13

14

Its stump all dead and (buried) in the dust;
From waters inhalation will it bud,

And send forth shoots like a new planted stem.
But man-he dies and fallen wastes away;

Man draws his parting breath, and where is he?
As fail the waters from the sea;"

As wastes the flood and drieth up,

So man lies down to rise no more;

Until the Heavens be gone, they ne'er awake,
Nor start them from their sleep.

[A BRIEF PAUSE.]

O that in Sheol thou would'st lay me up;

That thou would'st hide me till thy wrath shall turn,3—
Set me a time, and then remember me.

[A MUSING SILENCE.]

Ah, is it so? When man dies, does he live again!

Ver. 3.y: on this; deɩKTIKŵs; either by tone or gesture indicating that he means himself; as is shown by the sudden change of person. MERX wholly destroys the pathos of this by arbitrarily changing into .

4 Ver. 4. O could. The optative rendering here is not only according to the usual use of ", but gives more distinctly the idea of inherited human depravity, and consequent disease, which here forces itself upon the mind of Job. On this account, it may be thought singular that it should be generally adopted by the more rationalizing commentators. There is here, says UMBREIT, the Oriental (!) idea of the Erbsünde; but then he immediately qualifies it as usual by saying: "Not. however, in the sense of the subtile dog

matic definitions."

5 Ver. 8. The supply of the ellipsis only gives the full meaning.

6 Ver. 10. unites both these senses: fallen-wastes. It puts him in contrast with the fallen tree.

7 Ver. 11. D' may mean any large collection of water. 8 Ver. 13. 1 denotes a turning. DELITZSCH, very happily: "Till thine anger change."

9 Ver. 14. • Ah, shall he live?". This language is neither that of denial. nor of dogmatic affirmation. Between these lie two states of soul: one of sinking doubt, the other of rising hope. It depends upon the tone and manner of utterance, whilst these, again, can only be recalled to us by something in the structure of the sentence,

or by the context. The particle is the hinge on which
the sentence opens. It may be taken two ways. Its force
may be regarded as confined to its own clause locally, or,
with more reason, may it be supposed to rule the whole sen-
tence; since DN is merely transitive, and here implies no
doubt. It is exclamatory, as well as interrogative. If a
man die, or when a man dies, ah, shall he live again! That,
in English, might possibly be the language of doubt, though
much would depend upon contextual considerations. Or,
take the other style of utterance (in English, we mean): Ah,
is it so, when man dies, does he live again? This would cor-
respond to the idea of the interrogative influencing the
whole verse; OR being entirely subordinate. It is not
despairing, nor even desponding, but an expression of won-
der, rather, at the greatness of an idea striking the mind in
some fresh and startling aspect. It is surprise, rather than
doubt, or the state of soui which Homer so naturally, as well
as vividly, represents, Iliad xxiii, 103. Achilles, like all the
other Greeks, believed in the reality of a spirit world, as
distinctly held in his day; yet when the dream, or the ap-
pearance of Patroclus, startles him with an unusually near
and vivid thought of it, he cries out:

“Ω πόποι ἡ ῥά τίς ἐστι καὶ εἶν 'Αίδαο δόμοισιν
Ψυχὴ καὶ εἴδωλον;

O wonder! Is there truly in that unseen world
Both soul and form?

And so even the Christian believer might speak when the momentous thought comes suddenly before him with some

15

16

17

18

19

Then all the days appointed me I'll wait,
Till my reviving1o come.

Then thou wilt call, and I will answer thee;

For thou wilt yearn" towards thy handy work.
But now thou numberest my steps;

Thou wilt not set a guard" upon my sin;

(For) sealed, as in a bag, is my transgression bound,
And mine iniquity thou sewest13 up.

[A LONGER INTERVAL OF SILENCE.]

Yes"-even the mountain falling wastes away;
The rock slow changes from its ancient's place;
The water wears the stones;

Its overflowings sweep away the soil;
So makest thou to perish human hope.

longing for the handy work which he had once so curiously and marvellously made.

