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Job 16:18
Verse
Summary
Commentary
- Adam Clarke
- Keil-Delitzsch
- Jamieson-Fausset-Brown
- John Gill
- Tyndale
Adam Clarke Bible Commentary
O earth, cover not thou my blood - This is evidently an allusion to the murder of Abel, and the verse has been understood in two different ways: 1. Job here calls for justice against his destroyers. His blood is his life, which he considers as taken away by violence, and therefore calls for vengeance. Let my blood cry against my murderers, as the blood of Abel cried against Cain. My innocent life is taken away by violence, as his innocent life was; as therefore the earth was not permitted to cover his blood, so that his murderer should be concealed, let my death be avenged in the same way. 2. It has been supposed that the passage means that Job considered himself accused of shedding innocent blood; and, conscious of his own perfect innocence, he prays that the earth may not cover any blood shed by him. Thus Mr. Scott: - "O earth, the blood accusing me reveal; Its piercing voice in no recess conceal." And this notion is followed by Mr. Good. But, with all deference to these learned men, I do not see that this meaning can be supported by the Hebrew text; nor was the passage so understood by any of the ancient versions. I therefore prefer the first sense, which is sufficiently natural, and quite in the manner of Job in his impassioned querulousness.
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary
18 Oh earth, cover thou not my blood, And let my cry find no resting-place!! - 19 Even now behold in heaven is my Witness, And One who acknowledgeth me is in the heights! 20 Though the mockers of me are my friends - To Eloah mine eyes pour forth tears, 21 That He may decide for man against Eloah, And for the son of man against his friend. 22 For the years that may be numbered are coming on, And I shall go a way without return. Blood that is not covered up cries for vengeance, Eze 24:7.; so also blood still unavenged is laid bare that it may find vengeance, Isa 26:21. According to this idea, in the lofty consciousness of his innocence, Job calls upon the earth not to suck in his blood as of one innocently slain, but to let it lie bare, thereby showing that it must be first of all avenged ere the earth can take it up; (Note: As, according to the tradition, it is said to have been impossible to remove the stain of the blood of Zachariah the son of Jehoiada, who was murdered in the court of the temple, until it was removed by the destruction of the temple itself.) and for his cry, i.e., the cry (זעקתי to be explained according to Gen 4:10) proceeding from his blood as from his poured-out soul, he desires that it may urge its way unhindered and unstilled towards heaven without finding a place of rest (Symm. στάσις). Therefore, in the very God who appears to him to be a blood-thirsty enemy in pursuit of him, Job nevertheless hopes to find a witness of his innocence: He will acknowledge his blood, like that of Abel, to be the blood of an innocent man. It is an inward irresistible demand made by his faith which here brings together two opposite principles - principles which the understanding cannot unite - with bewildering boldness. Job believes that God will even finally avenge the blood which His wrath has shed, as blood that has been innocently shed. This faith, which sends forth beyond death itself the word of absolute command contained in Job 16:18, in Job 16:19 brightens and becomes a certain confidence, which draws from the future into the present that acknowledgment which God afterwards makes of him as innocent. The thought of what is unmerited in that decree of wrath which delivers him over to death, is here forced into the background, and in the front stands only the thought of the exaltation of the God in heaven above human short-sightedness, and the thought that no one else but He is the final refuge of the oppressed: even now (i.e., this side of death) (Note: Comp. Kg1 14:14, where it is probably to be explained: Jehovah shall raise up for himself a king over Israel who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam that day, but what? even now (גם עתה), i.e., He hath raised him up (= but no, even now).) behold in heaven is my witness (הנּה an expression of the actus directus fidei) and my confessor (שׂהר a poetic Aramaism, similar in meaning to עד, lxx ὁ συνίστωπ μου) in the heights. To whom should he flee from the mockery of his friends, who consider his appeal to the testimony of his conscience as the stratagem of a hypocrite! מליצי from הליץ, Psa 119:51, my mockers, i.e., those mocking me, lascivientes in me (vid., Gesch. der jd. Poesie, S. 200. The short clause, Job 16:20, is, logically at least, like a disjunctive clause with כי or גם־כי, Ewald, 362, b: if his friends mock him - to Eloah, who is after all the best of friends, his eyes pour forth tears (דּלפה, stillat, comp. דּלּוּ of languishing, Isa 38:14), that He may decide (ויוכח voluntative in a final signification, as Job 9:33) for man (ל here, as Isa 11:4; Isa 2:4, of the client) against (עם, as Psa 55:19; Psa 94:16, of an opponent) Eloah, and for the son of man (ל to be supplied here in a similar sense to Job 16:21, comp. Job 15:3) in relation to (ל as it is used in ל ... בּין, e.g., Eze 34:22) his friend. Job