree with the words of this verse, nor with its scope and coherence with the former, of which See Poole on "Job 6:6".