صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

whom also such things happened; for He suffered pain in body and soul, was persecuted by His enemies, and forsaken, afflicted, and tortured by God Himself.

Chap. xvi. 19 seq.: He intimates that God's tribunal is above all tribunals; and when his mind and conscience, his faith and love toward God, cannot be recognised, appreciated or judged by any judge or witness, other than the Supreme, how can he do otherwise than appeal to Him? So the Apostle (1 Cor. iv. 3-4) repudiates every judgment but that of God... (On chap. xvii. 3.) Here he calls God, in whose power he is, his Surety; which is simply to ask that He would approve his appeal, and judge in accordance with it, so that if his adversary should carry the day, He would satisfy his claims. So we find elsewhere the pious, when wronged by an unrighteous judgment, appealing to the judgment of God, requesting Him to be their surety, as though they wished God to say to the adversary: This man is mine; enter thy suit, if any thing is due to thee, I will render satisfaction (Isa. xxxviii. 14; Ps. cxix. 122).

Ch. xvi. 22. BRENTIUS: Death is here called a path, by which we do not return. For take away the Word, or Christ, and death seems to be eternal annihilation; add the Word and Christ, and death will be the beginning of the resurrection. . . . (On ch. xvii. 11 seq.). This despair of Job is described for our instruction, that we may learn: first, that no one can endure the

[ocr errors]

judgment of death without God the Father; next that we may know by clear testimony that God alone is good, but every man a liar.

Ch. xvii. 11 seq. STARKE: We see here how unlike are God's ways and thoughts, and those of men. Job had no other thought but that now it was all over with him, he would neither continue in life, nor again attain his former prosperity. And God had notwithstanding joined both these things together so wondrously and so gloriously, as the wished-for issue of Job's sufferings sufficiently proves. DELITZSCH: Job feels himself to be inevitably given up as a prey to death, and as from the depth of Hades into which he is sinking, he stretches out his hands to God, not that He would sustain him in life, but that He would acknowledge him before the world as His. If he is to die even, he desires only that he may not die the death of a criminal. When then the issue of the history is that God acknowledges Job as His servant, and after he is proved and refined by the temptation, preserves to him a doubly rich and prosperous life, Job receives beyond his prayer and comprehension; and after he has learned from his own experience that God brings to Hades and out again (1 Sam. ii. 6; comp. on the other hand above, ch. vii. 9), he has forever conquered all fear of death, and the germs of the hope of a future life, which in the midst of his affliction, have broken through his consciousness, can joyously expand.

II. Bildad and Job: Ch. XVIII—XIX.

A.-Bildad: Job's passionate outbreaks are useless, for the Divine ordinance, instituted from of old, is still in force, securing that the hardened sinner's doom shall suddenly and surely overtake him.

CHAPTER XVIII.

1. Sharp rebuke of Job, the foolish and blustering boaster:

VERS. 1-4.

1 Then answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said:

2 How long will it be ere ye make an end of words? Mark, and afterwards we will speak.

3 Wherefore are we counted as beasts, and reputed vile in your sight?

4 He teareth himself in his anger!

shall the earth be forsaken for thee?

and shall the rock be removed out of his place?

2. Description of the dreadful doom of the hardened evil-doer:

VERS. 5-21.

5 Yea, the light of the wicked shall be put out, and the spark of his fire shall not shine.

6 The light shall be dark in his tabernacle, and his candle shall be put out with him.

7 The steps of his strength shall be straitened, and his own counsel shall cast him down.

8 For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walketh upon a snare.

9 The gin shall take him by the heel,

and the robber shall prevail against him. 10 The snare is laid for him in the ground, and a trap for him in the way.

11 Terrors shall make him afraid on every side, and shall drive him to his feet.

12 His strength shall be hunger-bitten,

and destruction shall be ready at his side.

13 It shall devour the strength of his skin;

even the first-born of death shall devour his strength.

