01.6. Job Rhythmical Version

SPECIAL INTRODUCTION TO THE RHYTHMICAL VERSION

__________ The term Rhythmical is preferred to Metrical, because the latter name, though in itself appropriate, is also used of Biblical translations not strictly in Rhythm, or Metre, but only adopting the metrical division, ἐν στίχοις, or as suggested by the Hebrew parallelism. The present is an attempt to give the Book of Job in a true rhythmical form. The determination of that form, however, requires careful study. There are, it is said, some old English Versions of Job in rhyme. That, however, was not to be thought of. Aside from the difficulty such a method would make in preserving the exegetical accuracy demanded, it was felt that to such a production as Job the jingle of rhyme would be altogether belittling. Our common blank verse line of five feet would present no great difficulty in itself. With a little change, even our Common English Version might be put into that form with a preservation of all such accuracy as it possesses. But there were two objections to it. The first is that such blank verse, though having more dignity than rhyme, would become too monotonous, as the reader would presently feel, and would, therefore, be poorly adapted to the exceedingly passionate and abrupt parts of this divine poem. In the second place, it would require a disregard of the Hebrew accentuation and parallelism as determining the close of lines, and demanding inequality. What we call blank verse is, in fact, only rhythmical, or, rather, measured, prose. The divisions into lines on the page of the book are but for the eye. The thought goes over them, not only to the completion of sentences, but of clauses and subordinate divisions. In other words, the ends of lines are not marked by any peculiar cadence either in the rhythm, as in Greek, or in the thought, as in Hebrew. By the ear alone, one could not tell whether the reader was at the beginning, at a mid cæsura, or at the ends of verses. Now the Hebrew parallelisms, whether they have within them what may strictly be called rhythm or not, are ever marked by distinct closings, determined both by the cadence of the thought, and by the position of the accents. This must be attended to,—and the translator has aimed at its strictest observance. For such a purpose, inequality of lines is absolutely demanded, since the Hebrew divisions thus made are of very different lengths. Besides, such inequality, if rightly managed, is an excellence and a beauty in itself. It prevents monotony, and gives, moreover, the freedom that is wanted in the more impassioned parts,—especially in Job’s sighing, soliloquizing, and sometimes almost delirious utterances.

Thus the reader will perceive, that in order to preserve these important elements of parallelism and accent, there has been employed a very peculiar kind of rhythm. It bears an outward resemblance to what is sometimes incorrectly called Pindaric in English verse. But this is a misnomer, because the true Pindaric has different kinds of feet, or measures, as well as different lengths of lines. Here, however, one kind of foot, the iambus (˘–) or the iambic spondee, is universal. Other feet, as they very rarely occur, are merely substitutes for it. Thus the anapæst (˘˘–) is used sometimes at the beginning of a line, as also a choriamb (–˘˘–), occasionally, but ever in such a way as to commence a dipode with the stronger ictus. The tribrach (˘˘˘) very rarely occurs. It is avoided as unmusical, though commonly regarded as admissible among English iambi. In regard to the lines, the principal one is the common pentameter, or blank verse line of English poetry. The Alexandrine comes in much more rarely, and almost always in the second or closing part of a parallelism. In such a position, especially at the end of some impassioned utterance, comes, now and then, the heptameter, or long line of seven feet, used by Bryant in some of his poems, and by Chapman in his translation of Homer. It is equivalent to two lines of our Common Metre, but much more harmonious, on account of its long unsevered movement. As in the first line of the following couplet: And thou thyself | in ripened age | unto thy grave | shalt come, As sheaf that in its season to the garner mounts; the second being an Alexandrine. Mingled with the common blank verse line of five, there comes very frequently one or more of four feet; whilst in the transitions, and in the commencement of some new peculiar strain, there are short lines of three, and occasionally of two feet, or a single dipode. The trimeter not unfrequently makes a very satisfactory close after pentameters:

Higher than Heaven’s height! what canst thou do?

Deeper than Sheol’s depths! what canst thou know? Its measurement is longer than the earth, And broader than the sea. But what need of this? it may be said. The great thing is to get the idea, however it may be expressed, in English. Attempts at verse must necessarily impair the force and clearness of the thought. To this it may be replied, in the first place, that facility, smoothness in reading, are to be desired, if the sense is not sacrificed, and that the feeling accompanying the thought may be a most important part of the thought itself. In the second place, paradoxical as it may seem to some minds, it may be maintained that the sense is actually made more clear in a rhythmical translation, if properly done, inasmuch as it gives that element of emotion without which the sense, in its essence and entirety, is not truly received. There may, indeed, be an overloading, and an obscuration, arising from too much artificialness; but whether that can be charged upon the present attempt, is left to the judgment of the reader. For fuller reasons in support of a position that may seem so paradoxical, he is referred to the Introduction to the Metrical Version of Ecclesiastes, Vol. X. of the Lange Series, page 171. The ground taken is that we cannot do justice to poetry unless we read it as poetry,—that is, not simply knowing it to be such in the original, but feeling it to be so as we peruse the translation. Now this cannot easily be done in a rough unrhythmical prose version. The disorder in the dress is constantly interfering with this feeling we wish to have. Thus reading it as prose, in spite of our knowledge of its being poetry, we are constantly expecting the more logical transitions; and when they are not found, it seems all a disconnected and, sometimes, unmeaning rhapsody. A very simple rhythm, if it be smooth, may give the feeling that should accompany, whilst yet keeping as close to the lexical and grammatical sense as any purely prose translation could do. By this simple outward process, the soul of the reader is set in the right direction. The subjective predominates. He gets into the current of thought and feeling, and the purely emotional transitions become not only easy, but natural. When they occur, they are felt to be something we might expect,—and the mind thus prepared, not only apprehends them at once, but sees in them an exquisite emotional appropriateness. Thus the passage is actually better understood from the very fact of its rhythmical form. In this way a verse translation of a poem in another language, with the same number of words, or with a very small difference, may carry the whole sense, that is, both emotion and idea, more surely and more distinctly than any prose version could have done that had been constructed with the utmost regard to lexical accuracy. This may be tested by a comparison which would appeal to every reader’s common sense, as well as literary taste. Take Bryant’s translation of the Iliad. Its blank verse is not only very smooth, as verse, but remarkably faithful. It is an evidence how near one may bring the English to the Greek, and yet preserve a simple though musical metrical form. Let the effect of this be contrasted, not with the overloaded rhymes of Pope, but with the best prose translation that could be made, having for its aim the utmost lexical accuracy, and availing itself of every help that could be derived from the study of Eustathius, and of all the scholiasts. Certainly, Bryant carries us farther into the very soul of Homer than any such prose translations could possibly do, even though aided by so complete a scholastic apparatus. From such a view, the Biblical commentator himself, dry as his work generally is, gets a new insight, as it were, by coming into the emotional spirit of the language he is explaining. But all this, it may be said, is interpreting by the imagination; it is letting one’s self be led away by a feeling which may, or may not, have come from the passage. There is, indeed, danger of this; but then it may be truly said that a man with no emotion from what he is studying—a man having a mere intellectual interest, or possessed of little or no imagination—can never be a good commentator, or a good translator of Job, or of the Psalms, or of the Hebrew Prophets, or even of Homer. He must certainly fail in what is more essential than any mere grammatical exegesis, most valuable and important as that may be.

Again, there is a great deal of emphasis, and of what may be called emotional or exclamatory power in certain Hebrew words and idioms, which the corresponding words in English, and the nearest English idioms, fail to express. There is needed some interjection, some qualifying particle, which comes in easy and natural when it so comes from the sustained flow of rhythmical feeling instinctively, as it were, selecting the right words. One of the coolest temperament cannot read Job without seeing that there must be in it much of this post-scenic language. It may be a tone, a sigh, a pause of silence, an imploring or a deprecating look, a demonstrative gesture, all of them intimated in the words themselves, or revealed in the answers of the disputants who understand their fullest import, and all making up that life-scene, that unmistakable reality, which is insisted on in the Addenda, Excursus I. and II., pp. 5–6.

It is this consideration to which the translator would appeal as justifying epithets occasionally, though quite rarely, applied by him to Hebrew nouns. In all such cases it will be found that they belong to the emphasis of the passage, and that, without them, the English reader would receive a deficient idea, and certainly a deficient feeling, of the substantives to which they are attached. Thus “visions dire,” Job 7:14; the epithet is necessary because חזיון means more than vision in this place. It is more than the seeing: it is the thing seen—a phantom, a spectre. So תרדמה, Job 4:13, rendered “vision-seeing trance,” is more than any slumber, however deep. Its vision-seeing or clairvoyant nature appears from Genesis 2:21 : Adam’s deep sleep; Genesis 15:12 : Abraham’s vision-seeing trance; 1 Samuel 20:12 : the sleep that God sent upon Saul. It is used, indeed, of deep slumber generally, but in Job 4:13 it evidently has this mysterious trance significance which is so unmistakable in the passages referred to. A similar remark applies to those occasional cases where the translator has placed words in brackets, though forming a part of the movement of the line. They denote something quite evidently to be implied, whether as hidden in some emotional particle, or as indicating a thought that has come in during some touching pause of silence, especially in the speeches of Job (see Addenda aforesaid, pa. 6), and which, though unexpressed in words, appears in the coloring it gives to what follows as something well understood by the repliants and all who were spectators of the scene. A few words in regard to the language and style of the Version. Of the first, it may be said that the aim has been to make it as pure Saxon-English as possible. Words of that kind have ever been preferred. Some very plain and even homely expressions have been used, as having all the more force and pathos by reason of their plainness. Much use has also been made of the poetical element of inversion, but not at all, it is thought, beyond the degree of which the English is capable. It has often seemed to the writer that, throughout the English Bible, the translators might have kept much more of this than appears; as in that beautiful example, Acts 3:6 : “Silver and gold have I none, but what I have, that give I unto thee.” In this way, whilst making the Scriptures more impressive, and even more clear, they might have enriched our language with vivid forms of speech, which the very reading of the Bible would, long ere this, have completely naturalized, even had they seemed strange, or semi-poetical, in the beginning. In this matter of style, too, may be mentioned the use of the nominative independent, which is of frequent occurrence in English, especially in animated or poetical English, and is still more marked in the Arabic, where the subject so often stands by itself, as l’inchoatif, to use De Sacy’s and the native Arabic technic, whilst the pronoun representing it is expressed or included in the form of the verb. It is also quite common in Hebrew, so that whilst it may be used freely in an English translation of any Hebrew sentence containing subject and predicate (l’énonciatif), it is actually demanded when the subject stands first,—as, for example, Job 11:2 : A flood of words, demands it no reply?

Or, again, where it is the object of the verb that is thus treated: That night! thick darkness seize it.

Other similar features of style, in respect to which pains have been taken, might be mentioned, were it not for the fear of making this Introduction too long. There need only be a reference to the pauses and notes of silence introduced in some places, especially in Job’s hesitating and panting speeches,—as the whole subject is fully discussed in the Addenda, pp. 178, 179, to which the reader is directed. To the text of the Version there have been added in the margin quite full exegetical notes. These have been intended to explain, not only every departure from the Common English Version, but also every thing in the Version offered that might seem to demand elucidation for the reader, besides a careful presentment of those difficult passages on which all commentators have dwelt, more or less. In this part of the work the author has taken pains to avail himself of the best helps. The old Versions (Greek, Latin, and Syriac) have continually been consulted, the Targum, the Jewish Commentary of Raschi, the old Commentators as their opinions are given in Poole’s Synopsis, the best of the more modern, such as Lud. de Dieu, Schultens, Umbreit, Ewald, Dillmann, Delitzsch, Schlottmann, Pareau, Merx, Davidson, Good, Rosenmueller, Barnes, Noyes, together with Conant and our own Zöckler, who are not the least among them. More or less consulted have been other German commentators, such as Heiligstedt, Vaihinger, Hirzel, et al. Important aid has also been derived from the French Version of Renan. To these may be added that immense work, Caryl on Job, in two very large folio volumes. (1650.) This quaint old Puritan Commentator has not been appreciated as he deserves. Equal in Biblical learning to the most learned of an age abounding in such men as Usher, Pocock, Lightfoot, Bochart, he excells them all in that spiritual discernment which makes him especially serviceable to those who would obtain the deepest acquaintance with this Book of Job. It is to him not a work of art, not a drama, not a fiction in any sense, but a divinely given case of religious experience. His critical as well as practical remarks are all penetrated with this idea, giving him an insight, even into Hebrew words and idioms, which the learning that lacks such a conviction so often fails to supply. The translator, moreover, does not hesitate to say that after giving these valuable helps all due attention, he has not wholly rejected his own independent judgment. Often has it been yielded in deference to superior authority and further study. In other cases, however, it is maintained, though always, he thinks, with a becoming diffidence. The whole is submitted to the reader with the hope that it may be regarded as making some contribution to our Biblical Literature.

