a. Vers. 11-13. [The wish that he had died, like I elsewhere, "then, by this time." at birth.] in Comp. ch. xiii. 19; 1 Sam. xiii. 13. I should have slept (lit.: "I should have fallen asleep ;" and so also in the first member: "I should have laid myself down"), then would there be rest for me, viz., the rest of the dead in the under-world, of the shades in Sheol, which, as compared with the inexpressible misery of this upper world, is evermore rest and repose. For the impersonal use of comp. Isa. xxiii. 12; Nehem. ix. 28. b. Vers. 14-16. A more particular description of the rest in the realms of the dead, which Job longs for. Vers. 14 and 15 are still dependent on the verbs in ver. 13. Ver. 14. With kings and counsellors of the land.-77, the counsellors of a land, i. e., the highest officers of the state, royal adWho built visers, not kings themselves. If the reading ruins for themselves. TT: Ver. 11. Why died I not from the womb? i. e., immediately after birth, immediately after I saw the light of this world.-So should Dr be explained here, according to the parallelism of the second member of the verse, not according to Jerem. xx. 17, which passage speaks rather of dying in the womb ( being used there in the local, not the temporal sense), of dying, therefore, as an embryo, a thought which is foreign to our author. (So in opposition to Schlott. and Del.) [The view of Junius, as given by Schlott., of the gradation of thought in this verse and the following, is at least striking enough to be stated here. It represents Job as here cursing his life in four stages of its development: in the womb, immediately after birth, when taken up by the father, and finally when put to the mother's breast. It may be doubted nevertheless whether Job's impassioned outburst is characterized by such careful and minute dis- is correct, then the passage certainly crimination. The future, like 77 perd in Isa. Iviii. 12; lxi. 4; Mal. i. 4). The speaks of the building of ruins (comp. the same ver. 3, is an example of the poet's bold idealiza- expression, however, can scarcely mean the retion, which, taking its position back of the mo- building of fallen structures, a thought which ment of birth, asks, 'Why may I not die from many of the ancient writers found in it, but the womb?' See Green, 263, 5; Ew. 135, 6. which is obviously far-fetched and foreign to -E.] Come forth out of the womb and the context, especially if the rebuilding of ruined expire?-Expire, to wit, immediately after edifices is taken as of the same meaning with the coming forth. On the extension of the negation expression, "to be rich, to be well endowed, over the second member, comp. notes on ver. 10. opibus abundare." Neither can it refer to the [The Fut. (or Imperf.) expressing that building of mausoleums, houses for the dead, which is subsequent to the Pret. (Perf.)] or, in particular, pyramids; an interpretation Ver. 12. Why did knees anticipate me? defended by Hirzel, Ewald, Fürst, Delitzsch, [Con: Why were the knees ready for me?- Dillmann [Kamphausen, Wemyss, Bernard, "Prevent," in A. V., in the obsolete sense, to Barnes, Wordsworth, Carey, Renan, Rodwell, come before, and so to anticipate]: i. e., the Elzas, Merx], but not sufficiently verified etyknees or lap of the father, joyfully saluting the mologically. The Coptic -pau cannot, withnewly-born child. Comp. Gen. 1. 23; Is. lxvi. out further evidence, be identified with, 12. It is less natural to understand the knees even admitting that the interchange of and is of a woman to be meant, to wit, the knees of an not something unheard of. In any case it could attendant midwife or nurse. Comp. Gen. xxx. not be proved that the author had in mind the 3. [The longing and anxious desire of the pyramids of Egypt, so that the passage cannot be yearning mother to nurse her unborn darling wrested to favor the theory of the Egyptian nahas never been so happily expressed elsewhere." tionality of the poet; comp. Introd. 7. The GOOD.] There is certainly nothing in the pas-simplest and most obvious way of explaining it sage which points to any custom of heathen an- is, with Umbreit, Hahn, Schlottmann, Vaihinger, tiquity, involving the formal recognition of the Heiligstedt [Gesenius, Noyes, Hengstenberg, child by the father, as Hirzel supposes. [At all Green in Chrestom. ], to recognize in the an events, as Dillm. observes, such a recognition is ironical designation of great, splendid palaces, not the leading thought of the passage.-E.] which, notwithstanding their grandeur, must at And what (=why) the breasts that I last fall into ruin-a process which, in the East, should suck?