yet I am not silenced because of the darkness, nor because thick darkness covers my face.
Some make Job to complain here that God dealt unjustly and unfairly with him in proceeding to punish him without the least relenting or relaxation, though he had such incontestable evidences to produce of his innocency. I am loth to think holy Job would charge the holy God with iniquity; but his complaint is indeed bitter and peevish, and he reasons himself into a sort...
Commenting on Job 23:13-17
Because I was not taken away by death from the evil to come (literally, "from before the face of the darkness," Isa 57:1). Alluding to the words of Eliphaz (Job 22:11), "darkness," that is, calamity. cut off--rather, in the Arabic sense, brought to the land of silence; my sad complaint hushed in death [UMBREIT].
Because I was not cut off before the darkness, [neither] hath he covered the darkness from my face. (l) He shows the cause for his fear, which is, that he being in trouble sees no end, nor yet knows the cause.