T.L.

RHYTHMICAL VERSION Of The

BOOK OF JOB

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Chapter 1

¹There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. This man was pure ²and just, one who feared God and shunned evil. There were born to him seven ³sons and three daughters. His wealth was seven thousand sheep and goats, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household of servants. And this man was great above all the Sons of the East.

⁴Now his sons used¹ to hold a feast, each one of them at his own house, and on his own day; and they sent invitations to their sisters to eat and drink with them. ⁵And it was² the way of Job when these festival days came³ round, that he sent and purified them. To this end he rose early in the morning, and offered burnt-offerings according to the number of them all; for it was a saying⁴ of Job: it may be that my sons have sinned and cursed⁵ God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.

⁶Now it was the⁶ day when the Sons of God came to present themselves before the⁷ Lord; and Satan (the Adversary or the Accuser⁸) came also among them. ⁷And the Lord said to Satan, Whence comest thou? And Satan answered the Lord and said: From going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down⁹ in it. ⁸And the Lord said to Satan: Hast thou observed my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a man pure and just, fearing God and shunning evil? ⁹Then Satan answered the Lord and said: Doth Job fear God for nought? ¹⁰Hast thou not made a hedge¹⁰ about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side. Thou hast blessed the work of his hands: his wealth has spread abroad in the land. ¹¹But put forth thy hand now and touch all that he hath, and see if he will not curse thee to thy face. ¹²And the Lord said to Satan: Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only against his person put not forth thy hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord.

¹³Now it was the day that his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in the house of their brother, the first-born. ¹⁴And there came a messenger to Job and said: The cattle were ploughing, the she asses were feeding beside them, ¹⁵when the Sabæans fell upon them and took them; The servants also have they smitten with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

¹⁶While he was still speaking, there came another and said: The fire of God fell from heaven, and burned the flocks and the young men, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

¹⁷While he was still speaking, there came another, and said: The Chaldæans made three bands, and set upon the camels and took them. The servants also have they slain with the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

¹⁸While he was still speaking, there came another and said: Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in the house of their brother, the first-born. ¹⁹And behold, there came a great wind from the direction of the wilderness, and struck upon the four corners of the house, so that it fell upon the young people, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

²⁰Then Job arose and rent his garment, and shaved his head; and he fell to the earth and worshipped. And he said:

²¹All naked from my mother’s womb I came, And naked there shall I again return.

Jehovah gave, Jehovah takes away;

Jehovah’s name be blessed.

²²In all this Job sinned not, nor charged cruelty¹¹upon God.

Chapter 2

¹Again it was the day when the Sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord; and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord. ²Then said the Lord to Satan: Whence comest thou? And Satan answered the Lord and said: From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and ³down in it. Then said the Lord to Satan: Hast thou observed my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a man pure and just, fearing God and shunning evil? And still he holds fast his integrity, though thou didst move me against him to destroy him without cause.

⁴And Satan answered the Lord and said: Skin after skin¹²; yea all that a man hath will he give for his life. ⁵But put forth thy hand now, and touch his bone; touch his flesh; and see if he will not curse thee to thy face! ⁶And the Lord said to Satan: Behold, he is in thy hand, only spare his life.

⁷Then Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with a grievous sore, from the sole of his foot to his crown. ⁸And he took a potsherd to scrape himself therewith, as he sat among the ashes. ⁹Then said his wife to him: ¹⁰Dost thou still hold fast thine integrity? Curse¹³ God and die. But Job said to her: Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we, then, accept¹⁴ good at the hands of God, and shall we not accept evil? In all this Job sinned not with his¹⁵ lips.

¹¹Now three friends of Job heard of all this evil that was come upon him. And they came, each one from his place, Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, for they made an appointment together to go ¹²and mourn with him, and to comfort him. And they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not; and they wept aloud, and rent, each one, his mantle, and ¹³sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven. And they sat down with him upon the earth, seven days and seven nights; and none spake a word to him; for they saw that his pain¹⁶ was very great.

Chapter 3 ¹After this Job opened his mouth and cursed his day.

²And Job began and said, ³Perish the day when I was to be¹⁷ born, The night that said,¹⁸ a man child is conceived.

⁴     That day! O be it darkness evermore;

Eloah never seek it from above, Nor ever shine the light upon its face.

⁵     Let darkness and the death shade call¹⁹ it back;

Dense clouds upon it make their fixed abode; And dire eclipses²⁰ fill it with affright.

⁶That night! thick darkness take it for its own. In the year’s reckoning may it never joy; Nor come into the number of the months.

⁷Lo! let that night be barren evermore, And let no sound of joy be heard therein.

⁸     Who curse the day, let them forever curse it,—

They who are doomed²¹ to rouse Leviathan.

⁹Be dark its twilight stars. For light let it look forth, and look in vain; Nor may it ever see the eyelids of the dawn.

¹⁰For that it did not shut the womb when I was born, Nor hide the coming sorrow from mine eyes.

¹¹Why at the birth did I not die— When from the womb I came—and breathe my last?

¹²Why were the nursing²² knees prepared? And why the breasts that I should suck?

¹³     For now in silence had I lain me down;

Yea, I had slept and been at rest ¹⁴(With kings and legislators of the earth— The men who build their mouldering,²³ monuments—

¹⁵Or princes once enriched with gold, Their homes with treasure filled), ¹⁶Or, like the hidden birth,²⁴ had never lived;

Like still-born babes that never saw the light.

¹⁷     For there the wicked cease from troubling;

There the weary are at rest.

¹⁸There lie the captives all at ease; The driver’s voice they hear no more.

¹⁹The small and great alike are there; The servant from his master free.

²⁰O why does He²⁵ give light to one in pain? Or life to the embittered soul?

²¹To those who long for death that never comes; Who seek for it beyond the search of treasure;

²²Who joy to exultation,—yea, Are very glad, when they can find the grave.

²³[The grave!²⁶]’tis for the man whose way is hid,— Whom God hath hedged around.

²⁴For still my groaning goes before my food, My moans like water are poured forth.

²⁵     For I did greatly fear,²⁷ and it hath come;

Yea, it hath come to me, the thing that was my dread:

²⁶For I was not at ease, nor felt secure, Nor rested thoughtlessly—yet trouble came.

Chapter 4 ¹Then answered Eliphaz, the Temanite, and said:

²     A word, should we attempt, wouldst thou be grieved?

Yet who from speaking can refrain?

³Lo many hast thou taught, And strengthened oft the feeble hands.

⁴The faltering steps thy speech hath rendered firm, The sinking knees made strong.

⁵     But now to thee it comes, and thou art weary;

It toucheth thee, and thou art all amazed.

⁶Is not thy pious²⁸ fear thy confidence? Is not thy hope the pureness of thy ways?

⁷Call now to mind; when has the guiltless perished?²⁹ And where were just men hopelessly destroyed?

⁸It is as I have seen, that they who evil plough— Who mischief sow, they ever reap the same.

⁹By the breath of God these perish utterly; By the blast of his fierce wrath are they consumed.

¹⁰(Hushed is) the lion’s cry, the schachal’s roar; The strong young lion’s teeth are crushed.

¹¹The fierce old lion perishes from want; The lion’s whelps are scattered far and wide.^{30 12}To me, at times,³¹ there steals a warning³² word;

Mine ear its whisper seems to catch.

¹³In troubled thoughts from spectres of the night, When falls on men the vision-seeing³³ trance,—

¹⁴And fear has come, and trembling dread, And made my every bone to thrill with awe³⁴—

¹⁵’Tis then before me stirs a breathing form;³⁵ O’er all my flesh it makes the hair rise up.^{36 16}It stands;³⁷ no face³⁸ distinct can I discern; An outline is before mine eyes;

Deep silence!³⁹ then a voice I hear:

¹⁷ Is mortal ⁴⁰ man more just than God? Is boasting ⁴¹ man more pure than He who made him?

¹⁸In His own servants, lo, He trusteth not, Even on His angels doth He charge⁴² defect.

¹⁹Much ⁴³more to them who dwell in homes of clay, With their foundation laid in dust, And crumbled like the moth.

²⁰From morn till night they’re stricken down, Without regard they perish utterly.

²¹     Their cord⁴⁴ of life, is it not torn away?

They die—still lacking⁴⁵ wisdom.

Chapter 5 ¹Call now. Does any answer thee? To whom among the Holy dost thou turn?

²     Grief slays the foolish man;

It is the simple one whom anger kills.

³I’ve seen myself the foolish⁴⁶ taking root; But soon I cursed his home.

⁴His sons, from safety far removed, Are trampled in the gate—no helper near.

⁵     His harvest doth the hungry man devour;

Even from the thorns⁴⁷ he seizes it;

Whilst thirsty robbers swallow up his wealth.

⁶Be sure that evil comes not from the dust, Nor trouble grows as herbage from the ground.

⁷     Ah no!⁴⁸ Man’s woe is from his birth.

Thence rises it as rise the children of the flame.

⁸To God then, surely, would I seek; To God would I commit my trust;

⁹To God whose works are vast, his ways unsearchable, His wonders numberless;

¹⁰Who giveth rain upon the earth, And sendeth waters o’er the fields.

¹¹The lowly ones he sets on high; The mourning souls in safety are exalted.

¹²He foils the cunning in their vain device; Their hands are powerless to work reality.^{49 13}He snares the wise in their own craftiness;

Whilst the dissembler’s plot is hurried on to ruin.

¹⁴These are the men who meet the darkness in the day; Who grope at highest noon as in the night.

¹⁵God rescues from the sword, from their devouring mouth, Yea, from the very hand, so strong, He saves the poor.

¹⁶And thus the weak has hope; And foul injustice shuts her greedy mouth.

¹⁷O blessed is the man whom God reproves; The Almighty’s chastening, therefore, spurn thou not.

¹⁸     ’Tis true he woundeth, yet he bindeth up.

He smiteth, yet ’tis his own hand that heals.

¹⁹In troubles six will he deliver thee; In seven—still no harm shall touch thy soul.

²⁰In famine, he from death⁵⁰ will thee redeem,— In war, from the sword’s edge.

²¹From the tongue’s smiting thou art hidden safe; Nor shalt thou fear war’s wasting when it comes.

²²At devastation and at famine shalt thou laugh; Of forest beasts⁵¹ thou shalt not be afraid.

²³     For with the very stones hast thou a covenant;

All creatures of the field hold peace with thee.

²⁴     So shalt thou know thy tabernacle safe;

Thine household muster, and find nothing gone.^{52 25}Then shalt thou learn how numerous thy seed,—

Thine offspring as the earth’s green growing herb.

²⁶And thou thyself, in ripened age, unto thy grave shalt come, As sheaf that in its season to the garner mounts.

Lo this; we’ve pondered well; this is our thought.

O hear and know it; take it to thyself.

Chapter 6 ¹Then Job replied ²O could my grief be weighed, And poised⁵³ against it, in the scale, my woe!

³For now it would be heavier than the sand; And thence it comes, my incoherent⁵⁴ speech.

⁴For Shaddai’s arrows are within my flesh; Their poison drinketh up my soul;

God’s terrors stand arrayed before my face.

⁵Brays the wild ass when the green herb is nigh? Or lows the ox when fodder is before him?

⁶     Unsalted, tasteless—how can it be eaten?

What relish is there in the white of eggs?^{55 7}[So with your words]. My soul refuses taste.

’Tis food⁵⁶ I loathe.

⁸O that my prayer were heard; That God would grant the thing for which I long.

⁹     Let him consent and crush me down;

Let loose his hand and cut⁵⁷ my thread of life.