-["There is a certain impa- as every where in hot countries, takes place with tience and disgust in the : Why, what were startling rapidity and suddenness. The expresthe breasts that I should suck?" DAV. The dual sion is thus to be taken in a catachrestic sense, forms of the original, "two knees," "two of that which is not yet indeed a ruin, but which breasts," are preserved in the translation by will inevitably become such (comp. "dust," Dav. and Renan, perhaps with needless liteashes,' "grass," "a worm," etc., used to derality.] consecutive, as in chs. vi. 11; vii.signate man: chap. x. 9; Ps. ciii. 14, 15; xc. 12; x. 6-and often. The Imperf. (Fut.) pr 5, etc.). The difficulty of the expression has describing an action immediately following after suggested several attempts to amend the text, as, that which is previously mentioned, like .g., by Böttcher (de inferis, 298), ang, T .ver. 13, etc יָנוּחַ and אֶשְׁקוֹט ;11 .ver Ver. 13. For now I should have lain down and been quiet. A reason for the wish contained in the questions of vers. 10 and 12; therefore here "for," not "surely" (Del.) streets, courts;" by Olshausen, nips, “palaces;" by J. D. Michaelis (Suppl. p. 905), nin, which, according to the Arabic, would be temples, sanctuaries." Comp. also the LXX., which translates by iyavpičvro įmì Eipeow, TT: in the sense of to hide in the ground, to טָמַן | הגאיוֹנִים בַּחֲרָבוֹת the text of which would be The bury," comp. Gen. xxxv. 4; Ex. ii. 12. [The expression as it stands in the text is certainly a difficult one, and unquestioning confidence in regard to the true interpretation is scarcely to be looked for. The rendering adopted by Zöckler, "who have built themselves ruins," is indeed, as he claims, the simplest and most obvious rendering of the words as they now read. But, on the other hand, it may be urged: (1) This proleptic ironical use of the word "ruins" in the connection would be an unlooked for and an artificial interruption of the pathetic flow of thought-of the ardent, plaintive yearning for death, or for the condition in which death would place him. (2) The kind of irony which would thus be expressed is unsuited to the state of Job's feelings in this discourse. Irony there is in the passage doubtless, but it is the irony of personal feeling, suggested by the contrast between his present misery and destitution, and the rest and equality of the grave. The irony which would have led him to see ruins in the palaces of the great would have been altogether alien to the intense subjectivity of his mood. Job is here thinking of himself of what he would have been-of the rest, and the equality with earth's greatest, which would have been his, had he died at his birth. To interject here, the godless, the abandoned, who are a sudden satire on the destiny awaiting the external splendor of others would be untrue to na ture, and so unworthy of the poet's art. (3) The anticipation of ruin seems scarcely in harmony with the particular object of the immediate context, which is to describe the greatness of kings and counsellors, as of men high in rank and rich in their possessions. As Davidson says of this interpretation, it is "a sense which does not magnify, but minishes, the reputation of the great dead." On the other hand, the interpretation "mausoleums" or "pyramids" is in harmony with the particular object of the context, enhancing the greatness of the persons spoken of, as well as with the general train of thought and feeling in this strophe, dwelling as it does on the condition and surroundings of the dead. It does not seem unreasonable, therefore, to conclude either that the word in its present form may be thus defined, or that the word in its original form being an unusual one, or of foreign origin, it was afterwards modified under the influence of the familiar Hebrew phrase, "to [.E- בָּנָה חָרָבוֹת ",build ruins TT: c. Vers. 17-19. Exhibiting more in detail the extent to which death equalizes the inequalities of men's lots in life. Ver. 17. There the wicked have ceased their raging.-, in the state of the dead, in the under-world ["conceived of after the analogy of sepulchral caves, and where the dead were deemed to preserve the same relations which they had held during their life." REN.]. ruled by evil passions and lusts, as in Isa. xlviii. 22; lvii. 21; Ps. i. 4, etc. Hence 1 is the T stormy agitation, or inward raging of such men ["corresponds to the radical idea of looseness, broken in pieces, want of restraint, therefore of Turba, contained etymologically in "DEL.]; comp. Isa. lvii. 20; Jer. vi. 7. Dillmann understands by the "raging of the wicked" the furious ravaging of insolent tyrants, with which is then vividly contrasted in the second member the enfeebled, powerless condition of those who are "exhausted of strength." But there is nothing in the connection to show that any such contrast was intended between tyrants and the oppressed, between persecutors and the persecuted; and even the mention of the "taskmaster" in ver. 18 has nothing in it to confirm this interpretation, which arbitrarily attributes to by the sense of Dy. Comp. ch. xv. 20; xxvii. 