Job 31:22

Job 31:22 [Then] let mine arm fall from my shoulder blade, and mine arm be broken from the bone.

Ver. 22. Then let mine arm fall from the shoulder blade] That unworthy arm of mine (as Cranmer cried out of that unworthy right hand of his, which he therefore burnt first), so injuriously lifted up against the fatherless, Job 31:21, let it never be useful to me any more, but let me be punished with that wherewith I have sinned. God sometimes takes notice of the offending member; as in Jeroboam's withered hand, Abimelech's head, which had stolen the crown, Samson's eyes, the rich man's tongue, the adulteress's thigh, Numbers 5:27. This Job knew, and therefore subjoineth this imprecation, Diris se devovens, thereby to clear himself from Eliphaz's false imputations, Job 22:6,7. The like may be done by us, but sparingly, and not without great necessity, for the helping of the truth in necessity, lest if we do it falsely or rashly, God say, Amen, and set his fiat to it; as he had done in sundry instances in several ages; witness Alexander, the cruel keeper of Newgate, and his son-in-law, John Peter, who rotted above ground, according to their wish. So Anne Averies, in Queen Elizabeth's days; Sir Gervaise Elloways, in King James's, hanged on the Tower hill, which he confessed was just upon him, for that in carding and dicing he had often wished himself hanged, if it were not so and so.

And mine arm be broken from the bone] Broken to shivers, as the word signifieth, and by the infamous hands of the hangman, for a terror to all false judges, as some do sense it; Rumpar medius, saith Brentius, as Judas burst in the midst with a huge crack, Acts 1:18, his guts gushing out; as did likewise Foxford's, a great persecutor in Henry VIII's time. Some men's sins go before to judgment, God hanging them up, as it were, in gibbets, that others may hear and fear, and do no more so.