¹⁰For here would be my comfort still, That I could yet endure,⁵⁸ though he spare not— The Holy one, whose word I’ve not denied.

¹¹But what then is my strength, that I should hope? And what mine end that I be patient still?

¹²My strength! is it the strength of stones? Or is my flesh of brass?

¹³Is not my help within me gone, And driven from me life’s reality?^{59 14}Unto the faint, love still is due from friends,⁶⁰ Even though he had the fear of God forsaken.

¹⁵Not so my friends—illusive as the brook, As bed of streams whose waters pass away;

¹⁶Whose turbid floods are darkened from the sleet, As on their face the snowflakes hide⁶¹ themselves.

¹⁷What time they shrink,⁶² deserted of their springs, As quenched in heat they vanish from their place, ¹⁸’Tis then their wonted ways are turned⁶³ aside; Their streams are lost, gone up in emptiness.

¹⁹The caravans of Tema look for them. The companies of Sheba hope in vain.

²⁰     Confounded are they where they once did trust;

They reach the⁶⁴ spot and stand in helpless⁶⁵ maze.

²¹And thus are ye—but nought; A fearful spectacle ye see, and gaze in terror.

²²Have I said, give to me? Or from your wealth be liberal for my⁶⁶ sake?

²³Or save me from the hostile⁶⁷ hand, Or from the invader’s power redeem my life?

²⁴Give me your counsel, and I’ll hold my peace; And let me clearly know where I am wrong.

²⁵How mighty are the words of righteousness! But your reproving! how does it convince?

²⁶At words do ye your censures aim? At wind—such words as one may utter in despair?

²⁷ It is as⁶⁸ though you cast lots for the orphan’s wealth; Or traffic⁶⁹ made of one you called your friend.

²⁸     And now, O turn to me, behold my face.

I will not speak before you what is false.

²⁹     Return, I pray; let not the wrong prevail.

Return again; there’s justice on⁷⁰ my side.

³⁰     Is there perverseness in my tongue?

Cannot my conscience⁷¹ still discern iniquity?

Chapter 7 ¹Is not man’s life a warfare on the earth? His day, the hireling’s day?

²As gasps the servant for the shadow’s turn, As longs the toiler for his labor’s end,^{72 3}So am I made the heir to months of wretchedness, And nights of pain they number⁷³ out to me.

⁴     When I lie down I say:

How long⁷⁴ till I arise, and night be o’er?⁷⁵ Then am I full of tossings till the dawn.

⁵My flesh is clothed with worms⁷⁶ and clods of earth, My leprous skin heals up⁷⁷ and runs again.

⁶My days are swifter than the weaver’s dart, They pass away without a gleam⁷⁸ of hope.

⁷     Remember that my life is breath;

Mine eye shall not again behold the good.

⁸     The eye that sees me now shall look on me no more;

Thine eye shall seek me, but I shall be gone.^{79 9}As fades the cloud, and vanishes away, So one goes down to Sheol, never to ascend.

¹⁰No more to his own house he cometh back, The place that knew him knoweth him no more.

¹¹[’Tis so with me]. I’ll not withhold my words. In anguish of my spirit let⁸⁰ me speak, And moan⁸¹ in bitterness of soul.

¹²Am I a sea, a monster of the deep? That thou should’st o’er me watch.

¹³I said, my bed shall comfort me; My couch shall lighten my complaint.^{82 14}’Tis then thou scarest me with dreams, To fill me with alarm from visions dire.

¹⁵     So that my soul even strangling would prefer,—

Death, rather than these bones^{83 16}I loathe the sight, I would not thus live on.⁸⁴ O let me then alone; my days are vanity.

¹⁷For what is man that thou should’st make him of so great account? That thou should’st set thy heart upon him?

¹⁸That thou should’st visit him each morning as it comes, And try him every moment?

¹⁹How long wilt thou not look away from me? Nor leave me till I draw my laboring⁸⁵ breath.

²⁰Watcher of men, if I have sinned what can I do to thee? That thou should’st set me for thy mark; That I should be a burden unto thee?^{86 21}Why not lift up [the burden of] my sin, And put away all my iniquity?

²²For soon shall I lie down in dust And thou shalt seek me but I shall not be.

Chapter 8 ¹Then answered Bildad the Shuhite and said:

²How long wilt thou speak thus? And like a mighty wind pour forth thy words?

³The God above—does He in judgment err? The Almighty One—does He pervert the right?^{87 4}If so it be thy sons have sinned, And He hath given them up to their own wickedness.

⁵If thou thyself should’st early seek to God, And to the Almighty make thine earnest⁸⁸ prayer—

⁶If thou thyself wert right and pure, Then surely would He wake for thee, And make secure thy home of righteousness.

⁷However small might be thy first estate, Thy latter end should prosper gloriously.

⁸     Ask now the generation gone before.

Yes, of their fathers set thyself to learn.

⁹[For we are but of yesterday, and nothing know; So like a shadow are our days on earth].

¹⁰Will they not teach thee, speak to thee, In parables⁸⁹ of deep experience?

¹¹Grows high⁹⁰ the reed except in marshy soil? Or swells the flag, no water near its root?

¹²In its rank greenness, as it stands, uncut, It drieth up before all other herbs.

¹³So are the ways of all who God forget. So perishes the hope of the impure.

¹⁴His confidence reveals its worthlessness;⁹¹ His trust,—it is a spider’s web.

¹⁵     He leans upon his house, but it abideth not;

He grasps it, but it will not stand.^{92 16}Or like the herb so green before the sun, Whose shoots go forth o’er all its garden bed;

¹⁷     Hard by the fountain⁹³ do its roots entwine;

Among its stones it looketh everywhere.

¹⁸If one uproot him from his place, It strait disowns him;⁹⁴ thee I’ve never seen.

¹⁹     Lo this the joy of his brief way.

(’Tis gone), but (like it) from the dust shall others spring.

²⁰Lo, God the upright never casts away; Nor takes He by the hand the men of evil deeds.

²¹(Wait then) until He fill thy mouth with joy, Thy lips with jubilee.

²²Thy haters shall be clothed with shame While tents of evil men are seen no more.

Chapter 9 ¹Then answered Job and said:

²Most surely do I know that so it is. For how shall mortal man be just with God?

³Be it His will to call him to account,— For one in thousand of his sins no answer can he make.

⁴Most wise in heart, most strong in might! Who braves him with impunity?

⁵’Tis He that moves⁹⁵ the mountains and they know it not; Who overturneth them in His fierce wrath;

⁶Who makes the earth to tremble from its place, Its strong foundations rock.

⁷’Tis He who bids the sun, and it withholds its rays; Who sealeth up the stars;

⁸Who bent⁹⁶ the heavens all alone, And walks upon the mountain waves;

⁹Who made the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades,— The hidden⁹⁷ constellations of the South;

¹⁰Who doeth mighty works—unsearchable,— And wonders infinite.

¹¹     Lo! He goes by me, but I see him not;

Sweeps⁹⁸ past, but I perceive him not;

¹²See! He assails; then who shall turn him back? Or who shall say to Him, what doest thou?

¹³(Vain check!) Eloah turns not back His wrath Until the boldest⁹⁹ aids go down beneath His hand.

¹⁴How, then, can I reply? And choose my words in controversy with him?

¹⁵I could not plead it, even were I just; But to my Judge¹⁰⁰ must supplication make.

¹⁶If I had called, and He had answered me, I could not trust that He had heard my voice, ¹⁷He who¹⁰¹ o’erwhelms me with a whirlwind storm, And without cause my wounds so multiplies;

¹⁸Who doth not suffer me to catch¹⁰² my breath, But fills me with exceeding¹⁰³ bitterness.

¹⁹     Speak I of strength? A strong one!¹⁰⁴ Lo! how strong!

Speak I of right? who sets for me a time?

²⁰If I claim righteousness, my own words prove me wrong; Should I say I am pure, He’d show me still perverse.

²¹     I pure!¹⁰⁵ I would not know myself;

I should reject my life.

²²’Tis all the same, and therefore do I say it; The pure, the wicked, He consumes alike.

²³     Comes there the pestilential scourge that slays so suddenly!

He mocks the trial¹⁰⁶ of the innocent.

²⁴Earth is abandoned to the wicked’s hand; The faces of its judges doth He veil.¹⁰⁷ If not, who is it then, (the cause and source of all)?

²⁵     My days are swifter than the post;

They flee apace; they see no good;

²⁶As sweeps the light papyrus bark, Or as the eagle dashes on its prey.

²⁷     When I resolve, my mourning I’ll forget,—

Cast off my look of sorrow, smile¹⁰⁸ again, ²⁸Then, with a shudder, I recall my woe; So sure am I Thou wilt not hold me guiltless.

²⁹     Yes, I am wicked; (be it so);

Why labor then in vain?

³⁰Even should I wash myself in water pure as snow, And cleanse my hands in lye;

³¹Then would’st thou plunge me in the ditch; So that my very garments should abhor me.

³²For He is not a man like me, that I should answer him. In judgment, then, together might we come.

³³But now there is no umpire who can chide, And lay his tempering hand upon us both.

³⁴O, would He take His rod away; So that His terror might not awe my soul;

³⁵Then fearless would I plead my cause; For now I’m not¹⁰⁹ myself.

Chapter 10 ¹I am weary of my life, Unto my inward plaint I yield myself;

O let me speak—my soul in bitterness.^{110 2}Unto Eloah will I say, condemn me not;

O, let me know why thou dost strive with me?

³Is it thy pleasure that thou should’st oppress? That thou should’st cast away thy handy work, And shine upon the counsel of the wicked?

⁴     Hast thou the eyes of flesh?

Dost thou behold as mortal man beholdeth?

⁵Are thy days such as his, Or even like the mighty¹¹¹ man, thy years?

⁶That thou should’st seek for my iniquity, And hunt up all my sin.

⁷’Tis to thy knowledge I appeal; I’m not (this)¹¹² guilty man But none can save me from thy power.

⁸Still thine own hands have wrought me, fashioned me, In every part—all round. Dost thou destroy?

⁹Remember, now, that thou hast made me as the clay; And wilt thou turn¹¹³ me back to dust?

¹⁰Hast thou not poured me out as milk? And curdled me like¹¹⁴ cheese?

¹¹With skin and flesh, hast thou not clothed me round? With bones and sinews¹¹⁵ woven firm my frame?

¹²With life and goodness hast thou favored me, Whilst o’er my breath thy providence hath watched.

¹³     But these things wast thou hiding in thy heart.

All this, I know, was fixed in thy¹¹⁶ decree.

¹⁴When e’er I sin, thine eye is noting it; And thou wilt not absolve me from my guilt.

¹⁵     Yes, woe to me if I act wickedly;

If righteous, still may I not lift ray head; So full of shame am I; but see¹¹⁷ my misery;

¹⁶For it swells¹¹⁸ high; so like a lion dost thou still pursue, And still repeat thy wondrous dealing with me.

¹⁷     Against me dost thou bring new witnesses.

Thine anger with me dost thou still increase, As ever changing hosts against me come.

¹⁸     Why didst thou bring me from the womb?

I should have died with no eye seeing me;

¹⁹I should have been us though I’d never been, From womb to grave translated speedily.

²⁰How few my days! O let Him then forbear And turn from me, that for a moment I may smile, ²¹ Before I go whence I shall not return, To the land of darkness, and the shades of death;

²²A land of gloom tenebrous,¹¹⁹ dense as night, Land of the death shade, where no order reigns, Where day is but a darkness visible.¹²⁰

Chapter 11 ¹Then answered Zophar the Naamathite and said, ²A flood of words; demands it no reply? A man all lips! shall he be justified?

³Thy clamors, shall they silence men? That thou may’st thus rave on without rebuke;

⁴And say, my doctrine, it is pure, I’m guiltless in Thy sight.

⁵O were it so that God would really¹²¹ speak; And for thy silencing¹²² His lips unclose ⁶And show thee wisdom’s hidden depths,—

Truth’s twofold¹²³ form. For know it well; less than thy debt doth God exact¹²⁴ of thee.

⁷Eloah’s secret,¹²⁵ canst thou find it out? Or Shaddai’s¹²⁶ perfect way canst thou explore?

⁸     Higher than Heaven’s height, what canst thou do?

Deeper than Sheol’s depths, what canst thou know?