14 His confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle, and it shall bring him to the king of terrors.

15 It shall dwell in his tabernacle, because it is none of his; brimstone shall be scattered upon his habitation.

16 His roots shall be dried up beneath,

and above shall his branch be cut off.

17 His remembrance shall perish from the earth, and he shall have no name in the street.

18 He shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world.

19 He shall neither have son nor nephew among his people nor any remaining in his dwellings.

20 They that come after him shall be astonished at his day, as they that went before were affrighted.

21 Surely such are the dwellings of the wicked,

and this is the place of him that knoweth not God.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL.

1. In opposition to Job's solemn appeal to God as a witness of his innocence, Bildad continues fixed in his former preconceived opinion, that a secret crime must be the cause of his heavy burden of suffering. After a short, sharp, censorious introduction, in which he pays back Job's bitter and harsh reprimands in the same coin, (vers. 2-4), he shows that, notwithstanding Job's passionate bluster, the old divine decree was still in force, by virtue of which a sudden merited punishment from God carries off the hardened sinner, and with him his entire household and race (vers. 5-21). He thus presents a companion piece to that description of the doom of the ungodly with which Eliphaz had closed his preceding discourse (ch. xv. 20-35), this delineation of Bildad's being new only in form, but being similar to that of Eliphaz throughout as to its substance and tendency. The whole discourse is divided into six strophes of three to four verses each, of which the first forms the introductory section spoken of above, while the remaining five belongs to the long main division, vers. 5-21. 2. Introduction and First Strophe: A short, sharp rebuke of Job as a foolish boaster, raving with passion; vers. 2-4.

Ver. 2. How long will ye yet hunt for words?-Let it be observed that Bildad's former discourse began with a like impatient question, ch. viii. 2 (there, here ) and further, that he addresses his opponent in the plural, for the reason that the latter had himself first made his cause identical with the cause of all the righteous, and had thereby himself provoked this representative association of his person with all who were like-minded. ["Some say that he thinks of Job as one of a number; Ewald observes that the controversy becomes more wide and general [representing two great parties or divisions of mankind]; and Schlottmann conjectures that Bildad fixes his eye on individuals of his hearers, on whose countenances he believed he saw a certain inclination to side with Job. This conjecture we will leave to itself; but the remark which Schlottmann also makes that Bildad regards Job as a type of a whole class, is correct, only one must also add, this address in the plural is a reply to Job's sarcasm (ch. xii. 2) by a similar one. As Job has told his friends that they act as if they were mankind in general, and all wisdom were concentrated in them, so Bildad has taken it amiss that Job connects himself with the whole of the truly upright, righteous, and pure; and he ad

dresses him in the plural because he, the unit, |lowed by many moderns, including Dillmann has puffed himself up as such a collective whole." [Ewald, Noyes, Lee, Con., Car., Rod., and so Delitzsch]. Still further Job had also begun his E. V.]) derives the word from 70=0, "to last discourse (see ch. xvi. 8) with a complaint be impure" (Lev. xi. 43), and translates accordabout the useless interminable discourse of the ingly: et sorduimus coram vobis. But this meanfriends, a complaint which Bildad here retali- ing would be a stronger departure from that ates, although to be sure in an altered form. of the first member than is allowed by the struc["Job's speeches are long, and certainly are a ture of the verses elsewhere in this discourse, trial of patience to the three, and the heaviest which exhibit throughout a thoroughly rigid trial to Bildad, whose turn now comes on, be- parallelism. Moreover it would obscure too cause he is at pains throughout to be brief. much the antithetic reference to ch. xvii. 8, 9. Hence the reproach of endless babbling with which he begins here, as at ch. viii. 2." Del.].

viii. 2.

