Commentaries:
Barnes' Notes
Because I delivered the poor that cried - This is spoken of himself as a magistrate or judge - for the whole description relates to that. The meaning is, that when the poor man, who had no means of employing counsel, brought his cause before him, he heard him and delivered him from the grasp of the oppressor. He never made an appeal to him in vain; compare Proverbs 21:13; Proverbs 24:11-12.
And the fatherless - The orphan who brought his cause before him. He became the patron and protector of those whose natural protectors - their parents - had been removed by death; compare the notes at Isaiah 1:17.
And him that had none to help him - The poor man who had no powerful patron. Job says that, as a magistrate, he particularly regarded the cause of such persons, and saw that justice was done them - a beautiful image of the administration of justice in patriarchal times. This is the sense in which our translators understood this. But the parallelism seems rather to require that this should be applied to the fatherless who had no one to aid him, and the Hebrew, by understanding the ( w ) conjunctive as meaning "when," will bear this construction. So it is understood by Rosenmuller, Umbreit, Herder, and Noyes.
Other Barnes' Notes entries containing Job 29:12:
Job 11:19
Job 22:9
Isaiah 1:17
James 1:27
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