when my steps were washed with butter, and the rock poured out for me streams of oil!
Losers may have leave to speak, and there is nothing they speak of more feelingly than of the comforts they are stripped of. Their former prosperity is one of the most pleasing subjects of their thoughts and talk. It was so to Job, who begins here with a wish (Job 29:2): O that I were as in months past! so he brings in this account of his prosperity.
Commenting on Job 29:1-6
When I washed my steps with butter,.... Not the steps of his house or palace; for to have done this, or his servants by his orders, as it would have been a very great impropriety, so a piece of great prodigality, which Job could never have been guilty of; but either his footsteps, the prints of his feet; and the sense be, that his cattle...
butter--rather, "cream," literally, "thick milk." Wherever I turned my steps, the richest milk and oil flowed in to me abundantly. Image from pastoral life. When I washed my steps--Literal washing of the feet in milk is not meant, as the second clause shows; Margin, "with me," that is, "near" my path, wherever I walked (Deu 32:13). Olives amidst rocks yield the best oil.