Matthew Poole and continuators on Job 38:2

2. Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge ?

It is a question of admiration and reprehension, What and where is he that presumeth to talk at this rate? This Language becomes not a Creature, much less a Professour of Religion. The Person here designed is not Elihu who spoke last, but Iob who had spoken most, as is apparent from v. 1. and from Chap. 42. 3. where Job takes the following reproof to himself, and from the following Discourse wherein God convinceth Job by divers of the same kind of arguments which Elihu had used against him.

Either 1▪ his own counsel; i. e. that expresseth his own mind darkly and doubtfully. But that was not Job's fault. He spake his mind too plainly and freely. Or rather 2. God's counsel, which is called simply counsel by way of eminency, as the word and the commandment are oft put for the word and command of God. For the great matter of the dispute between Job, and his Friends, was concerning God's counsel, and purpose, and providence in afflicting Job; which being a wise, and just, and glorious action of God, Job had endeavoured to obscure and misrepresent and censure. And God's decrees and judgments are frequently called his counsels, as Psal. 33. 11. Prov. 19. 21. Isa. 28. 29. Act. 2. 23.

God doth not charge Job, as his three Friends had done, with hypocrisie and wickedness in the course of life, [illegible: 1+ letters]or with atheistical opinions of God, or his providence, as some of the Hebrew Writers do, but confines, his reproof to his hard speeches.

Proceeding from ignorance, and mistake, and inconsiderateness; not from malice or rage against God, as his Friends accused him.