he proves that the cause of the tearing is his
own furious passion. For thee [LXX. proba-
bly reading, which Merx adopts into
the text, render av où arovávns] should the
earth be depopulated [lit. forsaken] (comp.
y in Is. vii. 16; vi. 12) [on the form
with Pattach in the ultimate, see Green, 91,
6], and a rock remove out of its place
(comp. ch. xiv. 18; ix. 5). Both these things
would come to pass if the moral order of the
world, established by God as an unchangeable
law, more especially as it reveals itself in
rewarding the good and punishing the wicked,
were to depart from its fixed course; or in other
words, should God cease to be a righteous
rewarder. For that, as Bildad thinks, is what
Job really desires in denying his guilt; his pas-
sionate incessant assertion of his innocence
points to a dissolution of the whole sacred fabric
of universal order as established by God (comp.
Rom. iii. 5, 6). [A fine and most effective
stroke of sarcasm. On the one side, the puny,
impotent storming of Job's wrath; on the other,
the calm, unalterable movement of Divine Law.
How foolish the former when confronting the
latter! And by what right could he expect the
Divine Order to be overthrown for his sake?
For thee (emphatic) is everything to be plunged
into desolation and chaos?-E.]

Ver. 4. O thou, who tearest thyself in thy rage.-This exclamation, which is prefixed to the address proper to Job, and put in the p is not "to put an end to words, third person ([so apud Arabes ubique fere, to make an end of speaking" (so the ancient Schult.], comp. ch. xvii. 10 a), is in direct conversions, Rabbis, Rosenm., Gesen. [E. V. Um-tradiction to the saying of Job in ch. xvi. 9, breit, Lee, Carey, Renan]), etc.; for a plural which represents him as torn by God, whereas Dyip (with a resolved Daghesh for DP, [see Green, 54 3]), for P. cannot be shown elsewhere. Moreover in that case we should rather look for the singular construction PPD (see ch. xxviii. 3). [Merx introduces the sing. into the text. Rodwell renders - as an exclamation, and the following Imperf. (like that of b) as an Imperative," How long? Make an end of words." So substantially Bernard, except that he supplies the clause following in ch. This construction however still leaves the plural unaccounted for. According to the usual construction the clause should have after, to render which with E. V., etc. "How long will it be ere," etc., is forced and gratuitous.-E.]. We are to take P (with Castell., Schult., J. D. Michaelis, Ewald, Hirzel, Del. [Dillm., Schlottm., Con., Words.], etc.), as plur. constr. of PR, laqueus (a hunter's noose, a snare), so that the phrase under consideration signifies, "making a hunt for, hunting after words" (laqueus verbis tendere, verba venando capere). By this however is intended not contradiction and opposition perpetually renewed, but only uninterrupted, yet useless speaking. [Fürst, while agreeing with the above derivation of p, explains it here as fig. for perversion, contortion: "how long will ye make a perversion of words ?" But this explanation of the figure is less natural and appropriate. Bildad's charge against Job and his party is that they were hunting after words, straining after something to say, when there was really nothing to be said.-E.]-Understand, and afterwards we will speak.

TT

,"will you understand," voluntative for the Imperative ; comp. on ch. xvii. 10 a.

Ver. 3. Why are we accounted as the brute?-a harsh allusion to ch. xvii. 4, 10; comp. also Ps. lxxiii. 22.-—Are regarded as stupid in your eyes?—, from

DUN, DDU, "to stop up," hence lit. "are (are treated as) stopped up in your eyes," i. e. are in your opinion stupid, blockheads (comp. the similar phrase in Is. lix. 1). The LXX. exchange the word, which does not appear elsewhere, for ', σεoшлhкaμev; the Targ. gives KID, "are sunk." The Vulg. finally (fol

3. The terrible doom of hardened sinners, described as a salutary warning and instruction

for Job: vers. 5-21.

Second Strophe: vers. 5-7. [The destruction of the wicked declared.]

Ver. 5. Notwithstanding, the light of the wicked shall go out.-D adding to that which has already been said something new and unexpected, like us, equivalent to "notwithstanding;" comp. Ps. cxxix. 2; Ezek. xvi. 28. The "light going out" is a figure of prosperity destroyed (comp. ch. xxx. 26); so also in the second member: and the flames of his fire shine not. As to ', "flame," comp. Dan. iii. 22; vii. 9. Also as to the transition from the plural in a ("wicked ones") to the sing. in b (his fire), see on ch. xvii. 5; Ewald, 319, a.