13; Isa. xiii. 11; xxv. 3; Ps. xxxvii. 25, etc. [in most of which passages, however, it will be found that the parallelism sustains the notion of the equivalence of the two terms, and of the frequent use of the former in the sense assigned to it by Dillmann. Do we not hear in these words an echo of Job's own calamities? Were not the turbulent, restless, fierce Chaldeans and Sabeans fit types of the with their 117? and was not Job himself in his present helplessness Ver. 15. Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver.-If the of the preceding verse are not "pyramids," the D' of this verse cannot possibly be understood to mean "houses of the dead," as Hirzel explains. But even if that construction of the former verse be the true one, it would still be in the highest degree unnatural, artifieial, and forced, to understand the expression in the passage before us as meaning any thing else, all together, so many as there are of them, than the riches which princes during life heap up in their palaces. Comp. ch. xxii. 18. Ver. 16. Or like a hidden untimely birth I should not be.-I should not exist, have no being., lit. a "falling away" (čkтpwμa), an abortion, as in Ps. lviii. 9; Eccles. vi. 3. For [.E-? יְגִיעֵי כֹּחַ one of the very Ver. 18. Together rest the prisoners.— as in chap. xxiv. 4. ["The Pilel signifies perfect freedom from care." DEL.]—They hear not the taskmaster's voice, i. e., the voice of the overseer, or slave-driver, issuing his orders, urging to work, and threatening with blows. Comp. Gen. iii. 7; v. 6, 10; Zechariah ix. 8. Ver. 19. Small and great are there the | viii. 18; xii. 13; xvi. 7; xx. 23;. xxii. 21; same.-; not "are there, are found XXV. 2; xxvii. 22; xxx. 19. "Gives he, a dis. tant fling at God, though a certain reverence refuses to utter His name, but He is at the base of such awful entanglement and perverse attitude of things." (Dav.).—E.] Ac Parallel with, "to the wretched," stands in the second member, 1, "to the troubled in soul," those whose heart is troubled The same there" (LXX., Vulg., Hirz., Hahn, Schl. [Hengstenb., Ren., Good, Lee, Con., Dav., Rod.]), but "are there the same, equal in rank and worth." N here accordingly is emphatic=ó avróç, idem, as also in Isa. xli. 4; Ps. cii. 28. [So Umbr., Ew., Del., Wem., Elz. The thought is substantially the same, according to either view. cording to the former, N refers with emphasis to each subject, individually, "he, each is there," implying equality of condition; according to the latter, has more the quality of a predicate, expressing equality of condition. The former is preferable, as being simpler, more Vers. 21-22 contain specifications in particicustomary, and better suited to the double sub-pial form of the phrase ", with finite ject, "small" and "great." Elsewhere in the verbs attached in the second member of each sense of idem it is used of a single subject. verse, a construction which elsewhere also is not Comp. ref. above.-E.] Furthermore, the se- unfrequently met with (see Ew. 8 350, 6). cond member: "and free (is) the servant from his master," shows in a special manner that our verse is parallel in sense to the preceding; as there "prisoners" and "taskmasters" are contrasted, so here in the first member "small" and "great," in the second "servant" and "master." [Davidson, perhaps, finds too much in these words when he says (although the remark is a striking one): It is this last that fascinates Job in the place of the dead-the slave is free from his master; and Job is the slave, and one whom he will not name is the master-Has not man a hard service on the earth, and as the days of a hireling are his days?" ch. vii. 1.] 4. Third Long Strophe (divided into two shorter strophes of three and four verses respectively): Job asks, why must he, who is weary of life, still live? vers. 20-26. a. Vers. 20-22. [The question in a general form.] 6 Ver. 21. Who wait long for death-and it comes not (lit. "and it is not," ', comp. verse 9), and dig for it more than for [hidden] treasures.-The Imperf. consec. is used here in the sense of the Present, as also elsewhere occasionally (see Ew. § 342, a). [The Vav. consec. would indicate that the digging for death is consequent upon waiting for it-the passive waiting and longing being succeeded by the more active digging and searching for it. A terrible picture of the progress of human misery.-E.] It is not necessary (with Hahn and Schlottmann) to translate by the subjunctive form, who would dig" (would willingly do 50). Delitzsch's assumption, that the fut. consec. is used "because the sufferers are regarded as now at last dead," is altogether too artificial. after death on the part of those who are as yet The discourse presents rather an ardent longing living-and this longing is described so as to harmonize with the figurative representation of chap. xxviii. 