5 'Tis He that moves' the mountains and they know it not; 1 Ver. 5. That moves. A contrast evidently is in- | there are no conspicuous constellations visible to our hemis. tended between p' and the stronger word. The first is the gentler and more gradual change, imperceptible though powerful (they know it not). See ch. xiv. 18. Hence its other sense of growing old, which it has in Hebrew as well as in Arabic. The other word denotes something sudden and violent. 2 Ver. 8. Who bent. The reference is to the work of creation, though regarded as a work still continuing. It is phenomenal language; the mighty force required to bend that strong arch, and keep it bent. Er neigt den Himmel ganz allein: UMBREIT. In Ps. xviii. 10, the figure is that of bowing, or bending down the heavens to descend. 3 Ver. 9. Hidden constellation. Hebrew, chambers. The reference is to the southern celestial spaces, where 5 Ver. 13. Boldest aids. . Rahab is used here and elsewhere, for any one, or anything, proud or ferocious. See Isa. li. 9; Ps. lxxxvii. 4; lxxxix. 11; Isa. xxx. 7, etc. When used as a personification it is thought to mean Egypt. It may mean here Satan, of whom, as several passages show, aside from the Introduction, Job seems to have had some idea as his great enemy-the Devil and his allies. • Ver. 15. My judge. ', an unusual Poel form. So UMBREIT, CONANT, DELITZSCH, et al. Gesenius: Adversary, litigator, Davidson: Assailant. But fills me with exceeding bitterness. Speak I of strength? A strong one 10 Lo! how strong! If I claim righteousness, my own words prove me wrong; I pure!" I would not know myself; I should reject my life. 'Tis all the same, and therefore do I say it; The pure, the wicked, He consumes alike. Comes there the pestilential scourge that slays so suddenly! Earth is abandoned to the wicked's hand; The faces of its judges doth He veil.13 If not, who is it then, (the cause and source of all)? My days are swifter than the post; When I resolve, my mourning I'll forget,- So sure am I Thou wilt not hold me guiltless. Why labor then in vain? Even should I wash myself in water pure as snow, And cleanse my hands in lye; Then would'st thou plunge me in the ditch; For He is not a man like me, that I should answer him. 19 Ver. 19. A strong one! The ascribing the latter part of each of these clauses to God, by way of a supposed Budden answer, as is done by DELITZSCH, DAVIDSON, EWALD, and others, is exceedingly arbitrary. The sense is better satisfied by the simpler construction, though a very passionate and broken one. After the closest study of these abrupt and exclamatory verses (19-22), it is difficult to find anything better than what is substantially given in our English Version, somewhat improved by Conant. It is a wild, despairing utterance. There are, indeed, inconsistencies in it, but the attempt to remove them only takes away from the pathos, as well as the passionateness of the whole passage. Job has no false humility. He is utterly in the dark, and almost maddened by his sharp sufferings. God seems to him to be dealing very hardly with him; and he must say it though doing his best to preserve reverence. 11 Ver. 21. I pure! 'N D, in the 21st verse, differs neither in force, nor in construction, from the same expression in the 20th; yet a number of commentators, EWALD, SCHLOTMANN, DAVIDSON, DELITZSCH, et al., make the second a positive, instead of a conditional declaration: "I am innocent," said emphatically: I'll say it though I die for it. This is opposed to the spirit of the whole passage, which, though one of deep complaining, exhibits no defiance. 12 Ver. 23. DD, trial Teipaoμós. The rendering wasting away (as though from DDD) adopted by DELITZSCH, EWALD, and others, is inconsistent with the idea of sudden slaying (DN) mentioned in the first clause. Especially is this the case with UMBREIT'S rendering, allmähliger Verzehrung, gradual consumption. 13 Ver. 24. Doth he veil. That they may not see the right. 