15 16 Who dwell within his tent are none of his; And o'er his pleasant1 place is showered" the sulphur-rain. Above, his branch cut off. xxvi. 6; xxviii. 22. the Abaddon of Rev. ix. 11, or the one described, Heb. ii. 14, as τὸν τὸ κράτος ἔχοντα τοῦ θανάτου. If not in sound, yet in idea, would it be a more fearful epithet than the other, as calling up the pallida Mors of the classic poet, and, above all, that most awful image of wasting, emaciating disease, the xAwpos innоs, the "pale horse" of Rev. vi. 8, with "him who sat thereon, whose name was Death, and Hades following hard after him." The thought of terror merely, falls far below the foul-awing, yet still fascinating, power of such a representation. T make it more universal-the feminine in Hebrew thus sup- 12 Ver. 16. His roots dried up—his branch cut 13 Ver. 18. Do they drive. Note vii. 3. Comp. Ps. xlix. 15, ay binuh. They put (or drive) them into Sheol. Comp. also Job xix. 26. 14 Ver. 18. And chase. The idea of Ps. xlix. 15 is also in Prov. xiv. 32, though there it is expressed passively, Ver. 14. Doth it march him on. DELITZSCH says that "the 'it' here is a secret power, as elsewhere the feminine prefix is used to denote the dark power of natural and supernatural events, though sometimes the masculine is thus employed." This would make it a kind of impersonal fate, inya, "the wicked man is driven away in or fatality, of which, it is true, there are some traces to be found in the book (see INT. THEISM, ра. 23). But there is no need of finding the subject of the verb yn in such an abstract conception. It may be regarded, in strict grammatical construction, as the hungry woe, or the first-born of Death, although the gender is changed to the feminine to TT יז his wickedness." TT: 15 Ver. 20. Men of the West. For the reasons of this rendering, see UMBREIT, DELITZSCH, and others. CONANT, however, adheres to the old rendering. 10 Ver. 21. Unrighteous men; 73: Here taken collectively. -the cha) נכר as the Hiphil of the Hebrew root ההכרו 1 Ver. 3. Act as strangers. The translator abides | generally get its sense from the Arabic, and render it here by E. V. The rendering is obtained by regarding stun, or confound. But that is straining the Arabic word, which means simply to affect with admiration, besides leaving racteristic preserved) with the sense of the piel. SCHUL- wholly unexplained the preposition that follows. This is TENS, according to GESENIUS, thus regards it as for quite natural to the Hebrew verb, and also to the really corwith which he compares 7, Jerem. ix. 2. See also responding Arabic; as in the V. Conj., to be estranged, to act like a stranger to any one. 3 Ver. 4. Lodges. pa, 1 Sam. xiv. 22; xxxi. 2. The later commentators —pernoctat—tarries all night. 8 Ver. 6. Cast me down. There is no need of going | beyond, here, to get the sense of injustice, as some do. UMBREIT well renders it, mich beugt, bent down, humbled me. ZöсKLER also gives it clearly by gekrummet, crooked, or curved me. There is indeed complaint in the next verse, but it does not amount to a direct charge of injustice. It may be said, too, that in the language of the 7th verse Job had the friends in view. It was their wrong he cried out against. ♦ Ver. 10. I am gone—-71. Compare a similar pathetic use of oixoual by the Greek Dramatic poets. See Soph. Ajax, 896, οί χωκ', όλωλα. of the prose portion. With this rendering would well agree what follows if we keep the common familiar sense of, whether regarded as an infinitive (like ɲip, Ezek. xxxvi. 3) or as a plural feminine noun-my yearning, or yearnings, my tender feelings for the dear ones lost, for my desolate household (see xvi. 7 and note). She repels me from her (he seems to say) even in the manifestation of my deepest grief. T.: The sense of 13 is very uniform in the Hebrew-tender & Ver. 17. My temper-strange. That aversion in some sense is intended here cannot be doubted; but in what way is it signified? The translator had much doubt in respect to ', rendered generally breath, but which he has here ventured to translate temper, as the word is used, Prov. XXV. 28, where it is indeed translated spirit, but in the sense of passion, animus agitatus et commotus. This agrees with the immediate context, as well as with what is said of the wife in the Prologue. His spirit was alien to her. She did not understand him, his mind, his feeling, his state of soul. When he said, "the Lord gave, the Lord hath taken, etc.," she regarded it as stoical indifference. She knew nothing of the deep feeling underlying the declaration, his yearning for the lost as measuring the depth of his resignation, before insufferable bodily agony drove him to the outcry of chap. iii. (see Int. Theism, pa. 28). She said to him, "Curse God and die." She was not at all the woman to appreciate Job, and my breath is not inconsistent with it. The breath under a sense of this he might well say, that she had come to regard him with aversion; and perhaps she bad wholly abandoned him. Certainly the absence of all such allusion to incidents mentioned in the prologue would be more strange than their presence. It would furnish an almost unanswerable argument to those who maintained the later authorship They flout at me when I attempt to rise. with fastidium, as used Numb. xi. 20. But they cannot be the same word, as there