1 sq., 9 sq. [Ewald, not inaptly: a "digging after pearls or treasures." Comp. 66 66 out of earth's most secret womb, even as Pluto for death, like such treasures, seems to come is the god of both."] On 7 with accus. of the thing which is dug out, comp. Ex. vii. 24 [showing the incorrectness of the assertion that in the tive of the cavity produced by digging, and so sense of digging, the verb takes only the accusajustifying the rendering "to dig" here.-E.] In like Ver. 20. Wherefore gives He light to the wretched one?-The name of God, who is unmistakably the subject of the clause, is not expressly mentioned, from a motive of reverential awe; it is presupposed as a thing self-evident that he who gives light is God, and none other. Comp. ch. xxiv. 22. [The Eng. Ver. takes the verb impersonally: "Wherefore is light given, etc.?" And so Good, Lee, Wemyss, Ren., etc. Schlottmann and Green also prefer the impersonal construction on the ground that it is better suited to the present discourse and the state of feeling from which it proceeds, and that supVer. 22. Who are joyful, even to rapplying God' as the subject "gives an uncalled- ture-heightening the thought: usque ad exulfor appearance of open and conscious murmuring tationem, exactly as in Hos. ix. 1. to these moanings of uncontrollable anguish.' manner the following contains a still furIt is to be observed, however, that in verse 23 ther advance in the strength of the thought. the hedging of man about is directly ascribed to["The verse is a climax, (1) rejoice, (2) to exGod; and that although God is not formally ultation, (3) dance for joy." Dav. challenged by name as yet, there is through the whole discourse an audible under-tone of suppressed defiance, which seems all the time on the point of expressing itself. At the same time, one cannot but feel that this Curse is a cry of anguish rather than a cry of defiance, and that the suppression of God's name in this connection is a most natural manifestation of Job's feelings in their present stage of development—although, as Hirzel has shown, it is quite in our author's manner thus to omit the name of God. See ch. "Who rejoice, even to exultation, Ver. 23 resumes, after the parenthesis contained in the two preceding verses, the dative construction begun in ver. 20, and governed by the verb of that verse. To a man whose way is hidden: viz, to me, to Job himself; thing, it forthwith came upon me. Lit.: Ver. 25. For if I trembled before any comp. the following verses, in which the speak- | moaning of a sufferer. Comp. Psalm xxii. 2; er's own person appears as the prominent theme xxxii. 3. of discourse. [, "to a man," a general expression as yet, although evidently the speaker is thinking of himself. The verse forms the transition from the general description of the verses preceding to the direct description of the verses following.-E.] For a similar use of the figurative expressions "covering and hedging the way" to represent the act of putting a man in a helpless, forsaken, inextricable situation; comp. chap. xix. 8; also Lam. iii. 5; Is. xl. 27. [Renan translates: "To the man whose way is covered with darkness, And whom God has environed with a fatal circle." "He means, by having his way hid, being bewildered and lost: the world and thought and providence become a labyrinth to him, out of which and in which no path can be found, his speculative and religious belief hopelessly entangled, and his heart palsied and paralyzed by its own conflicting emotions and memories, so that action and thought were impossible, a hedge being about him, his whole life and condition being contradiction and inexplication, a step or two leading to a stand-still in any direction." DAV.] Ver. 24. For [', personal confirmation of the preceding statement] instead of my bread comes my sighing.- here not in the local sense,"before" ["in presence of it, and hence in effect along with it. Meaning: even at that season of enjoyment and thankfulness, when food is partaken, I have only pain and sorrow." CON.], but as also in chap. iv. 19; 1 Sam. i. 16, "for, instead of" (comp. the Latin pro). [Akin to this is the definition "like," from the idea of comparison involved in that of presence or nearness. So Schult., Dav., Ren.] Less suitable is the temporal construction: "before my food [=before I eat] sighing still comes to me." "My groans anticipate my food." Wem.] (so Hahn, Hirz., Schl., etc., after the LXX., Vulgate, etc.) [The temporal sense is somewhat differently given by Green, Chrest., before, sooner than; perpetually repeated, with greater frequency than his regular food." The suggestion found in Rosenm., Bar., etc., that Job's disease made his food loathsome in the act of eating gives a