14 Ver. 27. N1. A beautiful word. The sudden lighting up of the face. I fear I am not in my perfect mind. 16 Ver. 35. I am not myself. " ' . the mind wandering; as poor Lear says of himself: A number of the best modern commentators take this as a denial of guilt: "For I am not conscious to myself of wrong;" CONANT, literally, For I am not so in myself. Now, in many languages, some such expression as this is used to denote de This seems to be ROSENMUELLER's view: haud quidem mei sum compos. HIERONYMUS: Neque enim possum metuens re rangement-being not one's self, or firm (¡) in one's self— | spondere. See Note on Dƒ 777 xxiii, 10. 7 'Tis to thy knowledge I appeal; I'm not (this) guilty man 1 Ver. 1. My soul in bitterness. is an adjective (amarus). The phrase is, strictly, bitter of soul; bitter in my soul. The rendering given, if admissible, suits better the broken and passionate context. 2 Ver. 5. The mighty man: A sub-contrast seems intended between 8 and as in iii. 17. 2, validus-miles, Jud. v. 30; Jer. xli. 16; Chald., heros, miles, Ezek. ii. 20. Comp. Isa. ix, 'Gen. vi. 4-giants-μarpóßiot. The want of the distinction makes the rendering very lame, as in E. V.: "Are thy days as the days of man? Are thy years as man's days?" 3 Ver. 7. [This] guilty man. There is no claim of perfect innocence, but only that he is not the sinner whom his friends hint, or his own inexplicable circumstances would imply. 4 Ver. 9. Tarn me back to dust. The argument here goes beyond the first appearance; for Job certainly knew that he must die, even if he had not heard of the declaration, Gen. iii. 19. It is the remediless remaining in this state that he deprecates, whether or not distinctly conscious of it as a dogma, or an idea. In such an abandonment there seems something inconsistent with God's care for men, and the pains he had taken in their construction, whether we call it creation or evolution. 5 Ver. 10. Like cheese. The use of this kind of language in the Koran (see Surat xxii. 5; xcvi. 2, and other places) points back to ancient Arabian conceptions and modes of speech. See also the same process more fully described in the Arabic of the old book of Apologues, entitled Calila Wa Dimna, p. 71, De Sacy Ed. 18 19 20 21 22 For it swells high; so like a lion dost thou still pursue, Thine anger with me dost thou still increase, Why didst thou bring me from the womb? To the land of darkness, and the shades of death; Ver. 11. Woven. Compare Ps. cxxxix. 15, 16. or imaginary, as having something of form, and thus a kind 7 Ver. 13. qpy. With thee. In thy most secret pur- of visibility, a dark, shadowy, waving, flying, floating thing, рове. * Ver. 15. But see . is imperative. To the objection that in so taking it the construction is broken up, the answer is, that it is all the more expressive. It was meant to be broken. The language is passionate, ejaculatory. Ver. 16. 1. EWALD, DILLMANN, UMBREIT, DAVIDSON, all refer this to N, the head, in the preceding verse. MERX says, characteristically, that it is sinnlos, has no mean ing, and proceeds to change the text. W seems too far off, for a subject, and there is nothing conditional in the language: Should it lift, or if it lift up itself. then, etc.; DAVIDSON, CONANT also adopts this rendering. The E. V. refers it to "y my affliction just mentioned: it increaseth. So Rosenmüller, as also the Jewish Commentators, RASHI and ABEN EZRA. To the objection that is not congruous to affliction, the latter answers well that it is personified as elate and swelling in its triumph over the sufferer. Hence the rendering above. 16 Ver. 22. Gloom tenebrous. The true impression of this remarkable language (vers. 21 and 22) can only be obtained by a close study of the words and y. They are of a class which, in distinction from, or mere privative darkness, represent its positive idea, whether real -a faintly glimmering, gleaming, gloaming, wavy motion, shading off from light (gleam, glimmer) into gloom, or darkness visible. A vibratory, pulsatory, flying, fluttering, or undulation of some kind, is the radical image in this whole family of words (1, y, ay, by metathesis y`), and hence, along with flying, the apparently contradictory images of light and darkness. See LANGE