⁹Its measurement is longer than the earth, And broader than the sea.

¹⁰When He is passing by, and makes arrest, And calls to judgment, who can answer him?

¹¹For well He knows the men of vanity; Their evil sees, though seeming not to heed.^{127 12}Since man, vain man, has madness in his heart;¹²⁸ A foal of the wild ass, so is he born.

¹³(But as for thee), If thou prepare thy heart, And spread thy hands (in humble prayer) before him,—

¹⁴Putting¹²⁹ it far away, if sin be in thy hand, Nor letting wrong abide within thy tents,—

¹⁵     Then shalt thou lift thy face without a stain;

Then shalt thou stand secure,¹³⁰ with nought to dread.

¹⁶For thy sharp pain shalt thou forget, And like the passing waters, think of it no more.

¹⁷ Brighter than noon shall life¹³¹ again arise; And what is darkness¹³² now shall be like morn.

¹⁸      Then shalt thou be assured that there is hope;

Though now ashamed,¹³³ in peace shalt thou lie down, ¹⁹ And take thy rest with none to make afraid;

Whilst many [who have scorned] shall seek thy face.

²⁰ But as for wicked men, their eyes shall fail; Their refuge perishes; Their hope—’tis like the parting breath.

Chapter 12 ¹Then answered Job and said:

² Ye are the people, there’s no doubt; And wisdom dies with you.

³But I have understanding like yourselves; In nothing do I fall below your mark. Who knoweth not such, things as these?

⁴Sport to his friend! yes, such am I become, Though one who calls on¹³⁴ God, and whom he hears; A sport, (your) sport! A man upright and true!

⁵ As wasted lamp¹³⁵ to splendors of the proud, So is the man who stands on tottering feet;

⁶     Whilst quiet are the spoilers’ tents,—

All confident¹³⁶ the men who anger God, Into whose hands¹³⁷ Eloah sends (his bounty).

⁷But surely ask the beasts and they will teach; The birds of heaven will make it known to thee;

⁸Or converse¹³⁸ hold with earth, and it will speak; The fishes of the sea will tell it thee:

⁹Who knoweth not, by every one of these, Jehovah’s hand it is that doeth this?

¹⁰In whose hand lieth every breathing life; The spirit of all flesh—of every man.

¹¹Doth not the ear try words, As tastes the palate food?

¹²So with the old is sage experience;¹³⁹ With length of days doth understanding dwell.

¹³With God, too, there is wisdom, strength is His, Counsel to plan and never-erring¹⁴⁰ skill.

¹⁴     Lo! He casts down; it never shall be built;

He shutteth up; there is no opening.

¹⁵     The waters He withholds; the streams are dry;

He sends them forth, and they lay waste the earth.

¹⁶With Him is power, eternal truth¹⁴¹ is His; To Him alike are known deceiver and deceived.

¹⁷’Tis He that leadeth counsellors despoiled,¹⁴² And makes the judges fools.

¹⁸’Tis He who breaks the bonds of kings, And binds their loins with cords.

¹⁹Priests too He leadeth, stripped¹⁴³ (of sacred robes). The long established¹⁴⁴ (thrones) He overthrows.

²⁰The trusted He deprives of speech, And takes away the judgment of the old.

²¹On nobles doth He pour contempt, And renders weak the girdle of the strong.

²²     Deep things from darkness He reveals;

Tzalmaveth¹⁴⁵, world of shadows, brings He forth to light.

²³     He makes the nations grow, and then destroys;

Extends their bounds, then lets them pass away.

²⁴Chiefs of the earth, of reason he deprives, And makes them wander in a pathless waste.

²⁵     They grope in darkness, where no light appears;

He makes them stagger like a drunken man.

Chapter 13 ¹Behold all this mine eye hath seen;

Mine ear hath heard, and understood it well.

²What ye know I do also know; In nothing do I fall below you.

³For truly ’tis to Shaddai I would speak. With God to plead—this is my strong desire.

⁴     But ye indeed!¹⁴⁶ forgers of lies are ye;

Physicians of no value are ye all.

⁵O that you would be altogether still. For that would surely be your wisest way.

⁶     But hear my pleading now;

O listen to the strivings of my lips.

⁷For God,¹⁴⁷ will ye speak what is wrong? And utter specious things¹⁴⁸ in His behalf?

⁸Dare ye His person to accept¹⁴⁹? Is it for God,¹⁵⁰ indeed, that ye contend?

⁹Say, is it well, that He should search you out? Or as man mocketh man, so mock ye Him?

¹⁰Sure, He will make your condemnation clear;¹⁵¹ If thus, in secret, partially ye deal.

¹¹Shall not His glory fill you with alarm? His dread¹⁵² upon you fall?

¹²Pictures¹⁵³ in ashes drawn, your maxims grave; Your strong defences are but mounds of clay.

¹³     Be still; let me alone;¹⁵⁴ that I may speak,—

Whatever may befall.^{155 14}My flesh,¹⁵⁶ why should I bear it in my teeth? My very life, why take it in my hand.

¹⁵Lo! Let Him slay me; still for Him I’ll wait;¹⁵⁷ And still defend my ways before His face.

¹⁶Yes, my salvation shall He be; For in His presence the impure shall never come.

¹⁷Hear now, O hear my word; My declaration, hold it in your ears.

¹⁸     Behold me now; I have prepared my cause;

I’m sure I can maintain my right.

¹⁹Who then is HE,¹⁵⁸ that shall against me plead? For now if I keep silence I must die.

²⁰Only two things do not thou unto me; And then from thine appearing I’ll not hide.

²¹Far off withdraw thy hand from me, Nor let thy terror fill me with alarm.

²²Then call thou; I will make response; Or I will speak, and do thou answer me.

²³How many are my sins—my trespasses— My errors—my transgressions? Let me know.

²⁴Why hidest thou thy face from me?¹⁵⁹ Why hold me for thy foe?

²⁵A driven leaf would’st thou affright? The withered chaff pursue?

²⁶For bitter things against me thou dost write;¹⁶⁰ And to my youthful sins, thou makest me the¹⁶¹ heir.

²⁷My feet thou puttest in the stocks, An guardest all my ways, Making thy mark¹⁶² upon my very soles;

²⁸Whilst he¹⁶³ (thus watched) in rottenness consumes; Or like a garment which the moth devours.

Chapter 14 ¹ —––¹⁶⁴ Man of woman born;

Few are his days, and full of restlessness.

²     He comes forth like a flow’r, and is mown down;

Flees¹⁶⁵ like a passing shadow—makes no stay.

³On such a being,¹⁶⁶ openest thou thine eye, To bring me into judgment with thyself?

⁴O could¹⁶⁷ there come one pure from the impure! But there is no such one.

⁵If now his days are all decreed, And fixed the number of his months by thee;

If thou hast set a bound he cannot pass;

⁶Then turn away from him and let him rest, Till like a hireling he enjoy his day.

⁷     For a tree there still is hope.

Cut down, it springs again; Nor do its suckers fail.

⁸Though in the earth its root be old, Its stump all dead and¹⁶⁸ (buried) in the dust;

⁹From waters inhalation will it bud, And send forth shoots like a new planted stem.

¹⁰     But man—he dies and fallen¹⁶⁹ wastes away;

Man draws his parting breath, and where is he?

¹¹As fail the waters from the sea;¹⁷⁰ As wastes the flood and drieth up,—

¹²     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.] ¹³O that in Sheol thou would’st lay me up; That thou would’st hide me till thy wrath shall turn,¹⁷¹—

Set me a time, and then remember me.

[ A musing silence.] ¹⁴Ah, is it so?¹⁷² When man dies, does he live again!

Then all the days appointed me I’ll wait, Till my reviving¹⁷³ come.

¹⁵Then thou wilt call, and I will answer thee; For thou wilt yearn¹⁷⁴ towards thy handy work.

¹⁶     But now thou numberest my steps;

Thou wilt not set a guard¹⁷⁵ upon my sin;

¹⁷(For) sealed, as in a bag, is my transgression bound, And mine iniquity thou sewest¹⁷⁶ up.

[A longer interval of silence.] ¹⁸Yes¹⁷⁷—even the mountain falling wastes away; The rock slow changes from its ancient¹⁷⁸ place;

¹⁹The water wears the¹⁷⁹ stones; Its overflowings sweep away the soil; So makest thou to perish human hope.

²⁰     Thou overpow’rest¹⁸⁰ man, and he departs;

Changing his face, thou sendest him away.

²¹     His sons are honored, but he knows it not.

They come to poverty—he heeds it not.

²²By himself alone, his flesh endureth pain; By himself¹⁸¹ alone, his soul within him¹⁸² mourns.

Chapter 15 ¹Then answered Eliphaz the Temanite and said, ²A wise man, shall he utter windy lore? And with a rushing tempest¹⁸³ fill his soul¹⁸⁴,—

³Contending still with speech of no avail— With words that do no good?

⁴Nay more, thou makest void the fear of God, Confession to Him ever holding back.

⁵For ’tis thy sin that rules¹⁸⁵ thy mouth, And thou thyself dost choose the crafty tongue.

⁶     I judge thee not; ’tis thine own mouth condemns;

Against thee thine own lips do testify.

⁷     Art thou the man who first was born?

Before the hills wast thou brought forth?

⁸ Eloah’s secret counsel hast thou heard? And kept (its) wisdom¹⁸⁶ to thyself alone?

⁹     Tell us—What dost thou know that we know not?

What insight hast thou, we have not the same?

¹⁰     The grey haired¹⁸⁷—yea, the very old are ours—

One full of days, beyond thy father’s years.

¹¹God’s comfortings—are they too small for thee? And speech that flows so gently¹⁸⁸ (to thine ear)?

¹²     Why does thy heart¹⁸⁹ so carry thee away?

What means this quivering¹⁹⁰ of thine eyes ?

¹³That thou should’st turn again thy rage¹⁹¹ on God, Whilst pouring from thy mouth such words¹⁹² as these?

¹⁴Say, what is mortal man that he be pure! Or one of woman born¹⁹³ that he be righteous ?

¹⁵For lo, His Holy Ones He trusteth not; The very Heavens lack pureness in His sight, ¹⁶How much more man, the abhorred,¹⁹⁴ the all defiled!

Yes, man who drinketh in, like water, his iniquity.

¹⁷I’ll show thee now the truth; give heed to me ; And that which I have seen will I report;—

¹⁸What sages clearly have made known to us, And kept not back—truths from their fathers learned ;

¹⁹The men to whom alone the land was given; With whom had never mingled alien¹⁹⁵ blood.

[And thus they say.] ²⁰“The bad man sorely travails¹⁹⁶ all his days,— The numbered¹⁹⁷ years that for the bandit wait.^{198 21}A sound of terrors ever fills Ms ears; And then, when most secure, the invader¹⁹⁹ comes.

²²He has no hope from darkness to return, And for the sword, he watches²⁰⁰ evermore.

²³For bread he wanders, saying still—O, where! A day of darkness, well he knows, is ready to his hand.

²⁴     Anguish and trouble fill him with alarm ;

They overpow’r him like a chieftain²⁰¹ armed.”

²⁵For that against the Strong,²⁰² his hand he stretched, And proudly the Omnipotent defied—

²⁶Running upon him with the stiffened neck, And with the thick embossments of his shield,—

²⁷For that his face he clothed in his own fat, And built the muscle²⁰³ thick upon his loin,—

²⁸So dwells²⁰⁴ he in the ruined holds, In houses uninhabited, Fast hastening²⁰⁵ to become mere rubbish²⁰⁶ heaps.

²⁹Nor wealth he gets, nor do his means endure ; Nor shall his substance in the land extend.

³⁰From darkness nevermore shall he escape; The scorching²⁰⁷ flame shall wither up his shoots; In God’s hot anger doth he pass away.

³¹Let him not trust in evil; he’s deceived ; For evil still shall be his recompense ;

³²Before his²⁰⁸ time is it fulfilled, His palm no longer green ;

³³As shaketh off the vine its unripe grapes, Or as the olive caste away its flower.

³⁴For desolate the gathering of the vile, And fire devours the tents of bribery;

³⁵Where misery is conceived,²⁰⁹ and mischief born; And where the inmost thought deception²¹⁰ frames.