meaning needlessly T "For a fear have I feared, and forthwith it has overtaken me." ["Let me but think of a terror,” is present and concessive, DN understood, suppose me to fear a fear, to conceive a terror; it is no sooner conceived than realized: and not past and positive, I feared a fear, as if Job, in the height of his felicity, had been haunted by the presentiment of coming calamity, a meaning which is opposed to the whole convictions of antiquity, and contradicted by the anguish and despair of the man under his suffering, which was to him inexplicable and unexpected. The picture refers exclusively to the present misery of the man. . . . It overtakes me, , vav consec. introduces the issue of the dread: the thing dreaded immediately comes." DAV. So Green in Chrest.: "The meaning is not that he had apprehensions in his former prosperity, which have now been fulfilled; but all that is dreadful in his esteem has been already, or is likely soon to be (N, fut.), realized in his experience. He endures all that he has ever conceived that is frightful."] For the poetic full-sounding form ', comp. chap. xii. 6; xvi. 22; xxx. 14 (Ew. 8 252, a. [Green, ? 172, 3]). [Merx, transposing ver. 23, introduces it here, as immediately following ver. 25. His version accordingly reads as follows: For the Terror, of which I was afraid, overtook me; He thus makes the before : a repetition of the ", end of ver. 25, and not of p, ver. 20, according to the old position. He further would make the verse in its new position an The conjecture is certainly highly ingenious. ironical echo of Satan's words in chap. i. 10.— But there are decisive objections to the change. The first and weightiest is that the irony loses all its force, and the words themselves become all but meaningless in Job's mouth when it is remembered that the words were first spoken by Satan in the heavenly council, where Job was tery of the drama here unfolded that Job knows not present. It is an essential part of the mysoffensive, and is not suited either to the connecnothing whatever of the transactions between tion or to the terms employed. The fut. God and Satan. Any conscious allusion to anyis used in the frequentative sense.-E.] And my groans pour themselves forth like water: i. e. as incessantly as water, which flows ever onward, or is precipitated from a height. As is evident, a strong comparison, and one which would be greatly weakened by the explanation of Hirzel and others, who find in it an allusion to the water of Job's daily drink, parallel with D, his daily bread. For the masc., " before the fem. subj. n, comp. chap. xvi. 22; Ewald 1916. [Future frequentative like ]. For, lit. roaring (chap. iv. 10) in the sense of groaning, the thing in those transactions on the part of Job would be a blunder of art of which our author is incapable; and without such conscious intent the words lose all their pertinency. Moreover, the verse in its old position, as is remarked in the notes above, furnishes the transition from the general description of vers. 20-22 to the more personal application of vers. 24-26.-E.] Ver. 26. I have no quiet, no repose, no On the rest; and still trouble comes. abrupt brevity of the second member, comp. above, No. 1.-, here certainly more in the sense of grief, pain, trembling, than of passionate excitement, or rage, and so with a meaning different from ver. 17: but always (and so in ver. 17, as well as here) of an inward affection, not of external "distress" (Schlott.), or of a storm (Hahn), etc. Vaihinger's rendering: "restless life," is correct as to sense, but fails of doing justice to the pointed brevity of the expression. [The Vulgate reads this verse interrogatively: "Was I not in safety? had I no rest? was I not in comfort? Yet trouble came." So also the Targ. with curious amplifications: "Did I not dissimulate when it was told me concerning the oxen and the asses? did I not sleep when it was told me concerning the fire?" etc.] DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL. 2. Notwithstanding all this, however, Job does not altogether fall into the tone of those heathen, of those ἐλπίδα μὴ ἔχοντες καὶ ἄθεοι ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ (Eph. ii. 12; comp. 1 Thess. iv. 13). He does indeed ask: Why does God give light to the sorrowful, and life to the bitter in soul (ver. 20)? He is not found now, as aforetime (chap. i. 21 seq.), praising God in the midst of his sufferings; in so far as with all earnestness he curses his birth and conception, he is palpably guilty of "sinning with his lips" (chap. ii. 10), instead of exhibiting, as he had previously done, a childlike pious submission. But he by no means goes over to the side of Satan, that enemy of God, who is the author of his temptation. He does not go so far astray as presumptuously to "curse God to His