12 Ver. 16. gives here an intensive sense. The connection only occurs elsewhere in Prov. v. 22, where it is taken in bonam partem. In both cases, it has the sense of guarding for the sake of preserving. The idea is that there is no need any more of guarding or watching over Job's sin, lest it should be lost, for it is sealed up-tied fast in God's fasciculus, or bundle (compare the same word,, ver. 17, as used 1 Sam. xxv. 29, for the "bundle of life"). Such seems to be the train of thought, and it makes clear a passage which has been supposed to present no little difficulty in consequence of an apparent disagreement between its two clauses. The interrogatory rendering, as given in E. V., and elsewhere, is a forced help. The Vulgate regards 's as a prayer: Do not watch over my sins-parce peccatis meis; but that makes an unnecessary variance of construction between the two clauses and the two verbs and . The word D following gives a clue to the explanation.

new impressiveness. There is still another shade of the idea, near akin to this feeling of wonder: When a man dies, does he live? That is: Is death really the way to life? Do we live by dying? See the quotation from Euripides, and the remarks in the INTRODUCTION ON THE THEISM, page 8. In regard to the force of the context, there can be but little doubt. There is certainly a rising of hope which has somehow come in after the mournful language of ver. 12. This prompts the prayer preceding, in ver. 13; then there is the exclamation; and then, as though from some inspiration it had given him, the strong declaration that he would wait for this change, as involving something most desirable, though wholly unknown. Immediately follow words that seem to rise to full assurance (ver. 15): "Thou wilt call, and I will answer thee; thou will have regard to the work of thy hands." This force of the context is very clearly presented by DELITZSCH. The mode of expression implies something of a traditional knowledge, to say the least: Ah, is it so, as we have heard, rò @pudλovμevor-that saying rumored everywhere? For surely Job must have heard it, or heard of it. The Egyptians had it; see DIOD. SIC. i. 51. According to the Rationalists themselves, the Persians and other transEuphratean nations must have had it long before the time they ascribe to the book of Job. If the Vedas which MERX quotes (see INT. THEISM, page 16) are as old as pretended, some rumor of this idea must have crossed the Indus, and reached the land of Uz. The Greeks, we know, had it in the ante-Homeric times. There is good evidence, too, of its having been entertained by the early Arabian tribes; as is shown by passages in the Koran where the Infidels reply to Mohammed, saying: "When we are dead and have become dust and dry bones, how can we be revived? Why, this is just what we were threatened with, we and our fathers of old; away with it; surely this is nothing more than fables of the ancient men." See Koran Surat. xxiii. 84, 85; xxvii.pressive particle, 18, as it occurs in Job, often denotes a 69,70 and other places.

io Ver. 14. Reviving. : General sense change, vicissitude, from that mysterious root. It is used in connection with NY, warfare, time of military or other serrice, x. 17. Here the change, naturally suggested by the context, is release from Sheol, as from a warfare, when that set time comes. There can hardly be a doubt, however, that the use of the word here is suggested to Job by the verb

, which he had taken, ver. 7, to denote the regermination of the tree. This, of itself, would seem to settle it that the change in view is one of reviviscence, and the idea derives still farther aid from the use of the word. Ps. xc. 5, where the Kal is applied to the flower growing up in the morning, and Ps. cii. 27, where the Hiphil denotes the reviviscence of nature in the new Heavens and the new Earth. As change, it is never change from life to death; and if that were the meaning intended here, a more unfit word could not be found.

11 Ver. 15. Wilt yearn. : a word of great strength and pathos, well rendered yearn by CONANT. In Ps. Lxxxiv. 3, the Niphal is used to express the longing of the soul for God and the services of his house. There it is foined with: "pines, yea faints my soul for the courts of the Lord." In Gen. xxxi. 30, it is used to describe Jacob's intense longing for home. And this is the word which, by a blessed anthropopathism, is used here to express God's

T

18 Ver. 17. Sewest up. Gesenius gives a secondary sense suggested by the Greek phrase dóλov páжтelv-"to sew falsehood against my iniquity." This suits Ps. cxix. 69; but there it is y, against me, against the person, not against the sin, which would be an absurdity. It would be here, moreover, an unnecessary departure from the other figures.