Ver. 6. The light darkens (lit. "has darkened," n, Perf. of certainty, as in ch. v. 20) in his tent (comp. ch. xxi. 17; xxix. 3; Ps. xviii. 29 [28]; Prov. xiii. 9), and his lamp above him (i. e., the lamp hanging down above

him from the covering of his tent, comp. Eccles. xii. 6) goes out.-This figure of the extinction of the light of prosperity which is repeated again and again, is alike familiar to the Hebrew and to the Arabian; the latter also says: "Fate has put out my light."

Ver. 7. His mighty steps [lit. the steps of his strength] are straitened: another figure which is "just as Arabic as it is Biblical" (Del.). Comp. in regard to it Prov. iv. 12; Ps. xviii. 87 [36]. Also as regards the form (not from, as Gesen. [Fürst], and Hirzel say, but Imperf. form 773, see Ewald, 138, b. [The meaning is clearly: his movements are hampered, his powers are contracted by the pent-up limits which shut him in].-And his own counsel casts him down: comp. ch. v. 12 seq., and as regards in the bad sense of the counsel of the wicked, see ch. x. 3; xxi. 16.

Third Strophe: vers. 8-11. [Everything conspires to destroy the sinner.]

Ver. 8. For his feet drive him into a net: lit. "he is driven, sent forth" (, precisely as in Judg. v. 15) [by or with his own feet. A vivid paradoxical expression, conveying also a profound truth. The sinner is driven, and yet rushes on to his ruin. He is divided against himself. He pursues his course at once with and against his will.-E.]-And he walks over pitfalls.-22, net-like, cross-barred work, or lattice-work, applied here specially to a snare (as in Arabic schabacah, snare), hence a cross-barred covering laid over a deep pit. ["He thinks he is walking upon solid ground, but he is grievously mistaken; it is but a delicate net-work, spread over an unfathomable abyss, into which, therefore, he every moment risks to be precipitated." Bernard.]

TT:

Vers. 9, 10 continue still further the same figures derived from hunting, snare, cord and noose. In vers. 8-10 there are six different implements mentioned as being in readiness to capture the evil-doer; a vivid variety of expression which reminds us of the five names given to the lion by Eliphaz, ch. iv. 10 seq.; comp. also on ch. xix. 13 seq.

Ver. 9. A trap holds his heel fast, and a snare takes fast hold upon him.-To the simple, to hold, corresponds in 6 the significantly stronger pin, which, however, is used with [instead of 2], thus giving expression to the idea of a mighty, overpowering seizure. [The jussive form pin is used simply by poetic license.] On Dy, snare [which is not plur., but sing., after the form py, from ], comp. on ch. v. 5. [The rendering of E. V.: "robbers" is to be rejected here, as well as in ch. v. 5.]

Ver. 10. Hidden in the ground is his cord, and his gin upon the pathway.[The suffixes here undoubtedly refer to the sinner, and not, according to Conant's rendering "its cord-its noose"-to the snare of ver. 9. 'The continuation in ver. 10 of the figure of the fowler affirms that that issue of his life, ver. 9, has been preparing long beforehand; the pros

perity of the evil-doer from the beginning tends towards ruin." Del.]

[ocr errors]

Ver. 11 unites the figures by way of explanation in a more general expression.-On every side terrors affright him.-in signifies two things at once-terrible thoughts and terrible circumstances, here naturally such as are sent by God upon the wicked to disturb him.-And scare him at his footsteps; i. e. pursuing him: meaning "step for step, close behind;" comp. Gen. xxx. 30; 1Sam. xxv. 42; Is. xli. 2; Hab. iii. 5.—[E. V. "shall drive him to his feet" is ambiguous.], lit. diffundere, dissipare, hence requiring a collective for its object (as e. g. "host" in Hab. iii. 14), or a word representing a mass (as e. g. "cloud, smoke," comp. Job xxxvii. 11; xl. 11, etc.); here, however, exceptionally connected with a single individual as its object, and hence synonymous with 77, to chase, scare (comp. ch. xxx. 15). ["It would probably not be used here, but for the idea that the spectres of terror pursue him at every step, and are now here, now there, and his person is multiplied." Del.]