Chapter 16 ¹Then answered Job and said:

²     Of things like these, abundance have I heard.

Wretched consolers, surely, are ye all.

³Is there an end at last of windy words? Or what emboldens²¹¹ thee to answer still?

⁴     Thus could I, also, speak as well as you;

If only your soul were in my soul’s stead, I too against you could array²¹² my words, Against you shake my head in scorn.

⁵Thus with my mouth,²¹³ I too could strengthen you, Whilst my lip solace held you (from despair) ⁶Though I should speak, my grief is not assuaged;

If I forbear, what (pain)²¹⁴ from me departs?

⁷     Ah surely²¹⁵ now He hath exhausted²¹⁶ me.

Yes, thou hast made my household²¹⁷ desolate, ⁸And shriveled²¹⁸ up my skin—a sight²¹⁹ to see. My leanness (as a witness) rises up, And answers to my face.

[A pause.] ⁹His anger rends,²²⁰ so fiercely it pursues.

He gnashes at me with his teeth.

It is my enemy;—on me he whets his eye.

¹⁰(See how) they gape upon me with their mouths. With scorn they smite me on the cheek; As one, against me do they fill²²¹ their ranks.

¹¹     Unto the evil one hath God delivered me;

Into the hands of the malignant²²² hath he cast²²³ me forth.

¹²     I was at ease, and he hath shattered me;

Seized by the neck, and dashed²²⁴ me to the ground;

Then raised me up, and set me for his mark.

¹³     His archers compass me about;

He cleaves my reins—he spareth not;

He pours my gall upon the earth.

¹⁴He breaketh me with breach on breach;²²⁵ He runs upon me like a man of war.

¹⁵I have sewed sackcloth on my skin; My horn have I defiled with dust;

¹⁶My face with weeping is inflamed; And on my eyelids rests the shade of death.

¹⁷For no wrong²²⁶ I had done; My prayer, too,—it is pure.

¹⁸Earth cover²²⁷ not my blood; Nor let my cry find place (where it may rest).

[A pause.] ¹⁹Even now, behold! My witness²²⁸ in the Heavens,—

Yea, my Attestor in the heights above!

²⁰     My friends—’tis they who scorn;

Whilst unto God mine eye is dropping (tears), ²¹That He²²⁹ himself would plead for man with God, As²³⁰ one of Adam’s sons doth for his brother plead.

²²For a few years will come and go;²³¹ And I shall go whence I shall not return.

Chapter 17 ¹My breath is short;²³² My days are quenched;²³³ The graves are waiting for me.

²Were it not²³⁴ that mockeries beset me round, On their sharp taunts mine eye would calmly²³⁵ rest.

³     Lay down²³⁶ now; be my surety²³⁷ with thyself.

Ah! Who²³⁸ is He that gives His hand for mine!

⁴     (Not they). Their heart from²³⁹ insight Thou hast closed;

Therefore Thou wilt not raise them (over me).

⁵“When one for booty²⁴⁰ friends betrays, His children’s eyes shall fail.”

⁶So, as a byword hath He set me forth, Till I become the vilest²⁴¹ of the vile.

[A pause of silence.] ⁷Mine eye is dim from grief; My moulded²⁴² limbs are like a shadow, all.

⁸The upright, sure, will be amazed at this,— The innocent be roused against the vile;

⁹But still the righteous man holds on his way; The clean of hand still goes from strength to strength.

¹⁰     But come now, all of you; come on I pray;—

Among you all no wise man can I find.

[Pause].

¹¹My days are past, My plans asunder²⁴³ rent, My soul’s most cherished thoughts.

¹²For day, they give²⁴⁴ me night, To the face of darkness light is drawing¹³ near.

¹³     If I should hope, Lo, Sheol is my home.

Yes, in the darkness have I spread my couch.

¹⁴To corruption have I said—my father thou;— My mother and my sister—to the worm.

¹⁵And where, then, is my hope? My hope, alas!²⁴⁵ who seeth it?

¹⁶To the gates²⁴⁶ of Sheol it is going down, When once it finds a resting place in²⁴⁷ dust.

Chapter 18 ¹Then answered Bildad the Shuhite and said, ²How long will ye thus make of words a prey?²⁴⁸ First clearly understand; then let us speak.

³Why are we counted as the beasts, And held as worthless in thine eyes?

⁴See—in his rage, it is himself he rends. For thee shall earth be desolate? The rock move from its place?

⁵Yet true it holds;²⁴⁹ the sinner’s light is quenched; And from his fire no kindling, spark shall shine.

⁶The sunshine darkens in his tent; The lamp above him goeth out;

⁷His steps are straitened,²⁵⁰ once so firm; And his own counsel headlong²⁵¹ casts him down.

⁸By his own feet he’s driven to the net; In his own chosen²⁵² way there lies the snare.

⁹The gin shall seize him by the heel; The noose shall hold him fast.

¹⁰His cord lies hidden in the earth; His trap in ambush by the wayside path.

¹¹     All round about do terrors frighten him;

[At every step] they start him to his feet.

¹²His woe²⁵³ is hungering for its prey; A dire disease stands ready at his side;—

¹³     To eat²⁵⁴ the very partings of his skin;

Yea, Death’s First Born²⁵⁵ his members shall devour.

¹⁴Torn from his tent, his strong security, Thus to the King of Terrors²⁵⁶ doth it march him on.

¹⁵Who dwell within his tent are none of his; And o’er his pleasant²⁵⁷ place is showered²⁵⁸ the sulphur-rain.

¹⁶     Beneath,—his roots dried²⁵⁹ up—

Above,—his branch cut off.—

¹⁷His memory perished from the land,— No name now left in all the plain,—

¹⁸From light to darkness do they²⁶⁰ drive him forth; And chase²⁶¹ him from the world;

¹⁹No child, no seed, among his people left— In all his habitations none escaped;

²⁰     Men of the West²⁶² stand wondering at his day;

Men of the East with shuddering fear are seized.

²¹Yes, such the dwellings of unrighteous²⁶³ men; And such the place of him who knows not God.

Chapter 19 ¹Then Job answered and said ²How long grieve ye my soul? And crush me with your words.

³     Ten times it is that ye have stung me thus;

Devoid of shame, ye act as strangers²⁶⁴ to me.

⁴Be it so, then, that I have erred; My error lodges²⁶⁵ with myself.

⁵If still against me ye exalt yourselves, And plead against me my reproach,—

⁶     Then be assured that God hath cast²⁶⁶ me down;

’Tis He that overspreads me with His net.

⁷     Behold I cry of wrong, but am not heard;

I cry aloud, but there is no redress.

⁸For He hath fenced my road; I cannot pass; And darkness doth He set o’er all my ways.

⁹My glory from me hath He stripped, And from my head the crown removed.

¹⁰On all sides doth He crush me; I am gone;²⁶⁷ And like a tree uproots He all my hope.

¹¹Against me doth He make His anger hot, And counts me as His foe.

¹²Together draw His troops; At me cast up their way;

Around my tent they camp.

¹³My brethren far away has He removed, And mine acquaintance from me are estranged.

¹⁴My kinsmen all have failed, And my familiar friends forgotten me.

¹⁵     Domestics,—maidens,—as a stranger hold me now;

I am become an alien in their eyes.

¹⁶     Unto my servant do I call—he answers not;

I have to supplicate him with my mouth.

¹⁷My temper²⁶⁸ to my wife is strange,— My yearning for the children that she bare.

¹⁸     Yes—even the very boys despise me now;

They flout at me when I attempt²⁶⁹ to rise.

¹⁹Men of my counsel²⁷⁰ from me all recoil; And those I loved are turned²⁷¹ against the sight;

²⁰     My bone fast cleaving to my skin and flesh;—

All shrunk²⁷² away the covering of my teeth!

²¹Have pity; O have pity—ye my friends; For ’tis Eloah’s hand that toucheth²⁷³ me.

²²But why, like God, should ye pursue? And not be satiated²⁷⁴ from my flesh?

[Pause.] ²³O, that my words were written now;

O, that they were upon the record graved, ²⁴With pen of iron, and of lead,—

Upon the rock cut deep—a witness evermore.

[A brief silence].

²⁵ I know that my Redeemer²⁷⁵ lives; And o’er my dust,²⁷⁶ Survivor,²⁷⁷ shall He stand.

²⁶       My skin all gone, this²⁷⁸ [remnant] they may rend;

Yet from my flesh shall I Eloah see;—

²⁷     Shall see Him mine;—

Mine eyes shall see²⁷⁹ Him—stranger²⁸⁰ now no more.

(For this) with longing faints my inmost²⁸¹ soul.

[Pause.] ²⁸Yes, ye shall²⁸² say, why persecute we him? And seek²⁸³ to find in me a root²⁸⁴ of blame?

²⁹Beware—Beware²⁸⁵—the sword. For there is wrath; yea sins (that call) the sword ;²⁸⁶ That ye may surely know that judgment²⁸⁷ is.

Chapter 20 ¹ Then answered Zophar, the Naamathite, and said:

²To this²⁸⁸ my thoughts compel²⁸⁹ me to respond; And therefore is my haste²⁹⁰ within me (roused).

³     The chastening of my reproof I hear;

’Tis zeal,²⁹¹ with knowledge, urges my reply.

⁴ Ha!²⁹² knowest thou this—a truth of olden time, Since Adam first was placed upon the earth?

⁵How brief the triumph²⁹³ of the bad! The joy of the impure, how momentary!

⁶Yes, though his pride may mount to heaven’s height, His head reach to the cloud;

⁷As is his splendor,²⁹⁴ so his hopeless²⁹⁵ ruin; Who gazed upon him say—where is he gone.

⁸     As a dream²⁹⁶ he flies, and is no longer found;

Like a night spectre²⁹⁷ is he scared away.

⁹The eye hath glanced²⁹⁸ on him—it glanceth not again; His dwelling-place beholdeth him no more.

¹⁰His children must appease²⁹⁹ the poor; And his own hands give back again his wealth.

¹¹His bones are filled from sins³⁰⁰ in secret done, And with him in the dust must they lie down.

¹²Though wickedness, while in his mouth, be sweet; So that beneath his tongue he keeps it hid,—

¹³Sparing it long, and loth to let it go, Holding it back, still near his palate’s taste;

¹⁴     Yet in his bowels is his bread all changed;

Within him, ’tis the very gall of asps.

¹⁵The wealth he swallows shall he vomit up, Yes, from his very maw shall God’s hand cast it forth.

¹⁶The venom of the viper shall he suck; The adder’s tongue shall slay him.

¹⁷On the fair rivers³⁰¹ shall he never gaze,— The flowing streams of honey and of milk.

¹⁸Toil³⁰² [wronged], before ’tis swallowed, he restores; As wealth exchanged, he has no joy of it.

¹⁹     Because³⁰³ he crushed, and helpless left, the poor;

Seized³⁰⁴ ruthlessly a house he would not build;

²⁰Because content, within, he never knew, Nor lets³⁰⁵ escape him aught of his desire—

²¹     (No, not a shred for his devouring greed),—

Therefore it is, his good³⁰⁶ cannot endure.

²²In the fullness of his wealth, his straits begin; When every hand of toil³⁰⁷ against him comes.

²³     Be³⁰⁸ it the time to fill his greed;

’Tis then God sends on him His burning storm of wrath, Until He rains it on him in his food.

²⁴Does he flee from the iron lance?³⁰⁹ The bow of brass shall pierce him through and through.

²⁵He³¹⁰ hath drawn [the sword]; forth comes it from his flesh; The gleaming weapon from his gall.

He is gone.³¹¹ Terrors are over him.

²⁶In his hid³¹² treasures lies all darkness hid; A self-enkindled³¹³ fire consumes it ever more, Still feeding³¹⁴ on the remnant in his tent.

²⁷     His sins the Heavens reveal;

Against him rises up the earth.

²⁸His wealth to other lands³¹⁵ departs, Like flowing waters, in His day of wrath.

²⁹This is the bad man’s portion sent from God,— His lot appointed from the³¹⁶ Mighty One.

Chapter 21 ¹Then Job answered and said:

²O listen³¹⁷ to my words; And let that be in place of your consolings.

³Bear with me, let me speak; And after I have spoken, then mock on.

⁴     Ah me! Is my appeal to man?

