Job 23:17

Because I was not cut off before the darkness, [neither] hath he covered the darkness from my face.

Ver. 17. Because I was not cut off before the darkness] i.e. The afflictions that now are upon me. It is a mercy to some to die sometimes, as Josiah, and those righteous ones, Isaiah 57:1, who were taken away from the evil to come. When God's glory was to pass by, he put Moses into the hole of the rock; so he sometimes doth his servants, till the glory of his justice hath passed upon others.

Neither hath he covered the darkness from my face] i.e. He hath neither prevented my troubles by death, as I wished he would have done, Job 3:3; Job 3:11,13, nor yet will he put an end to them by the same means; for, Mors aerumnarum requies (Chaucer's motto), Death is a rest from trouble. To the tossed soul it is as Mount Ararat was to Noah, where the ark rested; as Michel was to David, a means to shift him out of the way, when Saul sent to slay him; or as the fall of the house was to Samson, an end of all his sorrows and servitude.