14 Ver. 18. Yes, even the mountain. The ex

kind of soliloquizing pause. It makes an emotional rather
It may be supposed to refer to something thought, rather
than a logical transition, suggestive rather than adversative.
than expressed. What is the point of the comparisons that
here start up in the mind of the musing, partly controvert-
ing, partly soliloquizing Job? It is a question which com-
mentators have had difficulty in answering. The connective
link would seem to be something suggested by the thought
of deliverance from Sheol. ver. 15. But "how long! O Lord,
how long!" as the Psalmist so expressively says. The mind
of Job, beginning to fall back into its despondency, is led to
a mental consideration of the slow changes of nature, and
his breaking out with is a sort of answer to the
thought that had silently intervened: Ah, yes; God's times
are long; the earth, too, and the heavens (see vers. 11 and
12) are passing away. "Yes, even the mountain falling
crumbles to decay." The effect of this is to throw a shade
over his hope, until at the end of the chapter he seems to
have got almost wholly to his old despairing state.
15 Ver. 18. In the version given there is an attempt to
combine the two senses of phy so closely suggestive of each
other, namely age and removal. See Note ix. 5.

16 Ver. 19. Wears the stones: the pebbles on the beach made round and smooth by the ablution of the waters. It is a phenomenon suggestive, even to the most common mind, of long duration. One might almost fancy it a description of geological changes.

20

21

22

Thou overpow'rest" man, and he departs;
Changing his face, thou sendest him away.
His sons are honored, but he knows it not.
They come to poverty-he heeds it not.
By himself alone, his flesh endureth pain;
By himself 18 alone, his soul within him" mourns.

17 Ver. 20. Thou overpowerest. DELITZSCH: "Thou seizest him," from an Arabic usage. The other rendering, though the verb occurs but in two other places, xv. 24 and Ecclesiastes iv. 12, gives a clear sense, and is to be preferred for its harmony with the figures of the context.

18 Ver. 22. It reminds us of the wailing ghost in Homer. Job could hardly have believed it as a fact, and yet he seems here to have indulged the imagination of the body retaining feeling in the grave, and the soul, or life, in some way, sympathizing with it. It may be regarded, too, as an intensive expression of the dead man's indifference (see Ecclesiastes

|

ix. 5, 6) to all things in the world above. There may, perhaps, be meant the supposed state in Sheol, according to the dark view taken x. 22, as though Job had fallen back to that gloomy conception, unrelieved by the hope that gleams out in some of the verses above.

19 Ver. 22. Within him. Literally, by him, upon him, very near to him. The second y, though a repetition of the one above, may be regarded as including_both ideas. It is that thought of continued being referred to, INT. THEISM, pa. 3.

CHAPTER XV.

1

2

3

4

5

6

Then answered Eliphaz the Temanite and said,

A wise man, shall he utter windy lore?
And with a rushing tempest' fill his soul,—
Contending still with speech of no avail-
With words that do no good?

Nay more, thou makest void the fear of God,
Confession to Him ever holding back.

For 'tis thy sin that rules thy mouth,

And thou thyself dost choose the crafty tongue.

I judge thee not; 'tis thine own mouth condemns;
Against thee thine own lips do testify.

1 Ver. 2. Tempest. D'p. Literally the East wind (Eurus), but used for any violent blast (Hos. xii. 2; Isaiah xxvii. 8, DP DI “in the day of the East wind”). In the first clause, as HEILIGSTEDT says, there is the idea of in

anity; in the second, of vehemence.

2 Ver. 2. His soul. 1. EWALD takes this literally, the belly, or stomach, as opposed to the heart. The Hebrew, however, as well as the Arabic word, is figurative of the most interior department of the soul; as in the phrase

Prov. xviii. and xxvi. 22. Same phrase Prov. xx. 27.
Heb. iv. 12.

"

Comp.

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

Anguish and trouble fill him with alarm;
They overpow'r him like a chieftain1 armed."

For that against the Strong," his hand he stretched,
And proudly the Omnipotent defied -

Running upon him with the stiffened neck,

And with the thick embossments of his shield,-
For that his face he clothed in his own fat,
And built the muscle" thick upon his loin,-
So dwells" he in the ruined holds,

In houses uninhabited,

Fast hastening to become mere rubbish" heaps.
Nor wealth he gets, nor do his means endure;
Nor shall his substance in the land extend.
From darkness nevermore shall he escape;
The scorching" flame shall wither up his shoots;
In God's hot anger doth he pass away.