face" (chap. i. 11; ii. 7), as Satan had purposed that he should. He curses indeed the divine act of creation which had given him being, but not the Creator himself; the curse which he pronounces on his day does not put forth that wicked blasphemous sentiment which H. Heine expresses in one of his last poems: ""Tis well to die; but better still It were had mother never borne us." 1. In so far as we may be disposed to find the theme of the following discussion in the preceding chapter, it behooves us in any case to hold for certain that this theme is expressed only partially, and altogether formally, or only, so to speak, in an interrogative form. Job certainly does not come across the question in this discourse. To curse his existence, to ask again and again after the incomprehensible Wherefore of that existence-this constitutes the whole of this violent outbreak of feeling, with which Job initiates the discussion which follows. He does not give the slightest intimation in regard to the right way of solving the problem which torments him-the problem touching the enigma of his sorrowful existence; indeed he makes not the slightest attempt at such a solution. He pours forth in all its bitterness and harshness his despairing lamentation concerning the helpless misery of man, who is become the object of the divine anger. What he puts forth vividly reminds us from beginning to end of those well-ate outbreaks of discontent with God's dealings known utterances of the Greek poets, which declare it best never to have been born, and next best to die as quickly as possible. Comp. Theognis: Πάντων μὲν μὴ φῦναι ἐπιχθονίοισιν ἄριστον μηδ' ἐσιδεῖν αὐγὰς οξέος ἠελίου· φύντα δ' ὅπως ἄκιστα πύλας Αίδαο περῆσαι καὶ κεισθαι πολλὴν γῆν ἐπαμησάμενον, also the similar expressions of Bacchylides (Fragm. 3), Esop (Anthol. Gr. x. 123), Sophocles (Oed. Col. 1225: μn givαι Tòv åπаνта vika λόγον τὸ δ' ἐπῆν φανῆ, βῆναι κεῖθεν, ὅθεν περ ήκει, Tоλù đεvτεрov, &c ráɣiora: not to have been born surpasses everything which can be said: or if one has come to the light, to descend there whence he came as quickly as possible is by far the second best thing), of Alexis (in Athenæus, Deipnos. iii. 124, 6), of Pliny (Hist. Nat. vii. 1), etc. Especially current in heathen literature, although indeed often enough hinted at by the singers of the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms and the Lamentations of Jeremiah, is this manifoldly uttered lament over the ruined estate, the bankruptcy of the natural man in his unredeemed condition, left to himself, delivered over without remedy to the consequences of sin -a lament which here falls on our ears, without a single ray of comfort from on high to shine on its deep gloom, without any alleviating influence whatever from the hope of a better Hereafter, of which not a trace is as yet visible here. His words are words of lamentation and despondency, of doubt and questioning, but not words of blasphemy, nor even of atheistic doubt renouncing all faith in a living, good and just God. They show, indeed, that the trust which he had hitherto exercised in God had been violently shaken, that there was a wavering and faltering in the child-like obedience which, with touching loyalty, he had hitherto constantly yielded to God. But they are nevertheless only preparatory to the later, and far more passion to which he gives way. Even when he mentions here a man whose way God has "hidden and hedged about" (ver. 23), he is still far from indulging in any accusation of God as a cruel and unjust persecutor; it is as yet a comparatively harmless complaint, in the utterance of which the bitter accusation of his later discourses is only remotely anticipated. It is a fact, however, that he who has hitherto lived blamelessly in his fidelity to God does, in the complaints which in this discourse gush forth from his heart, enter on that downward path which, in proportion as his friends prove themselves to be unskilful comforters, and as physicians accomplished only in torturing, not in healing, leads him ever further from God and ever deeper into the abyss of joyless despair. Comp. Delitzsch (i. 84): "Job nowhere says, that he will have nothing more to do with God; he does not renounce his former faithfulness. In the mind of the writer, however, as may be gathered from chap. ii. 10, this speech is to be regarded as the beginning of Job's sinning. If a man, on account of his sufferings, wishes to die early, or not to have been born at all, he has lost his confidence that God, even in the severest suffering, designs his highest good; and this want of confidence is sin. There is, however, a great difference between a man who has in general no trust in God, and in whom suffering only makes this manifest in a terrible manner, and the man with whom trust in God is a habit of his soul, |