Impatient then might be my soul; why not?

⁵Turn now,³¹⁸ behold me—stand amazed, And lay your hand upon your mouth:

⁶’Tis when I think, that I am sore dismayed; And trembling taketh hold on all my flesh.

⁷     Why do the wicked live at³¹⁹ all?

Why grow they old, yea giant³²⁰ like in power?

⁸Before them—with them—firmly stands their seed;³²¹ Their spreading offspring ever in their sight.

⁹Why are their houses peace, away from fear,— No scourge upon them from Eloah’s hand?

¹⁰The issue of their herds is sure;³²² Their kine bring forth without mischance.

¹¹Their little ones, like flocks, they send them out; Their sons and daughters³²³ mingle in the dance.

¹²To harp and timbrel do they raise their voice; In melodies of flutes they take delight.

¹³In joy unbroken³²⁴ do they spend their days; And in a moment³²⁵ to the grave go down.

¹⁴To God they say, Depart from us; No knowledge of Thy ways do we desire.

¹⁵The Almighty! who is he that we should serve him? And if we pray to him, what do we gain?

[Pause.] ¹⁶But lo,³²⁶—their good is not in their own hand. The counsel of the wicked, be it far from me.

[A longer silence.] ¹⁷[Yet, truth³²⁷ ye say]; how oft goes out the lamp of evil men! And comes upon them their calamity! When God, in wrath, allots them deadly³²⁸ pangs.

¹⁸     Like stubble are they then before the wind,—

Like chaff the whirling tempest bears away.

¹⁹Eloah treasures up his evil for his sons;³²⁹ To him He thus repays it—he shall know.

²⁰His own destruction shall his eyes behold; When from the wrath of Shaddai he shall drink.

²¹For what his pleasure³³⁰ in posterity, When sundered thus the number of his months?

[Pause.] ²²[Ah, how is this?]³³¹ Shall any man teach³³² God?

Teach Him who judgeth things on high!

²³(For see); one dieth in his perfect strength, All quiet³³³ and at ease.

²⁴His breasts³³⁴ are full of milk; And moist the marrow of his bones.

²⁵Another dies in bitterness of soul, And never tastes of good.

²⁶     Alike in dust do both lie down;

Alike o’er both the worm its covering spreads.

[Pause.] ²⁷Behold I know your thoughts,—

Thoughts³³⁵ to my hurt, ye wrongfully³³⁶ maintain.

²⁸For where’s the dwelling of the Prince, say ye,³³⁷— And where the tent of evil men’s abode?

²⁹Have ye not asked the passers by the way? And know ye not their³³⁸ signs?

³⁰That to the day of doom the wicked man is³³⁹ kept; To the day of mighty³⁴⁰ wrath are they brought forth.

³¹Yet who before his face declares³⁴¹ his way? And who requites him (here) what he hath done?

³²Still to the grave (like others) is he brought; And for him, o’er his tomb, one keepeth³⁴² watch.

³³On him, too, lightly³⁴³ press the valley clods; And after him come all in lengthened³⁴⁴ train, As countless numbers thus have gone before.³⁴⁵

[Conclusion.] ³⁴How then console ye me? ’Tis empty breath,³⁴⁶ Since in your answers still remains offence.³⁴⁷

Chapter 22 ¹Then answered Eliphaz the Temanite and said:’

²The strong³⁴⁸ man—can he profit God, That thereby³⁴⁹ he may wisely serve himself?

³Is Shaddai, then, concerned that thou art just, Or is it gain to Him that thou make pure thy way?

⁴For thy religion’s³⁵⁰ sake, will He reprove, Or go with thee to judgment’s reckoning?

⁵     May it not be,³⁵¹ thy evil, too, is great?

Thy sins beyond thy numbering?

⁶May it not be³⁵² that thou for nought hast held thy brother’s pledge? Or from the naked stripped their covering?

⁷Or failed to give the weary drink, Or from the hungry hast withheld thy bread?

⁸[Hast said]³⁵³ the land is for the strong; The honorable man, he dwells therein;

⁹Yea widows empty hast thou sent away,— The arm hast broken of the fatherless.

¹⁰Wherefore, it may be,³⁵⁴ snares are round thee spread; And sudden fear alarms;

¹¹Or darkness, that thou can’st not³⁵⁵ see, Or water floods that overwhelm thy³⁵⁶ soul.

¹²Lo!³⁵⁷ where Eloah dwells! the heaven sublime!³⁵⁸ Behold! the crown³⁵⁹ of stars! how high they are!

¹³     “How doth God know?” ’Tis that thy thought is³⁶⁰ saying:

“Behind the dark araphel³⁶¹ can He judge?

¹⁴     Clouds are a covering, that He cannot see;

All by Himself³⁶² on heaven’s high dome He walks.”

¹⁵Ah! wilt thou call to mind³⁶³ that way of old, Which evil men once trod;

¹⁶They who were withered³⁶⁴ up before their time,— Their strong foundations melted³⁶⁵ like a flood,—

¹⁷The men who said to God, “depart from us, For what can Shaddai do to them³⁶⁶?”

¹⁸When He it was who filled their house with good, That way of evil men, O be it far³⁶⁷ from me.

¹⁹The righteous see it and rejoice; The guiltless make a byword³⁶⁸ of their doom:

²⁰     “Now is our enemy destroyed” (they say);

“And their abundance hath the fire devoured.”

²¹     O now make friends³⁶⁹ with Him, and be at peace;

For, in so doing, good³⁷⁰ shall come to thee.

²²Receive instruction³⁷¹ from His mouth; And treasure up His words within thy heart.

²³To Shaddai turn;³⁷² then shalt thou be restored, “When from thy tent thou hast put far the wrong.

²⁴     Then shalt thou lay³⁷³ up gold as dust,—

Yea Ophir gold like pebbles of the stream.

²⁵ Then, too, shall Shaddai be thy precious³⁷⁴ ore, Thy silver from the ³⁷⁵ mine.

²⁶     Then in th’ Omnipotent shall be thy joy;

Yes, to Eloah shalt thou lift thy face.

²⁷Then shalt thou pray to Him, and He will hear, And offerings thou hast vowed thou shalt perform.

²⁸The thing decreed by thee shall firmly stand; And over all thy ways the light shall shine.

²⁹When men look down, then shalt thou say—“aloft!³⁷⁶ [Look up], the meek-eyed will He raise.”

³⁰Yes, even the³⁷⁷ guilty He shall save; By the pureness of thy hands shall they escape.

Chapter 23 ¹Then answered Job and said:

²Again, to day, my plaint—rebellious³⁷⁸ still; The hand³⁷⁹ upon me heavier than my moans.

³O that I knew where I might find Him³⁸⁰—knew How I might come, even to His judgment seat.

⁴     There would I set my cause before His face;

There would I fill my mouth, with arguments;

⁵Would know the words that He would answer me, And mark what He would say.

⁶     ’Gainst me would He set forth His mighty³⁸¹ strength?

Ah, no—not that—but He would look on me.

⁷A righteous one there pleads³⁸² with Him; And from my Judge shall I be ever free.

⁸     Lo, to the East I go; He is not there;

Toward the West, but I perceive Him not.

⁹To His wondrous working on the North,³⁸³ I look, but look in vain; In the void South³⁸⁴ He hides Himself, where nought can I behold.

¹⁰     But my most secret³⁸⁵ way, He knows it well;

He’s trying me; I shall come forth as³⁸⁶ gold.

¹¹My foot hath held His steps. His way have I observed, nor turned aside.

¹²     The precepts of His lips I have not shunned;

More than my own behest, His counsels have I prized.

¹³But He is ever One;³⁸⁷ who turneth Him? And what His soul desires, ’tis that He does.

¹⁴The law ordained for me He now performs; And many a like decree remains with Him.

¹⁵     Therefore it is I tremble so before Him;

I think of Him, and I am sore afraid.

¹⁶     For thus it is that God makes weak my heart;

It is the Omnipotent amazes me.

¹⁷Not from³⁸⁸ the darkness am I thus cast down, Nor yet because thick darkness veils my face.

Chapter 24

¹How is it,³⁸⁹—times from God are not concealed— That they who know Him do not see His days?

²     Yes,³⁹⁰—land marks they remove;

They seize on flocks they pasture as their own.

³     The orphan’s ass they drive away;

They take the widow’s ox in pledge.

⁴They turn the needy from their right;³⁹¹ [At sight of them] the wretched hide themselves.

⁵Behold them! Like the desert-roaming ass, So go they early to their work—their prey; The barren wild their bread,³⁹² their children’s food.

⁶These reap his³⁹³ fodder in the field— The evil man’s—his vintage do they glean.

⁷     Naked they³⁹⁴ lodge—no rag to hide their shame;

They have no covering in the cold.

⁸Wet from the mountain storm, All shelterless they make the rock their³⁹⁵ bed.

⁹     The others³⁹⁶ tear the orphan from the breast;

Even from the suffering poor they take the pawn.

¹⁰Stript of their garments³⁹⁷ go they forth, And in their hunger do they bear the sheaf.

¹¹The oil within their³⁹⁸ walls they press, And tread their flowing wine vats thirsting³⁹⁹ still.

¹²From the city⁴⁰⁰ filled with dead, the groans ascend; And shriek aloud the⁴⁰¹ spirits of the slain; But God heeds not the dire⁴⁰² enormity.

¹³They,⁴⁰³ too,—those enemies of light, Who take no knowledge of its ways, Who stay not in its trodden⁴⁰⁴ paths;

¹⁴The murderer—at the dawn⁴⁰⁵ he rises up, To slay the poor—the destitute; By night he plays the thief.

¹⁵The adulterer’s eye waits for the twilight shade. No one, says he, shall see the way I take; A masking veil⁴⁰⁶ he puts upon his face.

¹⁶Through houses in the dark the burglar digs. In covert⁴⁰⁷ do they keep by day,—

All strangers to the light.

¹⁷Yes, morning⁴⁰⁸ is as death shade to them all; For (in it) they discern, each one, the terrors of the dark.

¹⁸Light as⁴⁰⁹ the bubble on the water’s face, He flees,—accursed his portion on the earth;— Nor turns he ever to the vineyard⁴¹⁰ way.

¹⁹As drought and heat bear off the melting⁴¹¹ snows, So Sheol those⁴¹² who sin.

²⁰     The womb⁴¹³ (the mother’s heart) forgets him there;

Whilst on him sweetly feeds⁴¹⁴ the worm.

He comes in memory no more; And broken like a tree Injustice⁴¹⁵ lies.

²¹Again; the man who wrongs the barren,⁴¹⁶ childless one, And to the widow no compassion⁴¹⁷ shows.

²²     The strong, too, by his might, he bears⁴¹⁸ away;

He riseth up; no one is sure of life.

²³God lets them rest⁴¹⁹ in their security; But still His eyes are ever on their ways.

²⁴     They tower a little while, and straight are gone;

Brought low like all,⁴²⁰ like all they’re gathered in;

Even as the topmost ears are severed like the rest.

²⁵Is it not so? Who then shall prove me false? Or bring to nought my words?

Chapter 25 ¹Then answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said:

²     To Him⁴²¹ belongs dominion—yea,⁴²² and fear.

’Tis He who makes the harmony⁴²³ on high.

³The number of His armies, who can count? Or say o’er⁴²⁴ whom His light doth not arise?

⁴How then can man be just with God? Or how can he be clean, of woman born?

⁵Look to⁴²⁵. the moon; behold! she pales her; The stars, to His beholding, are not pure.

⁶Much less a mortal man—corruption’s⁴²⁶ child— The son⁴²⁷. of man the worm!

Chapter 26 ¹Then answered Job and said:

²How hast thou helped the powerless? Or saved the feeble⁴²⁸. arm?

³How hast thou counseled the unlearned? Or truth,⁴²⁹ in its immensity, made known?

⁴Of Whom⁴³⁰ hast thou declaimed?⁴³¹. Whose inspiration is it comes from thee?

⁵Where⁴³². groan the giant⁴³³. shades, Beneath the waters and their habitants,—

⁶All bare before Him lies the Underworld, And deep Abaddon⁴³⁴ hath no covering.

⁷High o’er the Void, He stretcheth out the⁴³⁵ North; And over⁴³⁶ nothing hangs the world⁴³⁷ in space.

