Job 19:12

His troops come together,.... Afflictions which are many, and of which it may be said, as was at the birth of God, who had his name from the word here used, "a troop cometh": Genesis 30:11; and these sometimes come together, or follow so quick one upon another, that there is scarce any interval between them, as did Job's afflictions; and they are God's hosts, his troops, his soldiers, which are at his command; and he says to them, as the centurion did to his, to the one, Go, and he goes, and to another, Come, and it comes:

and raise up their way against me; as an army, when it comes against a place, throws up a bank to raise their artillery upon, that they may play it to greater advantage; or make a broad causeway, for the soldiers to march abreast against it; or an high cast up way, as the word y signifies, over a ditch or dirty place in a hollow, that they may the better pass over: some read it, "they raise up their way upon me" z; he opposing and standing in the way was crushed down by them, and trampled upon, and over whom they passed as on an highway, and in a beaten path; see Isaiah 51:23; but most render it, "against me"; for Job looked upon all his afflictions, as Jacob did Genesis 42:36, to be against him, to militate against him, and threaten him with ruin, when they were all working for him, even for his good:

and encamp round about my tabernacle: as an army round about a city when besieging it. Job may have respect to the tabernacle of his body, as that is sometimes so called, 2 Corinthians 5:1; and to the diseases of it; which being a complication, might be said to encamp about him, or surround him on all sides.

y ויסלו "aggerant", Cocceius, Schultens; "straverunt", Montanus, Schmidt; a מסלה "via strata et elevata", Mercerus, Drusius. z עלי "super me", Pagninus, Montanus, Mercerus, Schmidt, Michaelis.