longs and hopes for two things from God: (1) that He would finally decide in favour of גבר, i.e., just himself, the patient sufferer, in opposition to God, that therefore God would acknowledge that Job is not a criminal, nor his suffering a merited punishment; (2) that He would decide in favour of בן־אדם, i.e., himself, who is become an Ecce homo, in relation to his human opponent (רעהוּ, not collective, but individualizing or distributive instead of רעיו), who regards him as a sinner undergoing punishment, and preaches to him the penitence that becomes one who has fallen. ויוכח is purposely only used once, and the expression Job 16:21 is contracted in comparison with 21a: the one decision includes the other; for when God himself destroys the idea of his lot being merited punishment, He also at the same time delivers judgment against the friends who have zealously defended Him against Job as a just judge. Olsh. approves Ewald's translation: "That He allows man to be in the right rather than God, and that He judges man against his friend:" but granted even that הוכיח, like שׁפט followed by an acc., may be used in the signification: to grant any one to be in the right (although, with such a construction, it everywhere signifies ἐλέγχειν), this rendering would still not commend itself, on account of the specific gravity of the hope which is here struggling through the darkness of conflict. Job appeals from God to God; he hopes that truth and love will finally decide against wrath. The meaning of הוכיח has reference to the duty of an arbitrator, as in Job 9:33. Schlottm. aptly recalls the saying of the philosophers, which applies here in a different sense from that in which it is meant, nemo contra Deum, nisi Deus ipse. In Job 16:22 Job now establishes the fact that the heavenly witness will not allow him to die a death that he and others would regard as the death of a sinner, from the brevity of the term of life yet granted him, and the hopelessness of man when he is once dead. מספּר שׁנות are years of number = few years (lxx ἔτη ἀριθμητά); comp. the position of the words as they are to be differently understood, Job 15:20. On the inflexion jeethâju, vid., on Job 12:6. Jerome transl. transeunt, but אתה cannot signify this in any Semitic dialect. But even that Job (though certainly the course of elephantiasis can continue for years) is intended to refer to the prospect of some, although few, years of life (Hirz. and others: the few years which I can still look forward to, are drawing on), does not altogether suit the tragic picture. The approach of the years that can be numbered is rather thought of as the approach of their end; and the few years are not those which still remain, but in general the but short span of life allotted to him (Hahn). The arrangement of the words in Job 16:22 also agrees with this, as not having the form of a conclusion (then shall I go, etc.), but that of an independent co-ordinate clause: and a path, there (whence) I come not back (an attributive relative clause according to Ges. 123, 3, b) I shall go (אהלך poetic, and in order to gain a rhythmical fall at the close, for אלך). Now follow, in the next strophe, short ejaculatory clauses: as Oetinger observes, Job chants his own requiem while living.
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary
my blood--that is, my undeserved suffering. He compares himself to one murdered, whose blood the earth refuses to drink up until he is avenged (Gen 4:10-11; Eze 24:1, Eze 24:8; Isa 26:21). The Arabs say that the dew of heaven will not descend on a spot watered with innocent blood (compare Sa2 1:21). no place--no resting-place. "May my cry never stop!" May it go abroad! "Earth" in this verse in antithesis to "heaven" (Job 16:19). May my innocence be as well-known to man as it is even now to God!
John Gill Bible Commentary
Also now, behold, my witness is in heaven,.... That is, God, who dwells in the heavens, where his throne is, and which is the habitation of his holiness, and from whence he beholds all the sons of men, and their actions, is the all seeing and all knowing Being; and therefore Job appeals to him as his witness, if he was guilty of the things laid to his charge, to bear witness against him, but if not to be a witness for him, which he believed he would, and desired he might: for my record is on high; or "my testimony"; that can testify for me; who is an "eyewitness" (k), as some render it, before whom all things are naked and open; who has seen all my actions, even the very inmost recesses of my mind, all the thoughts of my heart, and all the principles of my actions, and him I desire to bear record of me; such appeals are lawful in some cases, which ought not to be common and trivial ones, but of moment and importance, and which cannot well be determined in any other way; such as was the charge of hypocrisy against Job, and suspicions of his having been guilty of some notorious crime, though it could not be pointed at and proved; see Sa1 12:3, Co2 1:13. (k) "oculatus meus testis", Schultens.
Tyndale Open Study Notes
16:18-22 Job expected his suffering to prove fatal (7:7, 21; 10:20-22); he pleaded with God to reveal his innocence even if he died first. 16:18 Job’s blood would cry out that he had been innocent and that he had suffered undeservedly (cp. Gen 4:10-11; Isa 26:21; Ezek 24:7-8).
