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Chooseth strangling - It is very likely that he felt, in those interrupted and dismal slumbers, an oppression and difficulty of breathing something like the incubus or nightmare; and, distressing as this was, he would prefer death by this means to any longer life in such miseries.
So that my soul - So that I; the soul being put for himself.
Chooseth strangling - Dr. Good renders it “suffocation,” and supposes that Job alludes to the oppression of breathing, produced by what is commonly called the night-mare, and that he means that he would prefer the sense of suffocation excited at such a time to the terrible images before his mind. Herder renders it, death. Jerome, suspendium. The Septuagint, “Thou separatest ( ἀπαλλάξεις apallaceis ) my life from my spirit, and my bones from death;” but what idea they attached to it, it is impossible now to tell. The Syriac renders it, “Thou choosest my soul from perdition, and my bones from death.” The word rendered strangling (מחנק machănaq ) is from חנק chânaq to be narrow, strait, close; and then means to strangle, to throttle, Nahum 2:12; 2 Samuel 17:23. Here it means death; and Job designs to say that he would prefer even the most violent kind of death to the life that he was then leading. I see no evidence that the idea suggested by Dr. Good is to be found in the passage.
And death rather than my life - Margin, as in Hebrew, bones. There has been great variety in the exposition of this part of the verse. Herder renders it, “death rather than this frail body.” Rosenmuller and Noyes, “death rather than my bones;” that is, he preferred death to such an emaciated body as he then had, to the wasted skeleton which was then all that he had left to him. This is probably the true sense. Job was a sufferer in body and in soul. His flesh was wasting away, his body was covered with ulcers, and his mind was harassed with apprehensions. By day he had no peace, and at night he was terrified by alarming visions and spectres; and he preferred death in any form to such a condition.
“O that I might have my request;
And that God would grant me the thing that I long for!
Even that it would please God to destroy me;
That He would let loose His hand, and cut me off!
Then should I yet have comfort.”
PK 163.1
“I will not refrain my mouth;
I will speak in the anguish of my spirit;
I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.”
PK 163.2
“My soul chooseth ... death rather than my life.
I loathe it;
I would not live alway:
Let me alone;
For my days are vanity.”
PK 163.3