Let him not trust in evil; he's deceived;
For evil still shall be his recompense;
Before his time is it fulfilled,

His palm no longer green;

As shaketh off the vine its unripe grapes,
Or as the olive casts away its flower.
For desolate the gathering of the vile,
And fire devours the tents of bribery;

Where misery is conceived," and mischief born;
And where the inmost thought deception" frames.

19 Ver. 24. Like a chieftain armed. This rend-
ering comes easy, if we regard 7, occurring only here,
as simply another orthography for the more frequent 117sis,
a spear (liquid for "). In this view compare it with Prov.
vi. 11, 11, man of shield.

20 Ver. 25. The strong. There is not only an emphasis, but a climax in the divine names, and, as used here. The translator has attempted to preserve this in the etymological significance of . Defied: "17" superbivit, contumax est. Ver. 26, with stiffened neck. Compare Psalm lxxv. 6.

21 Ver. 27. Muscle thick upon his loin. The word muscle as here used, is an accommodation to the sense. Suet or tallow would have been nearer to the Hebrew, but they would have been unpoetical to an English ear, be sides making something like a tautology. ' (pima), is the Greek meλn, the covering or enveloping folds of fat generally, σréap (7), though sometimes the meanings seem reversed. The Greek muen evidently means the enveloping fat, Soph. Antig. 1011. See President Woolsey's clear note upon the passage. Both figures here represent a man prospering, proud, and wanton-growing fat and lusty.

: ·

DE

22 Ver. 28. So dwells he. The translator has given here a consequential sense, though in opposition to DELITZSCH, DILLMANN, UMBREIT, ZOCKLER, and others. WETTE agrees with it in substance, in his rendering darum bewohnet. It is consistent, too, with EWALD'S rendering of , ver. 27, as making a protasis (Though he has covered, or if he has covered (Hab er sein Gesicht mit Fett bedeckt). Rosenmiller, too, makes this inhabiting desolate cities a punishment, and, therefore, a consequence. The great difficulty in the other view is the making this dwelling in ruined cities, fast going to decay, one of the bad man's sins, all the more out of congruity, too, by coming so directly after that

other sin of so different a character, represented in language
figurative of pride, and insolent outward prosperity. DE
LITZSCH and others make all of vers. 25, 26, 27, 28, the prodo
and commence the apodosis, or consequence, with
y, he shall not be rich, in the 29th: "Because he stretched,
etc., and ran--and corered--and abode in desolate cities-there-
fore, he shall not be rich." The latter part, at least, seems very
unconsequential. The objection to the other view is an-
swered by the fact that the conjunction 1 may be truly con-
versive, and yet retain the consequential sense which it so
frequently has,-connecting, indeed, but as a logical, instead
of a mere eventual following. Whether this is so, in any
case, is to be determined by the context, which here cer-
tainly seems greatly to favor it. As conversire, it simply
makes the tense following take the form of the preceding,
and such is the nature of conditional clauses in all languages
that the question of absolute times becomes a matter of indif-
ference as compared with the fact of the consequential rela-
tion. They may be in the past, or in the present, or in the
aorist: He made, etc.-therefore he dwelt: Or, he corers, and
therefore dicells. The English may be brought very bear
this Hebrew idiom by using a lighter transition particle than
therefore: He stretches out-he corers-so dwells he, etc.

23 Ver. 28. Fast hastening. The word
has given commentators unnecessary trouble. DELITZSCH
renders it appointed, CONANT, destined, which is better. The
primary idea of the word is near futurity, something im-
pending-promptus, paratus (y). The Hithpahel is not
passive, but reflex and intransitive.

24 Ver. 28. Rubbish heaps, D'?. See Isa. xxxviii. 26: D'Y), grass-grown heaps.

Ver. 30. Scorching flame. 7, an intensive word; see Cant. viii,6: Ezek. xxi. 3.

20 Ver. 32. 11: Its day not yet; or prematurely.

27 Ver. 35: Is conceived. The verbs are in the infinitive active, to conceire, etc., but they are best rendered passively. Literally, at the conceiving, etc. Comp. Ps. vii. 15. 28 Ver. 35. Deception; ; not self-deceit, as DELITZSCH and ZöсKLER tak it. That is too artificial.