Job: eyes to the blind
Blind people among the crowd and at the table. No change in sight is described. Job 29:11-17.
What led up to it
Job has lost his children, his wealth and his health. In this speech he remembers his life before, and defends how he lived it.
What happens
Among the things he lists: he rescued the poor, helped the fatherless and the widow, took up the stranger's case, and "served as eyes to the blind and as feet to the lame."
In their shoes
This is the view from the other side: what a good neighbour to a blind person looks like, in the words of a man Scripture calls blameless. He does not say he pitied the blind. He says he served as their eyes.
The place and the time
What the old books and the archaeologists can add. Each paragraph names its source.
Job did his work of justice in public. Matthew Henry notes that he went out through the city to the gate, where judgment was given, and Smith's confirms that the gates of eastern cities were the places of public business and law. Smith's places Job in the land of Uz, south or south-east of Palestine, as a chieftain of great wealth and rank.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Job 29; Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884 edition), entries "Gate" and "Job."
Brian asked whether anyone has thought about what it means to be someone's eyes rather than to give them alms. The shelf has one writer who does. Matthew Henry reads "eyes to the blind" as counsel for people who did not know what to do, and "feet to the lame" as practical help for those who knew what to do but could not do it; and he adds that we help people best in the very thing they lack.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Job 29.
Henry draws the sharper line in his comment on Matthew 9. Job, he says, was eyes to the blind, standing in for their eyes, but "he could not give eyes to the blind"; opening blind eyes is God's own work. Serving as someone's eyes and giving someone sight are different things, and Scripture names only the second as God's prerogative. The first is what a neighbour can do.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Matthew 9.
Brian asked whether anyone reads Job as physically guiding blind people rather than only advising them. Two do, in part. Henry himself, commenting on the blind man of Bethsaida, says Christ did not tell the man's friends to lead him but "himself took him by the hand, and led him, to teach us to be as Job was, eyes to the blind." So when Henry reads the phrase beside a blind man actually being led, he lets it mean leading. The Pulpit Commentary, a generation later, reads it as everyday service: Job gave the blind "the information which their infirmity hindered them from obtaining," and ran errands and carried messages for the lame, "not only in great, but also in little matters." That is the closest any writer on the shelf comes to Brian's reading: being someone's eyes as a practical, daily act.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Mark 8; The Pulpit Commentary (1880s), on Job 29:15.
Henry uses Job's phrase again when the blind and lame come home from exile in Jeremiah 31: their companions will be eyes to the blind and legs to the lame, as fellow travellers ought to be to one another. He consistently treats being someone's eyes as a service between equals on a journey, not as charity handed down.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Jeremiah 31 and Proverbs 1.
Job's claim stands beside the Law's commands: do not put a stumbling block before the blind (Leviticus 19:14), and cursed is the one who leads a blind man astray (Deuteronomy 27:18). Both the 1915 encyclopedia and Smith's note that the Law specially charged Israel to care for the blind. Job describes himself as keeping that charge and going beyond it. No source on the shelf discusses the Hebrew of the verse.
Source: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), entry "Blindness"; Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884 edition), entry "Blindness."
The passage
Job 29:11-17
11 For those who heard me called me blessed, and those who saw me commended me,
12 because I rescued the poor who cried out and the fatherless who had no helper.
13 The dying man blessed me, and I made the widow’s heart sing for joy.
14 I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; justice was my robe and my turban.
15 I served as eyes to the blind and as feet to the lame.
16 I was a father to the needy, and I took up the case of the stranger.
17 I shattered the fangs of the unjust and snatched the prey from his teeth.