is radical, and the word is evidently allied to the Arabic, to repel. There is nothing in the Hebrew akin to nausea, and the peculiar offensive the phrase the same way), the interior part; hence used, as in Job xv. בני חלצי ",children of my boncels * בני מעי body. It is like "children of my loins." The reference to his children, after the mention of his wife, is most natural; and it should be borne in mind that only four verses above, the brothers of Job, whether uterine, or collateral kinsmen more remote, are mentioned by their own appropriate name () as estranged from him, and far removed. They had abandoned him, and could not have been affected by any such offensiveness. The friends alone seem to have remained in close contact with him, and therein, with all their harshness, they were better than his wife and his brethren. Besides, that there should be no mention of children, would, indeed, be very strange. The difficulty clears up when we abide by the old rendering, whilst the mention of his dead children, and his yearning for them, in connection with his wife's aversion, becomes a most touching instead of such an offensive picture, as the other rendering would make it. 6 Ver. 18. When I attempt to rise. : pa ragogic -subjective or optative sense-when I would rise, indicating a feeble attempt, as he sits upon the ground, or among the ashes, ii. 8. The boys mock his emaciated form and tottering motions. np. See ness in Numb. xi. 10, arose from satiety, excessive familiarity, which is an idea the very opposite to that of strangeness. Carrying out the idea which is supposed to be intended in the first clause, many commentators give to , in the second, a sense derived from another Arabic root channa (in stead of hanna) with the sense of factor. The arguments against it are, 1, that, in the usual sense, is a very common Hebrew word. The Hithpahel conjugation is in verse 16, immediately preceding, and the Kal is repeated twice in ver. 21, in almost immediate connection: n, n. pity me, oh pity me, ye my friends. The Arabic channa differs in the diacritical point. but to the reader's eye the word used is the same root in all these places of the same chapter, to say nothing of its very frequent occurrence in all other parts of the Hebrew Scriptures. This certainly makes it seem very improbable that the writer should have gone so far out of his way to get a very foreign and almost opposite meaning in this passage. What makes it stranger still, is that the Hebrew is well supplied with words to express this idea of foetor. There is the very common N with its derivatives, besides . n, which occurs more than twenty times, and another form 3, Joel ii. 20. 2. The primary meaning of channa, as given by the Lexicographers, and especially by LANE, the most exact of them all (and who differs from them in his copious citation of illustrating passages) is "the emission of the breath, with a sound, through the nostrils." This shows that it is an onomatopic, khanna, a nasal sound, or utterance. If used to denote a disease, it would be something like the catarrh, or a cold in the head. 3. In getting this sense of fator, they take the remote Xth conjugation of channa (as given by Golius and Freytag, without any references): fotorem emisit puteus-a sense which LANE relegates to the most unusual ones, and which is most probably dialectical, or coming from some incidental association of sound, or otherwise. It is certainly very rare, not to be found in the Ancient Arabic, or in the later classical. It is not in the Koran, or in Hariri, or in Ahmed's Life of Timur, or in the copious Koranic commentary of Alzamakhshari. Besides this, it seems most likely to be derived from sachana, meaning to be warm (especially water). The VIIIth conj. of this root (istachana) would differ only by the doubling of the final consonant from the Xth of the other; and in the Arabic it sometimes happens that the derivative senses thus get mixed together, as istachana and istachanna, There is the same argument against bringing it from the Syriac Nun, rancidus. It is found only in CASTELL without any citations.. Both in the Hebrew and in the Arabic, as well as in It may be a late derivative from the Arabic, but more likely a merely accidental accommodation from the old sense of ; hence in Syriac, N', a name for a kind of oil (from the idea of smoothness) afterwards used for rancid oil. Any authority that this might seem to possess is invalidated by the fact that the Peschito Syriac translators would have found this word hanino (had it been old Syriac) the very one to be used if fortor were the real meaning intended. Instead of this, they have used the old Hebrew and Syriac, and given precisely the rendering of our E. V. (), "I entreated, supplicated for the children of my bowels." A strong argument against this later rendering of fator, offensiveness, is that, in consequence of demanding for the sense of to, instead of for, or on account of, it makes it impossible that (2d clause) should mean the children of Job, for they were all dead. Attempts have been made to refer it to children of slaves, etc., but this is too farfetched to deserve notice. UMBREIT and DELITZSCH regard as referring to his mother's womb, called my womb (as in iii. 10 "doors of my womb "). CONANT states the argument very well and concisely for this; but it does not satisfy. Job is not speaking of himself here, and so the argument from iii. 10, does not apply. In Micah vi. 7, certainly means children, and to get away from it by saying that in that case there is meant the womb of his wife is taking away all definiteness from the phrase, and making it mean anything an exigentia loci might demand. So with 7 Ver. 19. Men of my counsel, Psalm lv. 15, "With whom I took sweet counsel." 