Job 16:18
Job Decries His Comforters
17yet my hands are free of violence and my prayer is pure. 18O earth, do not cover my blood; may my cry for help never be laid to rest. 19Even now my witness is in heaven, and my advocate is on high.
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- Adam Clarke
- Keil-Delitzsch
- Jamieson-Fausset-Brown
- John Gill
- Tyndale
Adam Clarke Bible Commentary
O earth, cover not thou my blood - This is evidently an allusion to the murder of Abel, and the verse has been understood in two different ways: 1. Job here calls for justice against his destroyers. His blood is his life, which he considers as taken away by violence, and therefore calls for vengeance. Let my blood cry against my murderers, as the blood of Abel cried against Cain. My innocent life is taken away by violence, as his innocent life was; as therefore the earth was not permitted to cover his blood, so that his murderer should be concealed, let my death be avenged in the same way. 2. It has been supposed that the passage means that Job considered himself accused of shedding innocent blood; and, conscious of his own perfect innocence, he prays that the earth may not cover any blood shed by him. Thus Mr. Scott: - "O earth, the blood accusing me reveal; Its piercing voice in no recess conceal." And this notion is followed by Mr. Good. But, with all deference to these learned men, I do not see that this meaning can be supported by the Hebrew text; nor was the passage so understood by any of the ancient versions. I therefore prefer the first sense, which is sufficiently natural, and quite in the manner of Job in his impassioned querulousness.
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary
18 Oh earth, cover thou not my blood, And let my cry find no resting-place!! - 19 Even now behold in heaven is my Witness, And One who acknowledgeth me is in the heights! 20 Though the mockers of me are my friends - To Eloah mine eyes pour forth tears, 21 That He may decide for man against Eloah, And for the son of man against his friend. 22 For the years that may be numbered are coming on, And I shall go a way without return. Blood that is not covered up cries for vengeance, Eze 24:7.; so also blood still unavenged is laid bare that it may find vengeance, Isa 26:21. According to this idea, in the lofty consciousness of his innocence, Job calls upon the earth not to suck in his blood as of one innocently slain, but to let it lie bare, thereby showing that it must be first of all avenged ere the earth can take it up; (Note: As, according to the tradition, it is said to have been impossible to remove the stain of the blood of Zachariah the son of Jehoiada, who was murdered in the court of the temple, until it was removed by the destruction of the temple itself.) and for his cry, i.e., the cry (זעקתי to be explained according to Gen 4:10) proceeding from his blood as from his poured-out soul, he desires that it may urge its way unhindered and unstilled towards heaven without finding a place of rest (Symm. στάσις). Therefore, in the very God who appears to him to be a blood-thirsty enemy in pursuit of him, Job nevertheless hopes to find a witness of his innocence: He will acknowledge his blood, like that of Abel, to be the blood of an innocent man. It is an inward irresistible demand made by his faith which here brings together two opposite principles - principles which the understanding cannot unite - with bewildering boldness. Job believes that God will even finally avenge the blood which His wrath has shed, as blood that has been innocently shed. This faith, which sends forth beyond death itself the word of absolute command contained in Job 16:18, in Job 16:19 brightens and becomes a certain confidence, which draws from the future into the present that acknowledgment which God afterwards makes of him as innocent. The thought of what is unmerited in that decree of wrath which delivers him over to death, is here forced into the background, and in the front stands only the thought of the exaltation of the God in heaven above human short-sightedness, and the thought that no one else but He is the final refuge of the oppressed: even now (i.e., this side of death) (Note: Comp. Kg1 14:14, where it is probably to be explained: Jehovah shall raise up for himself a king over Israel who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam that day, but what? even now (גם עתה), i.e., He hath raised him up (= but no, even now).) behold in heaven is my witness (הנּה an expression of the actus directus fidei) and my confessor (שׂהר a poetic Aramaism, similar in meaning to עד, lxx ὁ συνίστωπ μου) in the heights. To whom should he flee from the mockery of his friends, who consider his appeal to the testimony of his conscience as the stratagem of a hypocrite! מליצי from הליץ, Psa 119:51, my mockers, i.e., those mocking me, lascivientes in me (vid., Gesch. der jd. Poesie, S. 200. The short clause, Job 16:20, is, logically at least, like a disjunctive clause with כי or גם־כי, Ewald, 362, b: if his friends mock him - to Eloah, who is after all the best of friends, his eyes pour forth tears (דּלפה, stillat, comp. דּלּוּ of languishing, Isa 38:14), that He may decide (ויוכח voluntative in a final signification, as Job 9:33) for man (ל here, as Isa 11:4; Isa 2:4, of the client) against (עם, as Psa 55:19; Psa 94:16, of an opponent) Eloah, and for the son of man (ל to be supplied here in a similar sense to Job 