Since you have closed their hearts to understanding, therefore you will not let them triumph.
Job's discourse is here somewhat broken and interrupted, and he passes suddenly from one thing to another, as is usual with men in trouble; but we may reduce what is here said to three heads: - I. The deplorable condition which poor Job was now in, which he describes, to aggravate the great unkindness of his friends to him and to justify his own complaints.
Commenting on Job 17:1-9
For thou hast hid their heart from understanding,.... That is, the hearts of his friends, and therefore they were unfit to undertake his cause, or be sureties for him, or be judges in it. It is the same thing as to hide understanding from their hearts, which God sometimes does in a natural sense; when men like not the knowledge of him, as attainable by...
their heart--The intellect of his friends. shalt . . . exalt--Rather imperative, "exalt them not"; allow them not to conquer [UMBREIT], (Isa 6:9-10).