Job 23:2

Even to day [is] my complaint bitter: my stroke is heavier than my groaning.

Ver. 2. Even today is my complaint bitter] q.d. After all mine endeavour to satisfy you, I am still misinterpreted, and accounted by you, my friends, no better than a malcontent and a murmurer against God; albeit my laments do no way equal my torments. True it is that Eliphaz had given him excellent counsel, Job 22:21,22, &c., but it was to flatter him into the same error that he himself held; viz. that bodily and temporal sufferings are a sure sign of a notorious hypocrite. Hence Job never taketh notice of it in this reply; but begins his apology pathetically and abruptly; and soon falls into an appeal to God, the righteous Judge, who well knew (though his friends would take no notice of it) that he complained not without cause; but the contrary.

My stroke is heavier than my groaning] Most men's groaning is greater than their strokes or sufferings. Invalidum omne natura querulum est (Senec.). Some are ever whining and growling; their lips, like rusty hinges, move not without murmuring and mutining, yea, they not only creak, but break, as rotten boughs do, if but a little weight be hung upon them; or as some men's flesh, which if never so little razed with a pin, it presently rankleth and festereth. Job was none of these; if he groaned, as he did (and will they deny him that ease of his dolour? Expletur lachrymis egeriturque dolor. Ovid), there was very great cause for it, since his pressures were greater than could be expressed by any sighs or words.