⁸He binds the waters in his cloud; Nor is it rent beneath their weight.

⁹He closes⁴³⁸ firm the presence of His throne, And o’er it spreads His cloud.

¹⁰A circle⁴³⁹ marks He on the water’s face, Unto the bound where light with darkness blends.

¹¹Heaven’s pillars rock;⁴⁴⁰ They stand aghast at His⁴⁴¹ rebuke.

¹²So by His strength He quells⁴⁴² the [raging] sea, And by His wisdom smites its threatening down.

¹³By His spirit hath He made the heavens fair;⁴⁴³ The serpent swift (on high) His hand hath formed.

¹⁴     Lo, these, the endings⁴⁴⁴ of His ways;

’Tis but a whisper⁴⁴⁵ word we hear of Him; His thunder-power, then, who can comprehend?

Chapter 27 ¹Then Job again took up his chant and said.

²As liveth God who turns⁴⁴⁶ away my plea,— The Almighty One who hath distressed my soul,—

³So long⁴⁴⁷ as breath remains to me, And in my nostrils dwells Eloah’s⁴⁴⁸ life,—

⁴These lips of mine shall never say the wrong, My tongue shall never murmur⁴⁴⁹ what is false.

⁵Away⁴⁵⁰ the thought; I’ll not confess⁴⁵¹ to you; Nor mine integrity, until my latest breath,⁴⁵² renounce.

⁶My right I hold;⁴⁵³ I will not let it go; My heart shall not reproach me⁴⁵⁴ while I live.

⁷Mine enemy; be he the wicked one; And mine accuser,⁴⁵⁵—he the unjust.

⁸For what the false⁴⁵⁶ man’s hope that he should⁴⁵⁷ gain, When once Eloah redemands⁴⁵⁸ his soul?

⁹Will God regard his cry When trouble comes?

¹⁰Is he the man who in the Almighty⁴⁵⁹ joys? Or who at all times on Eloah calls?

¹¹I’ll teach you now by God’s own hand; His dealings⁴⁶⁰ I will not keep back from you.

¹²     Behold, ye all have seen the⁴⁶¹ sight;

Why then speak ye such utter vanity?

¹³This is the bad man’s dole assigned⁴⁶² by God, The robber’s heritage from Shaddai’s hand:

¹⁴’Tis for the sword his children multiply; His offspring are not satisfied with bread.

¹⁵Those that remain are buried⁴⁶³ all in death; His widows⁴⁶⁴ do not weep.

¹⁶Though silver like the dust he heaps, And raiment common as the clay⁴⁶⁵ provides;

¹⁷He may prepare, the just shall put it on; His treasures shall the innocent divide.

¹⁸His house he buildeth like⁴⁶⁶ the moth. Or like the vineyard booth the watcher makes.

¹⁹     Rich⁴⁶⁷ lies he down, never to sleep⁴⁶⁸ again;

Once opens⁴⁶⁹ he the eye, and is no more.

²⁰Terrors o’ertake⁴⁷⁰ him like a flood; A tempest steals him in the night away.

²¹     The east wind lifts him up, and he is gone.

Tornado like,⁴⁷¹it hurls him from his place.

²²     God sends (his bolt)⁴⁷² upon him—spares him not;

Though gladly from His hand would he escape.

²³Men clap their hands at him; At sight of his abode⁴⁷³ they hiss in scorn.

Chapter 28

¹Yes⁴⁷⁴—truly—for the silver there’s a vein, A place for gold which they refine.

²The iron from the dust is brought, And copper from the⁴⁷⁵ molten ore.

³     To (nature’s) darkness man⁴⁷⁶ is setting⁴⁷⁷ bounds;

Unto the end⁴⁷⁸ he searcheth⁴⁷⁹ every things.— The stones of⁴⁸⁰ darkness and the shade of death.

⁴ Breaks from the settler’s⁴⁸¹ view the deep ravine; And there, forgotten⁴⁸² of the foot-worn path, They let them down⁴⁸³,—from men they roam afar.

⁵Earth’s surface (they explore) whence comes forth breads,— Its lowest depths, where it seems⁴⁸⁴ turned to fire;

⁶Its stones the place⁴⁸⁵ of sapphire gems, Where lie the glebes of gold.

⁷A path⁴⁸⁶ the bird of prey hath never known, Nor on it glanced the vulture’s piercing sight, ⁸Where the wild beast hath never trod, Nor roaring schachal⁴⁸⁷ ever passed it by.

⁹     Against the granite⁴⁸⁸ sends he forth his hand;

He overturns⁴⁸⁹ the mountains from, their base.

¹⁰He cutteth channels in the rocks; His eye beholdeth every precious thing.

¹¹From weeping bindeth he the streams,⁴⁹⁰ The deeply hidden brings he forth to light.

¹²But Wisdom,—where shall it be found? And where the place of clear intelligence?^{491 13}A mortal knoweth not its price;

Among the living⁴⁹² is it never found.

¹⁴The Deep⁴⁹³ saith—“not in me;” The Sea,—“it dwelleth⁴⁹⁴ not with me.”

¹⁵For it the treasured⁴⁹⁵ gold shall not be given, Nor massive⁴⁹⁶ silver for its price be weighed.

¹⁶With Ophir bars it never can be bought; Nor with the onyx, nor the sapphire gem.

¹⁷The glass with gold adorned gives not its price, Nor its exchange, the rarest jewelry.

¹⁸Corals and crystals name them not; The wealth of Wisdom far excelleth pearls.

¹⁹With it the topaz gem of Cush holds no compare No stamp of purest gold can give its estimate.

²⁰But Wisdom,—whence then, doth it come? And where this place of clear intelligence?

²¹     So hidden from the eyes of all that live;

Veiled eyen to birds⁴⁹⁷ (that gaze) from heaven’s height?

²²     Death⁴⁹⁸ and Abaddon say:

“A rumor of it hath but reached our ears.”

²³     God understands its way;

He knows its place.

²⁴For He to earth’s remotest ends looks forth, And under all the heavens, all beholds.

²⁵’Twas when He gave the wind⁴⁹⁹ its weight, And fixed the waters in their measurement;

²⁶When for the rain He made a⁵⁰⁰ law, A way⁵⁰¹ appointed for the thunder flash;

²⁷’Twas then He saw⁵⁰²,—declared it [good], And built it firm,⁵⁰³ and made its⁵⁰⁴ testings sure.

²⁸     But⁵⁰⁵ unto man He saith:

[“Thy] wisdom; Lo, it is to fear the Lord; To fly from evil, (thine) intelligence.”

Chapter 29 ¹Then again⁵⁰⁶ Job lifted up his chant and said:

²O that it were with me as in the moons of old; As in the days when o’er me still Eloah watched;

³When shone His⁵⁰⁷ lamp above my head, And when through darkness by His light I walked;

⁴As in my autumn days; When God’s near presence⁵⁰⁸ in my tent abode;

⁵     Whilst still the Almighty was my⁵⁰⁹ stay;

Around me still my children⁵¹⁰ in their youth.

⁶When with the flowing⁵¹¹ milk my feet I bathed; And streams of oil the rock poured forth for me.

⁷When up the city’s way, forth⁵¹² from my gate, I went, And in the place of concourse fixed my seat;

⁸The young men saw me, and retired; The elders rose—stood up.

⁹The leaders checked their words; And laid their hands upon their mouths.

¹⁰The men of note, their voice was⁵¹³ hushed; Their tongue suspended to the palate clave.

¹¹Then, too, there was an ear that heard⁵¹⁴ and blessed, An eye that saw and testified, ¹²That⁵¹⁵ I had saved the poor man when he cried, The fatherless, the one who had no friend.

¹³Thus on me came⁵¹⁶ the blessing of the lost; The widow’s heart I made to sing for joy.

¹⁴I put⁵¹⁷ on justices,—it became my robe— As mantle⁵¹⁸ and as diadem, my right.

¹⁵     Eyes to the blind was I—

Feet to the lame.

¹⁶A father to the poor; The cause I knew⁵¹⁹ not, I would search⁵²⁰ it out, ¹⁷So would I break the fangs of evil⁵²¹ men, And from their very teeth would dash the prey.

¹⁸Then said I, “in my nest shall I expire, And like the palm tree⁵²² multiply my days;

¹⁹My root laid open to the water’s breath, And all night long the dew upon my branch;

²⁰My glory constant⁵²³ with me—still renewed, And in my hand my bow forever⁵²⁴ green.”, ²¹To me men listened—waited eagerly; Were silent at my counseling.

²²After my word, they answered⁵²⁵ not again; For on them would my speech be dropping still.

²³Yes, they would wait as men do wait for⁵²⁶ rain, And open wide their mouths, as for the latter rain.

²⁴That I should mock⁵²⁷ them they would not believe, Nor make to fall the brightness of my face.

²⁵’Twas thus their way I chose,⁵²⁸ and sat their head. As king amidst the multitude⁵²⁹ I dwelt,—

Among the mourners as a comforter.

Chapter 30 [Scene: The Border of the Desert. See Exc. 10.] ¹And now they mock me; younger men than I, Whose fathers I disdained, To set them with the dogs that watched my flock.

²For what to me their strength of hand, In whom (the hope) of ripened manhood⁵³⁰fails?

²Through want and hunger like the arid⁵³¹ rock, These vagrants⁵³² from the land of⁵³³ drought— Of old time⁵³⁴ waste and wild,—

⁴Who in the jungles pluck the acrid⁵³⁵ herb; The roots of juniper⁵³⁶ their food.

⁵     From human concourse⁵³⁷ are they driven forth;

Men shout against them as against a thief;

⁶Within the gloomy gorge⁵³⁸ their dwelling-place; In holes of earth,⁵³⁹ amid the hollow rocks.

⁷Between the desert shrubs they bray;⁵⁴⁰ Under the brambles do they herd⁵⁴¹ like beasts.

⁸Children of folly, sons⁵⁴² of nameless sires, With scourgings⁵⁴³ are they driven from the land.

⁹And now their song have I become, Their ribald word⁵⁴⁴ of scorn.

¹⁰     They view me with abhorrence—stand aloof—

Yet from my face their spittle⁵⁴⁵ hold not back.

¹¹     since He hath loosed⁵⁴⁶ my girdle—humbled me—

They, too, against me come with unchecked⁵⁴⁷ rein.

¹²At my right hand they rise, this beastly brood; My feet they thrust aside;

Against me cast they up their deadly⁵⁴⁸ ways.

¹³They mar my⁵⁴⁹ path; As though ’twere gain to them,⁵⁵⁰ they seek my hurt, With none to help⁵⁵¹ (the mischief all their own).

¹⁴     Like a wide fracture in a⁵⁵² wall they come;

Beneath the desolation roll they on.

[Pause.] ¹⁵All turned⁵⁵³ against me—terrors everywhere; My dignity it scatters like the wind;

Gone as a cloud is my prosperity.

¹⁶And now my very⁵⁵⁴ life is poured out; The days of my affliction hold⁵⁵⁵ me fast.

¹⁷By night my every bono is pierced⁵⁵⁶ above; My throbbing nerves⁵⁵⁷ (within me) never sleep.

¹⁸     By great exertion is my garment⁵⁵⁸ changed;

Close as my tunic’s mouth it girts me round.

¹⁹Into the mire, His hand hath cast me⁵⁵⁹ down. To dust and ashes is my semblance⁵⁶⁰ turned.

²⁰     I call to Thee—Thou answerest not;

Before Thee do I stand—Thine eye beholds;

²¹     But Thou art turned relentless (to my prayer);

Thou art against me with Thy mighty hand.

²²Thou liftest me upon the wind to ride; As in my very being⁵⁶¹ Thou dissolvest me.

²³I know that Thou wilt turn me back⁵⁶² to death, The assembly house⁵⁶³ ordained for all that live.

²⁴Ah! Prayer is nought,⁵⁶⁴ when He sends forth the hand; In each⁵⁶⁵ man’s doom, of what avail their cry?

²⁵Have I not wept⁵⁶⁶ for him whose life is hard? Has not my very soul grieved⁵⁶⁷ for the poor?

²⁶But when I looked for good, then evil came;⁵⁶⁸ When I expected light, then darkness came.