8 Ver. 19. Are turned against the sight. The reudering is not too full for the Heb. 1)—are turned right round, or right away. It implies a revolting sight, brought out in all its ghastly features in the next verse. Ver. 20. All shrunk away. This verse has given rise to much and varied comment. The things first to be determined are the meaning of the phrase "y (skin of my teeth) and the meaning and construction of the verb non. The idea of DELITZSCH that the first means the periosteum, a fibrous membrane surrounding the bone, is farfetched, and could not have been thought of by Job. No meaning can be given to the phrase unless it be the lips or gums surrendering the teeth,-the covering of the teeth. There is no reason here to go beyond the primary sense of the verb the cognate it is that of smoothness (levis, glaber fuil GES.) bareness, slipperiness. Hence elapsus est, evasit, he slipped away, he escaped. There is the same primary idea in the English escape. As an escape from danger, however, or difficulty, it is a secondary sense, and found only in the Niphal (the Piel and Hiphil being causative of it). The Hithpahel occurs nowhere else except in this passage, and its reflex form and sense, as will appear, favor the idea above given. The next thing is to examine the Ancient Versions. The Peschito Syriac gives the sense of E. V. The Vulgate, or Hieronymus, renders it derelicta sunt tantummodo labia circa dentes meos, only the lips are left about my teeth-left as something abandoned or deserted. The LXX. dσтâ μov év odovou exerat, which has little or no sense. In the Hexaplar Syriac Version of the LXX. we find in the margin the rendering of the other early Greek versions. AQUILA gives it as in E. V. and the Peschito. SYMMACHUS: "I am hung," or, I adhere to the skin of my teeth. THEODOTION: I am aban doned of (forsaken by) the skin of my teeth. TREMELLIUS has the same rendering as E. V. LUTHER und kann meine Zähne mit der Haut nicht bedecken. This, with the version of the Vulgate and Theodotion, is the general idea above given, though differently expressed: the teeth exposed and proLITZSCH) arrive at a similar idea, but in a wrong way, by truding. STICKEL and HAHN (as cited and contested by Dɛmaking the infinitive of with the sense of nakedness. The difficulty appears to be in the first person of the verb. The sense given would seem to demand the third per 26 27 Have pity; O have pity-ye my friends; [PAUSE.] O, that my words were written now; O, that they were upon the record graved, Upon the rock cut deep-a witness evermore. [A BRIEF SILENCE]. I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER1 LIVES; 15 AND O'ER MY DUST," SURVIVOR, SHALL HE STAND. MINE EYES SHALL SEE HIM-STRANGER18 NOW NO MORE. son with for the subject: the skin of my teeth has slipped consequence of the disease. But this is an interpretation on which there is no need of dwelling. 10 Ver. 21. That toucheth me, 'ny. The apparent lightness of the act enhances, by its mighty effect, the greatness of the power: "He looketh at the earth, and it trembles; He toucheth the mountains, and they smoke (the Volcanoes)." Comp. Pe. cxliv. 5. 11 Ver. 23. Satiated. The idea intended is that of remorseless slander compared to a devouring of the flesh. In the SYRIAC it becomes a fixed idiomatic expression for this idea. Hence & Syriac word, NY, meaning the Devourer T The other rendering: "I am escaped with the skin of my teeth," seems to have but little meaning, though so strongly defended. From our English it has acquired a sort of proverbial sense--the barest escape from danger; but this is inapplicable to Job. The Arabic formula so commonly cited in its defense: "he escaped with his head," differs in the most important item. Head is, in many languages, used for life; and thus it becomes an expression of exultation, or at least of self-congratulation. But this would be most inconsistent in the case of Job. He does not speak like one who has escaped (got through his trouble), even with difficulty. And then that piteous cry which immediately follows: hanéni, hanéni, oh my friends, for it is Eloah's hand that toucheth me, could only have come from a sense of his forlorn, hopeless condition-his projecting bones, his shrunken skin, his protruding teeth, denuded of their once comely covering-DELITZSCH a tautology-a saying the same thing (myself all presenting a woful spectacle of misery and wild despair. There is another view cited by UMBREIT from Michaelis' Supplem., p. 1512, in which a meaning for the Hebrew verb is sought from a secondary sense of the Arabic coming from the common primary idea of smoothness or bareness. It is pilis caruit, or nudavit pilis in Conj. II., smoothing off the beard, like Hebrew. Hence by the skin of the teeth, he would understand the covering beard, which has all come out in [PAUSE.] 