16:21, comp. Job 15:3) in relation to (ל as it is used in ל ... בּין, e.g., Eze 34:22) his friend. Job longs and hopes for two things from God: (1) that He would finally decide in favour of גבר, i.e., just himself, the patient sufferer, in opposition to God, that therefore God would acknowledge that Job is not a criminal, nor his suffering a merited punishment; (2) that He would decide in favour of בן־אדם, i.e., himself, who is become an Ecce homo, in relation to his human opponent (רעהוּ, not collective, but individualizing or distributive instead of רעיו), who regards him as a sinner undergoing punishment, and preaches to him the penitence that becomes one who has fallen. ויוכח is purposely only used once, and the expression Job 16:21 is contracted in comparison with 21a: the one decision includes the other; for when God himself destroys the idea of his lot being merited punishment, He also at the same time delivers judgment against the friends who have zealously defended Him against Job as a just judge. Olsh. approves Ewald's translation: "That He allows man to be in the right rather than God, and that He judges man against his friend:" but granted even that הוכיח, like שׁפט followed by an acc., may be used in the signification: to grant any one to be in the right (although, with such a construction, it everywhere signifies ἐλέγχειν), this rendering would still not commend itself, on account of the specific gravity of the hope which is here struggling through the darkness of conflict. Job appeals from God to God; he hopes that truth and love will finally decide against wrath. The meaning of הוכיח has reference to the duty of an arbitrator, as in Job 9:33. Schlottm. aptly recalls the saying of the philosophers, which applies here in a different sense from that in which it is meant, nemo contra Deum, nisi Deus ipse. In Job 16:22 Job now establishes the fact that the heavenly witness will not allow him to die a death that he and others would regard as the death of a sinner, from the brevity of the term of life yet granted him, and the hopelessness of man when he is once dead. מספּר שׁנות are years of number = few years (lxx ἔτη ἀριθμητά); comp. the position of the words as they are to be differently understood, Job 15:20. On the inflexion jeethâju, vid., on Job 12:6. Jerome transl. transeunt, but אתה cannot signify this in any Semitic dialect. But even that Job (though certainly the course of elephantiasis can continue for years) is intended to refer to the prospect of some, although few, years of life (Hirz. and others: the few years which I can still look forward to, are drawing on), does not altogether suit the tragic picture. The approach of the years that can be numbered is rather thought of as the approach of their end; and the few years are not those which still remain, but in general the but short span of life allotted to him (Hahn). The arrangement of the words in Job 16:22 also agrees with this, as not having the form of a conclusion (then shall I go, etc.), but that of an independent co-ordinate clause: and a path, there (whence) I come not back (an attributive relative clause according to Ges. 123, 3, b) I shall go (אהלך poetic, and in order to gain a rhythmical fall at the close, for אלך). Now follow, in the next strophe, short ejaculatory clauses: as Oetinger observes, Job chants his own requiem while living.
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary
my blood--that is, my undeserved suffering. He compares himself to one murdered, whose blood the earth refuses to drink up until he is avenged (Gen 4:10-11; Eze 24:1, Eze 24:8; Isa 26:21). The Arabs say that the dew of heaven will not descend on a spot watered with innocent blood (compare Sa2 1:21). no place--no resting-place. "May my cry never stop!" May it go abroad! "Earth" in this verse in antithesis to "heaven" (Job 16:19). May my innocence be as well-known to man as it is even now to God!
John Gill Bible Commentary
Also now, behold, my witness is in heaven,.... That is, God, who dwells in the heavens, where his throne is, and which is the habitation of his holiness, and from whence he beholds all the sons of men, and their actions, is the all seeing and all knowing Being; and therefore Job appeals to him as his witness, if he was guilty of the things laid to his charge, to bear witness against him, but if not to be a witness for him, which he believed he would, and desired he might: for my record is on high; or "my testimony"; that can testify for me; who is an "eyewitness" (k), as some render it, before whom all things are naked and open; who has seen all my actions, even the very inmost recesses of my mind, all the thoughts of my heart, and all the principles of my actions, and him I desire to bear record of me; such appeals are lawful in some cases, which ought not to be common and trivial ones, but of moment and importance, and which cannot well be determined in any other way; such as was the charge of hypocrisy against Job, and suspicions of his having been guilty of some notorious crime, though it could not be pointed at and proved; see Sa1 12:3, Co2 1:13. (k) "oculatus meus testis", Schultens.
Tyndale Open Study Notes
16:18-22 Job expected his suffering to prove fatal (7:7, 21; 10:20-22); he pleaded with God to reveal his innocence even if he died first. 16:18 Job’s blood would cry out that he had been innocent and that he had suffered undeservedly (cp. Gen 4:10-11; Isa 26:21; Ezek 24:7-8).