Fourth Strophe: vers. 11-14. Description of the final overthrow of the wicked in its three stages: outward adversity, mutilation of the body by disease, and death-hence manifestly pointing at Job.

T

Ver. 12. His calamity shows itself hungry. The voluntat. used for the finite: comp. ver. 9, also below ch. xxiv. 14.—, defective for 1, is more correctly derived from 1 in the sense of calamity, misfortune, than from 1, "strength." The latter rendering, which is adopted by the Vulgate, Rosenm., Ewald, Stickel, Schlottm., Dillm. [E. V., Umbreit, Good, Lee, Wem., Noyes, Con., Car., Rod., Elz.], yields a sense which is in itself entirely appropriate: "then does his strength become hungry." ["But this rendering is unsatisfactory, for it is in itself no misfortune to be hungry, and does not in itself signify 'exhausted with hunger.' It is also an odd metaphor that strength becomes hungry." Delitzsch.] But the rendering favored by the Peshito, Hirzel, Hahn, Del. [Renan, Words. ], etc.-"his calamity shows itself hungry (towards him); it seems greedy, eager to devour him" agrees better both with the second member of the parallelism, and with the actual course of Job's adversity, suddenly bursting upon him, to which Bildad mawhich began with a series of external calamities nifestly refers. The explanation of the Targ. [and Bernard]- "the son of his manhood's strength (comp. in Gen. xlix. 3) becomes hungry" destroys the connection [and "sounds comical rather than tragic," Del.]; and Reiske's translation-" he is hungry in the midst of his strength"- -assumes the correctness of the conjectural reading, which is entirely without support.-And destruction (T, lit. "a heavy burden, a load of suffering," hence stronger than 1, comp. ch. xxi. 17; Obad. 18) is ready for his fall- might of itself signify "at his side" (lit. "rib"), being

to cast down the wicked.

, and

thus equivalent to 172, ch. xv. 23 (Gesen., Ew., | mented for a while with temporary Schlottm., Dillm.), [E. V., Good, Lee, Bernard, made tender and reduced to ripeness for death Wem, Words., Noy., Ren., Con., Car., Rod., by the first-born of death, he falls into the posElz.]; but a more forcible meaning is obtained, session of the king of in himself; slowly if in accordance with Psalm xxxv. 15; xxxviii. and solemnly, but surely and inevitably (as 18, we take yy to mean "limping, fall," and Ty implies, with which is combined the idea so find destruction represented as in readiness cution), he is led to this king by an unseen arm." of the march of a criminal to the place of exeDelitzsch]. The "king of terrors" is death xxviii. 15 personified as a ruler of the underhimself, who is here, as in Ps. xlix. 15 [14]; Is. world. He is not however to be identified with the king of the under-world in the heathen mythologies (e. g., with the Yama of the Hindus, or the Pluto of the Romans, with whom Schärer and Ewald here institute a comparison), nor with Satan. For although the latter is in Heb. ii. 14 designated as ỏ Tò KрȧTOÇ ÈXWV Tov davátov, in our book according to ch. i. 6 seq., he appears in quite another character than that of a prince of death. Neither can the Angel of the abyss, Abaddon (Rev. ix. 11) be brought into the comparison here, since the king of terrors is unmistakably the personification of death itself. if, with the Pesh., Vulg., Böttcher, Stickel, We produce an unsuitable enfeebling of the sense [Parkhurst, Noyes, Good, Wemyss, Carey] disregarding the accentuation we separate in from 7, and render it as subj. of Myyn: "and destruction makes him march onward to itself, as to a king" [or: "Terror pursues him like a king," Noyes]-a rendering which is made untenable by the disconnected and obscure position which, in the absence of a clause more precisely qualifying it, it assigns to

death"

