Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary

8 As a bird that wandereth from her nest, So is a man that wandereth from his home. It is not a flying out that is meant, from which at any moment a return is possible, but an unwilling taking to flight (lxx 8b: ὅταν ἀποξενωθῇ; Venet.: πλανούμενον ... πλανούμενος); for עוף נודד, Isa 16:2, cf. Jer 4:25, birds that have been frightened; and נדד, Pro 21:15., designates the fugitive; cf. נע ונד, Gen 4:14, and above, Pro 26:2, where נוּד designates aimless roving about. Otherwise Fleischer: "warning against unnecessary roaming about, in journeyings and wanderings far from home: as a bird far from its nest is easily wounded, caught, or killed, so, on such excursions, one easily comes to injury and want. One may think of a journey in the East. The Arabs say, in one of their proverbs: âlsafar ḳaṭ'at man âlklyym (= journeying is a part of the pains of hell)." But נדד here is not to be understood in the sense of a libere vagari. Rightly C. B. Michaelis: qui vagatur extorris et exul a loco suo sc. natali vel habitationis ordinariae. This proverb mediately recommends the love of one's fatherland, i.e., "love to the land in which our father has his home; on which our paternal mansion stands; in which we have spent the years of our childhood, so significant a part of one's whole life; from which we have derived our bodily and intellectual nourishment; and in which home we recognise bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh." (Note: Gustave Baur's article "Vaterlandsliebe," in Schmid's Pdagogischer Encyklopdie.) But next it says, that to be in a strange land must be an unhappiness, because a man never feels better than at home, as the bird in its nest. We say: Heimat [home] - this beautiful word becomes the German language, which has also coined the expressive idea of Heimweh [longing for home]; the Heb. uses, to express the idea of home, the word מקומי; and of fatherland, the word ארצי or אדמתי. The Heb. שׁבוּת corresponds (Note: The translators transfer to this place a note from vol. ii. p. 191f. of the author's larger Comm. . den Psalter, to which Delitzsch refers the reader: - "The modern High German adj. elend, middle High German ellende, old High German alilandi, elilendi, or elilenti, is composed of ali and land. The adj. ali occurs only in old High German in composition. In the Gothic it is found as an independent adj., in the sense of alius and ἄλλυς (vid., Ulfilas, Gal 5:10). The primary meaning of elilenti is consequently: of another country, foreign. In glosses and translations it is rendered by the Lat. words peregrinus, exul, advena, also captivus. In these meanings it occurs very frequently. In the old High German translation of Ammonius, Diatessaron, sive Harmoniae in quatuor Evangelica, the word proselytism, occurring in Mat 23:15, is rendered by elilantan. To the adj. the old High German subst. corresponds. This has the meaning exilium, transmigratio, captivitas. The connection in elilenti or elilentes, used adverbially, is rendered by the Lat. peregre. In the middle High German, however, the proper signification of both words greatly predominates. But as, in the old High German, the idea of miser is often at the same time comprehended in the proper signification: he who is miserable through banishment, imprisonment, or through sojourning in a strange land; thus, in several places of the middle High German, this derived idea begins to separate itself from the fundamental conception, so that ellende comes in general to be called miser. In the new High German this derived conception is almost alone maintained. Yet here also, in certain connections, there are found traces of the original idea, e.g., in's Elend schicken, for to banish. Very early also the word came to be used, in a spiritual sense, to denote our present abode, in contrast to paradise or the heavenly kingdom.... Thus, e.g., in one of Luther's hymns, when we pray to the Holy Ghost: Das er vns behte, an vnserm ende, Wenn wir heim farn aus diesem elende." [That He guard us to our end When we go home from this world.] - Rud. von Raumer) to the German Elend, but = Ellend, elilenti, of another land, strange.