If I have walked with vanity, or if my foot hath hasted to deceit. "If I have been a living lie, i.e. if, under a fair show of piety and righteousness of life, I have, as you my friends suppose, been all along a deceiver and a hypocrite, cloaking my secret sins under a mere pretence of well-doing, then the sooner I am exposed the better.
Let me be weighed," etc. The painful suggestion of hypocrisy has been made by Job's friends repeatedly during the colloquy (Job 4:7-9; Job 8:6, Job 8:12; Job 11:4-6, '11-14; Job 15:30-35; Job 18:5-21; Job 20:5-29, etc.
), and has deeply afflicted the patriarch. It is a charge so easily made, and so impossible to refute. All that the righteous man, thus falsely accused, can do is to appeal to God: "Thou, God, knowest.
Thou, God, wilt one day show forth the truth."