Gen. Am. Ed., p. 179, Note. So in the Greek imagery, darkness has wings. Night is called (ARISTCPH. Aves. 689) Medavónrepos, black winged. (Compare VIRG. Æn. II. 360, VI. 856). There is עַפְעַמִּי שָׁחַר the same radical image in the expression III. 9, XLI. 10, palpebræ aurora, eyelids of the dawn,-the and מָעוּף 11 Ver. 22. Darkness visible. Some commentators take this in a sort of conditional way: Its very light (if it had any) shines as darkness, or its day (daytime) is as midnight darkness-"the blackness of darkness." given it, though the verb y seems to have something So we have more positive than this,-it shines as darkness. We cannot help thinking that Job had something of the Miltonic conception. HIERONYMUS, Sempiternus horror inhabitant. 7 And show thee wisdom's hidden depths, Truth's twofold form. For know it well; less than thy debt doth God exact* of thee. 8 seen by Him. For God only knows what human sin deserves, and every chastisement, short of the great retribution, has mercy mingled with it. And then this admirably leads to the train of thought that follows in the exclamations below, ver. 7. is rendered debt to preserve the figure, which is sins." 6 Ver. 7. חקר Mystery-unsearchableness. • The emphasis is on the divine names 18 and "70, as in viii. 3. 8 Ver. 6. DELITZSCH, literally, "that she (wisdom) is twofold"-overlooking . DAVIDSON paraphrases: Dou-sanctioned in the New Testament: "Forgive us our debts; our ble, he says, is equivalent to manifold, and he renders insight, as EWALD does. Most commentators give the literal sense, double. Do we not get a good explanation of this from ch. xxviii., where two forms of wisdom are set forth, namely, the Divine wisdom, or the mystery of God's providence, and the wisdom mentioned at the end of that chapter, the wisdom which is for man, "the fear of the Lord," submission, and “departure from evil.” is substance, reality, truth-things as they are, V`. ovoía; but it is to be contemplated under two aspects, as pertaining to God, and as pertaining to man. See SIRACH Xxxiii. 15: xlii. 24: návra δισσά, ἓν κατέναντι ενός, κ. τ. λ. 4 Ver. 6. EWALD renders: "Overlooks much of thy guilt," which is not far from E. V. UMBREIT, DELITZSCH, DILLMANN, DAVIDSON, with the Targum, give it the sense of 7 (Hiph. ), to forget, or cause to forget, giving in the force of a partitive: from or of,-a portion of thy sin. "God remembers not all thy sin. The Syriac renders it, forgiveth. Vulgate has the other sense of 1, that of exacting like a creditor. And this is the rendering of E. V., which, after all, seems the best, and most in harmony with the context. It is grammatical, too, since in, may denote the comparison of less, as well as that of more, to be determined by the context. The partitive rendering: "a portion of thy sin," seems tame. The rendering above given preserves well the association of ideas. This is one of those secrets of God's wisdom, the upper wisdom, or the side of the duplicate Ver. 11. 1. The meaning is that it does not require from him a special act of study or attention, as it does from men. He never loses sight of it. He sees it though he does not seem to be looking at it. The conjugation Hith. has this sense of making to be, or assuming to bewhat the verb signifies,-to make one's-self observant. RASCHI explains it well of God's "keeping still, and long-suffering, as though he did not take note of it"193. Ver. 8 The word does not denote wisdom, as many commentators take it, or the want of wisdom, directly, or in the sense of stupidity, as GESENIUS interprets it, but to be full of heart, in the sense of courage (cor, Latin cordatus sometimes), spirit, eagerness, mettlesomeness, ferocity, etc. In Cant. iv. 9 the piel, (of which this may be regarded as the passive), means, thou hast excited, roused, warmed my heart. There can be but little doubt as to the meaning, since the second clause gives a figurative explanation of it. It suggests Ecclesiastes ix. 3, paaha nıhhın, “madness in their hearts"-whence the above translation. Some accommodation to it in English might be found in the words heady, |