28 29 Yes, ye shall say, why persecute we him? For there is wrath; yea sins (that call) the sword;24 or no meaning, besides necessitating a different and forced construction of the whole passage. It is in E. V., and maintained by DELITZSCH, CONANT, and other very able commentators; but an examination of the use of in such passages as Exod. xviii. 16–22; xxii. 8( hy), xxiv. 14, and other places, can leave little doubt of the meaning as above given-a ground of accusation or blame. It may have been, root of accusation, as denoting charges inferred without evidence, like those in chap. xxii., 20 Ver. 28. Shall say. The supposing a pause of silence, pressive in Hebrew, this sudden turn to himself as the obhowever brief, before ver. 28 greatly facilitates the interpre ject of their persecution. Comp. the precisely similar case, tation of what follows, and which by being brought abruptly xiv. 3, which MERX has marred by his useless emendation of in, has given rise to much annecessary difficulty. The high the text. feeling of the rapturous anticipation has somewhat gone 22 Ver. 28. Root of blame. When this phrase, 77 down; but it has made a change in Job, and gives him, is rendered root of the matter, it seems to have little strength to use a language to the friends different from what he had before employed. There is no recrimination, but he ventures to assume to them something of a warning, and even a prophetic style. It is, however, a general prediction, and there is nothing to show that he had in view the scenes narrated in the close of the book, as some have thought in order to lower the character of his ecstatic vision to a mere guess at returning prosperity. For ye shall say. There is no need of departing from the simple future sense of 17. The time will come when ye will take a different view of the case. The is slightly illative, being used, as it re-dug up-hunted for-having no proof upon the surface. peatedly is, in the Book of Job, to denote a kind of reply to something that has been silently passing through the mind. It is like the commencement of Chap. xxviii. Thus regarded, the two verbs following (777) and XY7)) may both be treated as in the same conjugation and tense, future in form, but to be rendered as present, or aorist, depending on 1787; in which view there is no need of regarding 1 in the second clause as anything more than simply connective. There is no inferential sense in it to be rendered since or seeing that; all of which arises from a wrong view of the connections of the passage. ROSENMUELLER: materiam litis. 23 Ver. 29. Beware-Beware. The repetition in the translation is justified by the great emphasis expressed in Band : "Take care of yourselves before the sword." The strengthening that Job had received rouses him to give them this warning, though not at all in their style of crimination. 24 Ver. 29. (That call) the sword. Comp. Romans xiii. 4. Literally, sins of the sword. 25 Ver. 29. That judgment is-surely is really isor what it really is-said, perhaps, in opposition to their su 21 Seek to find. In kal Y denotes not simply a perficial views about the judgments or dealings of the divine finding, casually, but a finding what is sought. Here it providence: That ye may have an idea of the greater and may be taken as the 1st Pers. Plu. Fut. Kal, instead of the Ni-higher judgment. We have here for the only phal participle, which the other view seems to necessitate. The change of person, although it makes strange sounding place in Job where it occurs, though so common in EccleEnglish, the translator has preserved because it is so ex- siastes and the later Hebrew. Job. Ver. 2. Compel me to respond. alone might mean simply to answer, but the suffix and the context seem to demand the causal sense. rendered furnish my answer-give me an answer. It might, however, be Ver. 2. My haste. There is no need of going away from the pure Hebrew sense of win, haste. It is just what the context shows to be wanted, and the word in brackets is simply the expression of what is implied in the emphatic repetition, in, of the first person: my haste in me. 1 Ver. 2. To this. . There is no need to follow | presented, but very intemperate and unjust as applied to UMBREIT and others in their far-fetched explanations of this particle, . Literally to so—for so—for this-there-for or therefore. So, wherefore. It denotes here an immediate reply. Fired by Job's saying to them to beware of the sword of justice, Zophar answers indignantly and impetuously. He could be very calm when, free from pain, he discourses so loftily and truly about God's wisdom and "truth's twofold form" (chap. xi. 6). With all theoretical coolness could he exhort Job to repentance. But now when the sufferer, strengthened by his glorious hope (xix. 25-28), turns upon them, as it were, and warns them that they too have need of repentance, Zophar goes off in great haste, as the next clause shows. This heat is continued through the chapter, producing that picture of the wicked man and his doom, most just in itself, and most graphically as well as eloquently 4 Ver. 3. Zeal. is here used for anger, temper, zeal or warmth (ira), as it is Judg. viii. 3; Prov. xvi. 32; Isaiah XXV. 4; xxx. 28; Zech. vi. 8. He justifies this outburst of spirit by the following word, ', from my understanding. It is not irrational anger, he would say, but justified by Job's provocation. |