Ver. 13. There devours the parts of his skin (D' elsewhere "cross-bars," or "branches of a tree," comp. ch. xvii. 16; used here of the members of the body: y here for the body; comp. on ch. ii. 4), there devours his parts the first-born of death [or with a smoother English construction, by inverting the order of clauses, as Rodwell: "The first-born of death shall devour-devour the limbs of his body"]. According to this rendering, which is already justified by the ancient versions, and which has of late been quite generally adopted, is the subject of the whole verse, and is placed for emphasis at the end. By this "first-born of death," we are to understand not the "angel of as the Targum explains it, nor again "death" itself, as Hahn thinks, but a peculiarly dangerous and terrible disease, ["in which the whole destroying power of death is contained, as in the first-born the whole strength of his parent." Del.]. Comp. the Arabic designation of fatal fevers as benât el-menijeh, "daughters of fate or death." The whole verse thus points with indubitable clearness to Job's disease, the elephantiasis, which devours the limbs and mutilates the body,-an allusion which is altogether lost, if, with Umbreit and Ewald, we make the wicked himself the subject of the verse, understanding him to be designated in b by way of apposition as "the first-born of death, i. e., as surely doomed to death, and to be compared in the rest of the verse to one in hunger devouring his own limbs, as in Is. ix. 19 [20].

T:

of which we might rather look for

(instead 3).

influence of the calamity as extending beyond Fifth Strophe: Vers. 15-17. Description of the the death of the wicked man, destroying his race, his posterity, and his memory.

Ver. 14. He is torn out of his tent, Ver. 15. There dwells in his tent that wherein he trusted: in as in ch. viii. 14. which does not belong to him: or again: in is taken as the subject of the sentence of that which is not his." For - may by E. V., Rosenm., Umbr., Ewald. Noyes, Ber- be rendered in both ways, either partitively nard, Good, Lee, Wemyss, Carey, Barnes, Rod.. (Hirzel), or, which is to be preferred, as a Merx, Delitzsch; the meaning being as explained strengthened negation, by the latter: Everything that makes the ungodly man happy as head of a household, and which is not his " (comp. the adverbial in gives him the brightest hopes of a future, is torn Ex. xiv. 11; also the similar, yet more frequent away from his household, so that he, who is dy-; and in general Ewald, 294, a). In any ing off, alone survives." The rendering of our

66

[ocr errors]

that

Comm. is adopted by Dillmann, Schlottm., Co-case - in ch. xxxix. 16 may be compared nant, Renan, Hirzel, Hahn, Heiligst.It is de- with it. The fem. (for neuter) is exfended by Dillmann on the ground that accord-plained on the ground that the forsaken tent is ing to the order of the description the fate of his thought of as being inhabited not by human tent and household is not mentioned until verse beings, but by wild beasts (Is. xiii. 20 seq.; 15; and also that by its position 1 stands xxxiv. 11 seq.), or wild vegetation (Zeph. ii. 9). in apposition to 1, whereas according to the -Brimstone is scattered on his habitaother construction the order should have been tion, viz., from heaven (Gen. xix. 24) in order inverted, in as subject coming immediately to make it, the entire habitation of the wretched after the verb: grounds which seem satisfactory. man (as in ch. v. 3) a solitude, the monu-E.]-And he must march to the king ment of an everlasting curse; comp. ch. xv. 34; of terrors: lit., "and it makes him march "Deut. xxix. 22; Ps. xi. 6; also the remark of (fem. used as neuter), viz., his calamity, Wetzstein in Delitzsch, founded on personal obserthe dismal something, the secret power which vation of present modes of thought and customs effects his ruin. ["After the evil-doer is tor- among the orientals: "The desolation of his

« السابقةمتابعة »