1 Ver. 2. Poised. IX, implying weight-lifting up, so as to hang in free suspension. There may refer to the grief and suffering laid together, or as denoting coincidence; at one-like 1; the two ends of the beam in one horizontal line; expressive of great exactness. for, great misfortune,—extreme wretchedness-a sighing onomatope, like our word woe. See HUPPELD's very fuli explanation of the word Ps. v. 10.

T

Ver.3. Incoherent. Primary sense of 7 is swallowing, as our translation gives it. The secondary sense is confused and difficult utterance, as though the words were choked or swallowed.

Ver. 6. The white of eggs. This comparison that seems so little poetical, is evidently significant of the unsavoriness and tastelessness of the counsel just given. How vapid is all your moralizing as contrasted with the pungency of my insupportable anguish! See the remarks of A. B. Davidson, a late but most admirable commentator, who is very full on this and the following verse.

Ver. 7. pn 217. Lit., diseases of my food, sickness of my food, or food of sickness-unsavory, or that makes me sick.

5 Ver. 9. Comp. iv. 21, and Isaiah xxxviii. 12.

• Ver. 10. Endure; 10. Most modern commentators follow Schultens in his deduction of this once occurring word from the Arabic Ty, to paw the ground as a horse, thence getting the sense of exultation. It seems ex. travagant, and out of harmony with the other language. Better take it from the Chaldaic D, which has the sense of burning. Hence also, as senses in use, those of contracting drawing ones-self firmly up. See the example given, BUXTORF, Chald. Lex. 1481, from BERESCHITH RABBA, rhy 10. anima ejus contrahitur, retrocedit in eo. Our Eng. Ver. harden myself is not far from this idea. Though He spare not, or, let Him not spare. The 3d clause. Literally: For I have not denied the words of the Holy One.

7 Ver. 13. in, from the substantive verb ". Anything substantial and real in distinction from the failing and the evanescent.

8 Ver. 14. Such is Dr. CONANT's clear rendering of this difficult passage. ; primary sense, melting. Hence failing (liquescentem), allegoria pereuntis. See Glass. Philologia Sa cra, 1712.

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

Not so my friends-illusive as the brook,
As bed of streams whose waters pass away;
Whose turbid floods are darkened from the sleet,
As on their face the snowflakes hide themselves.
What time they shrink," deserted of their springs,
As quenched in heat they vanish from their place,
'Tis then their wonted ways are turned" aside;
Their streams are lost, gone up in emptiness.
The caravans of Tema look for them.

The companies of Sheba hope in vain.

Confounded are they where they once did trust;
They reach the spot and stand in helpless1 maze.
And thus are ye-but nought;

A fearful spectacle ye see, and gaze in terror.
Have I said, give to me?

Or from your wealth be liberal for my sake?
Or save me from the hostile's hand,

Or from the invader's power redeem my life?
Give me your counsel, and I'll hold my peace;
And let me clearly know where I am wrong.
How mighty are the words of righteousness!
But your reproving! how does it convince?
At words do ye your censures aim?

At wind-such words as one may utter in despair?
It is as though you cast lots for the orphan's wealth;
Or traffic" made of one you called your friend.
O turn to me, behold my face.

And now,

I will not speak before you what is false.
Return, I pray; let not the wrong prevail.
Return again; there's justice on18 my side.
Is there perverseness in my tongue?
Cannot my conscience" still discern iniquity?

Ver. 16. Hide themselves. It does not represent a frozen stream, but a dark scene of winter, or of the rainy season, when the wadys are full. It is the snow falling on the swollen waters and immediately disappearing; the same exquisite image that Burns so happily employs:

Or as the snow falls in the river,

A moment white, then gone forever.

10 Ver. 17. Deserted of their springs. 13cut off from their fountains. The word 1 occurs but once. It is best derived from the Syriac coarctarit. The sense drying up is closely allied to this, and also to that of heating, which is commonly given to the verb. See DILLMANN and UMBREIT.

19 Ver. 20. They reach the spot; . Right up to it-on its very brink.

13 15', literally, blush with shame. The expression is not too strong when we think of the sickening disappointment of men travelling days in the desert, sustained by the hope of the cooling water, and finding at last only the parched bed of the wady.

14 Ver. 22. For my sake, '¶ÿɔ. A wider sense than

: לי

: For me, pro me-propter me, as though by way of ransom or deliverance from an enemy. See note 953 to Noldius' Concordance of Hebrew Particles.

thinking of some great and terrible enemy, who is not God. Comp. xvi. 9, 11.

15 Ver. 23. Hostile hand. Job seems to be ever

16 Ver. 27. As though. The language is evidently comparative.

17 Ver. 27. Or traffic made. ̃ ̃ɔ with the sense emit, like the corresponding Arabic, and as used Deut. ii. 6; Hos. iit. 2. SO SCHLOTTMANN und verhandelt euern Freund. 18 Ver. 29. The rendering of DELITZSCH.

