God hath delivered me up to the ungodly,.... The evil or wicked one, for it is in the singular number; and designs either Satan, into whose hands God had not only delivered his substance, but his person, excepting his life; though it may be, and which is an objection to this sense, Job as yet knew it not; or else Eliphaz, or, the singular number being put for the plural, as the next clause explains it, all his friends, whom he in turn calls evil and wicked men, because of their treatment of him; or else the Sabeans and Chaldeans are intended, who were suffered to plunder him of his substance; the words are very applicable to Christ, who was delivered to the Gentiles, and into the hands of sinners and wicked men, and that by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, who with wicked hands took him, and crucified him, Matthew 20:19; or God "shut [him] up", or "delivered [him] bound" d, as the word signifies; which was literally true of Christ, who was bound by the Jews, and delivered first to the high priest, and then to the Roman governor, in such circumstances,

John 18:12;

and turned me over into the hands of the wicked; signifying the same as before, unless it should be rendered, "and caused me to decline", or "come down by the hands of the wicked" e that is, from his former state of prosperity and happiness, into the low circumstances in which he was, and which he was brought into by the means of wicked men, God suffering it so to be.

d יסגירני "vinctum me tradidit", Grotius, Michaelis, Schultens. e ירטני "divertere fecit a vita", Pagninus; "declinare me facit", Beza, Drusius, Mercerus.

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