11 Ver. 18. Zöckler here, we think, is right in referring лn to the streams themselves, instead of rendering it caravans like many others. The process is by way of evaporation; "they go up into tohu," the waste atmosphere. It is not easy to apply this language to the caravans, though it is admirably descriptive of the drying up of the streams. The 19 Ver. 30. Conscience, the palate, when used verb, they twist to one side, well represents an aban-metaphorically, denotes the moral rather than the intellecdoned channel.

tual judgment.

17

For what is man that thou should'st make him of so great account?

18

That thou should'st set thy heart upon him?

That thou should'st visit him each morning as it comes,

And try him every moment?

19

How long wilt thou not look away from me?

20

21

22

Nor leave me till I draw my laboring" breath.

Watcher of men, if I have sinned what can I do to thee?

That thou should'st set me for thy mark;

That I should be a burden unto thee ?15

Why not lift up [the burden of] my sin,
And put away all my iniquity?

For soon shall I lie down in dust

And thou shalt seek me but I shall not be.

11 Ver. 13. Taken from Dr. CONANT'S Version, which is often rhythmical, although he did not aim at making it such. 12 Ver. 15. These bones. So CONANT, DAVIDSON, and most modern commentators.

13 Ver. 16. The meaning of this verse has been much discussed. The old rendering "I would not live always" seems too sentimental when unqualified. SCHLOTTMANN and others take from it the idea of suicide. I loathe life; I will not live. But this is repulsive. The version given exactly suits the condition of the sufferer.

14 Ver. 19. The rendering usually given is the literal one; and its correctness is put beyond doubt by the Arabic usage (see Hariri, Seance_xv., pp. 164, 167, De Sacy's Ed.) It denotes impatience: Let me have time to swallow. The version here adopted is merely a substitution of another expression giving the same idea. It is one of the very few cases in which the translator has thus attempted to modernize.

15 Ver. 20. Burden unto thee, We follow DELITZSCH here, who adopts the Jewish traditional reading of "y.

15

16

17

18

19

He leans upon his house, but it abideth not;
He grasps it, but it will not stand.®

Or like the herb so green before the sun,
Whose shoots go forth o'er all its garden bed;
Hard by the fountain" do its roots entwine;
Among its stones it looketh everywhere.
If one uproot him from his place,

It strait disowns him; thee I've never seen.

Lo this the joy of his brief way.

('Tis gone), but (like it) from the dust shall others spring.

1 Ver. 10. In parables. D is more poetical than D', and more sententious: sayings, adages, apologues, parables, (b) comparisons; suggesting the tropical language of the reed, the flag, and the spider, that immediately follows. p, from their heart: denoting here, as is most common in Hebrew, understanding, experience, rather than feeling. The literal rendering would give to the modern reader a false idea. Hence the paraphrase.

4 Ver. 11. Grows high, NY; proudly, gloriously. 6 Ver. 14. The well established sense of p is fastidire, to loathe, with when taken transitively. Intransitively, to be disgusting, or, when used of a thing, to disgust; Ezek. xvi. 47; Ps. xcv. 10; Niph. Ezek. xx. 43; xxxvi. 31; Hiph.

used just above, would be consistent with P, hope; for
the primary idea there is extension, drawing out (hope as a
line or thread); but has no such figure. It denotes

confidence as derived from the ideas of strength, thickness, re-
sistance, support, and hence it is used for stultitia folly, brute
that this confidence fails; it is seen to be vile and worthless.
What is meant to be said here is,
confidence, stubbornness.
Non placebit, as Hieronymus says. It disgusts instead of
strengthening. It cannot be objected that it is applied to the

plant, for the person figured is kept in view, and the meta-
phor is mixed. Such failure of confidence is exactly ex-
pressed by the same word (in Niphal) Ezek. xx. 43; xxxvi.
31: "And ye shall become disgusted in your own sight"

Ps. cxix. 158; cxxxix. 21; see Gesenius. Thus viewed, it (p) because of your evil, – vip' shop.

would be literally, his confidence (10) disgusis, like the sense Hieronymus gets, only he renders vecordia-nonplacebit ei vecordia sua. It becomes, or shows itself worthless to him. This is the idea given in the version above. The view which regards it as another form of ip = psp (to cut) seems arbitrary. Besides it would produce an incongruity of metaphor. The figure of cutting, if it had not been

6 Ver. 15. Grasps it. The figure is kept. breaking through the meshes of his web.

The spider

7 Ver. 17. For the justification of this rendering, see Cant. iv. 12, and notes of ZöCKLER and DR. GREEN on that passage. 8 Ver. 18. See vii. 10; Ps. ciii. 16. The speaker enters so into his figure that he personifies the plant. Hence the personal him is to be preferred to the impersonal it.