²⁷My very bowels boil, ⁵⁶⁹they’re never still; The days of pain have overtaken me.

²⁸Mourning I go,⁵⁷⁰ no sunlight (on my way). In the assembly do I rise; I cry aloud.

²⁹Brother am I to howling desert⁵⁷¹ dogs, Companion to the owls.

³⁰My skin is black above;⁵⁷² My bones are dried with heat.

³¹My harp,⁵⁷³ to mourning is it turned; My organ like the tones of those who weep.

Chapter 31 ¹Yes,⁵⁷⁴ I did make a covenant for⁵⁷⁵ mine eyes;

How⁵⁷⁶ then could I upon a virgin gaze?

²What portion of Eloah from above, What heritage [could I expect⁵⁷⁷] from Shaddai in the heights?

³Does not a woe await the evil man? A vengeance strange,⁵⁷⁸ to malefactors due?

⁴Does He not see my course of life, And number all my steps?

⁵If I have walked in ways⁵⁷⁹ of vanity, Or if my foot hath hasted to deceit,—

⁶So weigh⁵⁸⁰ me God in scales of righteousness And know Eloah mine integrity.

⁷If from the path my step hath turned aside, Or soul hath strayed⁵⁸¹ submissive to mine eyes, Or aught of blemish to my hand hath cleaved, ⁸Then let me sow, and let another reap, And let my plantings all be rooted up.

⁹By⁵⁸² woman if my heart hath been seduced, Or at my neighbor’s door if, I have watched, ¹⁰Then let my wife for others grind;⁵⁸³ Let others humble⁵⁸⁴ her.

¹¹For that were deed of foul intent⁵⁸⁵,— A sin demanding sentence from the Judge.

¹²A fire⁵⁸⁶ consuming to the lowest⁵⁸⁷ hell, And killing⁵⁸⁸ all my increase at the root.

¹³My serf,⁵⁸⁹ or handmaid, if I spurned⁵⁹⁰ their right, When their complaint before⁵⁹¹ me they have laid, ¹⁴What could I do when God to judgment⁵⁹² rises? When He makes search, what could I answer him?

¹⁵Who in the womb made me, made He not him? And from one⁵⁹³ common mother formed us both?

¹⁶From poor men’s want,⁵⁹⁴ if I have kept⁵⁹⁵ aloof, Or caused the widows’ eyes to fail⁵⁹⁶,—

¹⁷If I have eaten by myself alone, And from my crust the orphan had no share, ¹⁸[No—like a father, from my youth, he made⁵⁹⁷ me his support, And from my earliest dawn⁵⁹⁸ of life was I to her a guide,] ¹⁹If e’er I saw⁵⁹⁹ the perishing with nought to cover him, Or any lack of raiment to the poor, ²⁰His very loins, if they have blessed me not, When⁶⁰⁰ from my lambs’ fleece he hath felt the warmth, ²¹If o’er the orphan I have stretched my hand, When at the gate⁶⁰¹ I saw my helper near,—

²²Then fall my shoulder from its blade, And let my arm be broken from the bone.

²³     For God’s destruction would have been my fear;

Before His majesty I could not stand.

²⁴If I have made the gold my confidence, Or to the coined⁶⁰² gold said, thou art my trust;

²⁵If I rejoiced⁶⁰³ because my wealth was great, Or that my⁶⁰⁴ hand had gotten mighty store;

²⁶If e’er I saw⁶⁰⁵ the sunlight when it shone, The moon in glory as it walked above, ²⁷And then my soul was silently enticed, And hand (in adoration)⁶⁰⁶ touched my mouth;

²⁸Even that⁶⁰⁷ would be a sin for vengeance callings, For then had I been false to God above.^{608 29}If in my foe’s calamity I joyed, Or lifted up myself when ill befell him, ³⁰(No, no⁶⁰⁹—I suffered not my month to sin, To ask a malediction on his life);

³¹If men of mine own household have not said, “O tell us one not sated from his meat, ³²(The⁶¹⁰ stranger never lodged without; My doors I opened to the traveler”);

³³If I like Adam mine offences hid, My sin concealing in my secret breast, ³⁴Because I feared the rabble multitude, Or scorn of families⁶¹¹ affrighted me, So that I kept my place and went not forth—

³⁵     (O had I one to hear me now;

Behold my sign⁶¹²—let Shaddai answer me;

Mine adversary—let him write⁶¹³ his charge.

³⁶Would I not on my shoulder⁶¹⁴ take it up, And bind it to me as my crown?

³⁷The number of my steps⁶¹⁵ would I declare, Yes, as a prince, would I draw nigh to him.) ³⁸Against me, if my land hath cried,⁶¹⁶ And all its furrows wept,—

³⁹If I have eaten of its strength for nought, Or made its toilers pant⁶¹⁷ away their life;—

⁴⁰Instead of wheat let there come forth the thorn, And noxious weeds in place of barley grow;

Job’s words are ended, ⁶¹⁸ [he protests no more].

Chapter 32

¹So these three men ceased from answering Job because he was wise in his own ²eyes. Then was aroused the zeal of Elihu,⁶¹⁹ son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram.⁶²⁰ Against Job was his zeal aroused because he accounted himself ³more⁶²¹ just than God. And against his three friends was his zeal kindled, ⁴because they had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job. Now Elihu ⁵had waited till Job had spoken, because they were older than he. And Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouth of the three men, and his zeal was ⁶kindled. Then answered Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, and said:

I am but young in years, And ye are very old.

It was for this I shrunk⁶²² away, And feared to show you what I thought.

⁷For days should speak, I said, And multitude of years should wisdom teach.

⁸But surely there’s a⁶²³ spirit dwells in man, ’Tis Shaddai’s breath that gives intelligence.

⁹     Not always wise, the men of many⁶²⁴ years;

Elders there are who fail to know the right.

¹⁰For this I said: “O listen now to me, Let me, too, show my knowledge, even me.” ^{625 11}Lo! I have waited while ye spake; To all your reasonings have I given ⁶²⁶ heed, Whilst⁶²⁷ ye were trying words.

¹²Yes, unto you with earnest thought I look, And lo, there’s no one that convinces Job,— No one of you who truly answers him, ¹³Beware⁶²⁸ of sayings, we have wisdom⁶²⁹ found;

(Know ye) ’tis God that crushes him, not man.

¹⁴At me he hath not marshalled[630] words, Nor with your speeches will I answer him.

¹⁵     All broken down they fail to make reply;

(Some power) hath taken⁶³¹ all their words away.

¹⁶And still I waited though⁶³² they did not speak, But silent stood, ⁶³³ and offered no reply.

¹⁷     I too⁶³⁴ would answer I would bear my part;

Let me, too, show my thought.

¹⁸For I am filled with words; The spirit in my breast⁶³⁵ constraineth me.

¹⁹     My heart⁶³⁶ is full, as with unvented wine;

Like vessels new that are about to burst.

²⁰     Yes, I would speak⁶³⁷ that I may find relief—

Open my lips, and give it utterance.

²¹O let me not regard the face of man; To no one let me flattering titles⁶³⁸ give.

²²I know not how to flatter; were it so, Then would my Maker take me soon away.

Chapter 33 ¹And now⁶³⁹, O Job, but listen to my speech.—

Thine ear attentive to my every word.

²Behold I have unbarred⁶⁴⁰ my month; My tongue gives utterance⁶⁴¹ distinct.

³My words—they are my soul’s sincerity;⁶⁴² The truth I know, my lips do purely⁶⁴³ speak.

⁴God’s spirit made me man; [644] ’Twas Shaddai’s breath that gave me life.

⁵     If thou canst do it answer me;

Array⁶⁴⁵ thy words against me, take thy stand, ⁶To God⁶⁴⁶ belongs my beings, like ⁶⁴⁷thine own; And I, too, was divided⁶⁴⁸ from the clay.

⁷Behold, my terror shall not frighten thee, Nor heavy shall my hand⁶⁴⁹ upon thee press.

⁸But surely thou hast spoken in mine ears; The sound of words I hear [they seem to say]:

⁹     “A man without transgression—pure am I;

Yes, I am clean⁶⁵⁰—I have no sin.

¹⁰     Against me, Lo He seeketh grounds⁶⁵¹ of strife;

He counts me as his foe;

¹¹My feet He putteth in the stocks, And watcheth all my, ways.”

¹²Behold, in this, I answer thee, thou art not just; For know, Eloah is too⁶⁵² great for man.

¹³O why against Him dost thou make complaint, That by no word of His⁶⁵³ he answereth?

¹⁴     For God does speak—He speaketh once[654]—

Again, again—though man regard it not;

¹⁵In dreams, in visions of the night, In slumberings on the bed; When falls on men the overwhelming⁶⁵⁵ sleep.

¹⁶Then opens He their ear, And seals the warning given;

¹⁷To Make⁶⁵⁶ man put away his deed, To hide from man⁶⁵⁷ the way of pride.

¹⁸That from the pit He may keep back his soul, His life from passing on the spear.

¹⁹With anguish is he chastened on his bed— His every⁶⁵⁸ bone—a never-ceasing pain;

²⁰So that his very life⁶⁵⁹ abhorreth bread, His appetite⁶⁶⁰ rejects the once[661] -loved food.

²¹His flesh, from sight, it wastes away; His bones laid bare, before concealed⁶⁶² from view.

²²Unto perdition⁶⁶³ draweth nigh his soul; His life awaits the messengers of⁶⁶⁴ death.

²³And is there then an angel⁶⁶⁵ on his side,— The interceding one,—of thousands chief,— To make it known to man, ⁶⁶⁶ His righteousness;

²⁴     So does He show him grace, and say:

“Deliver him from going down to death; A ransom⁶⁶⁷ I have found.”

²⁵Moist as in childhood⁶⁶⁸ grows his flesh again, And to his youthful day does he return.

²⁶He prays to God and God accepts his prayer, To let him see His face with joy, And thus give back to man his righteousness.^{669 27}It is his song⁶⁷⁰ to men, and thus it says:

“I sinned, I made my way perverse, ⁶⁷¹ And it was not requited⁶⁷² me;

²⁸My soul hath He redeemed from passing to the grave, My life that it may yet behold the light.”

²⁹Behold! in all these ways, so dealeth God, Time after time, ⁶⁷³ and times again, with man;

³⁰His soul to rescue from the grave, That it may joy⁶⁷⁴ in light,—the light of those who live.

³¹Attend, O Job, give ear to me; Be still⁶⁷⁵ that I may speak.

³²     If thou hast words, then answer me;

Speak out; my wish is thy defence.

³³If not, then give to me thine ear; Be still, if I may wisely counsel thee.

Chapter 34 ¹And Elihu continued his reply and said:

²     Hear, O ye wise, my words;

Ye knowing ones give me your ear.

³It is the ear that trieth speech, As tastes the palate⁶⁷⁶ food.

⁴Let us then make the right our choice,[677] And aim to know between ns what is good.

⁵     For Job saith, “I am innocent;

’Tis God who puts away my cause.

⁶     Against my right shall I speak what is false?

Sore is my wound, but from no crime of mine.”

⁷Where is the mighty⁶⁷⁸ man like Job? Who like the water drinketh scorning down;

⁸Who⁶⁷⁹ joins the malefactor’s band, And walks the way of wicked men.

⁹For he has said: “It does no good to man, That he should take delight in God.”

¹⁰     To this⁶⁸⁰, ye wise of heart, my answer hear:

Away the thought; ⁶⁸¹ O far be God from wickedness;

O far be evil from the Almighty One.

¹¹For sure, the work of man, to him will He requite, And make him find according to his way.

¹²Yea, verily, ⁶⁸² God will not do the wrong; The Almighty One cannot pervert the right.

¹³Who gave⁶⁸³ to Him the charge of earth, And on it built the world?

¹⁴Should He think only of Himself, [684]— His breath and spirit (from the world) withdraw,—

¹⁵All flesh together would expire, [685] And man go back to dust.

¹⁶O could’st thou see it! ⁶⁸⁶ list to this, Give ear unto my words.

¹⁷A hater of the right; does he (the world) restrain? [687] The Just, the Mighty—Him shalt thou condemn? ^{688 18}Even to a king shall one say Belial? [689] To (earthly) powers, O wickedness?

¹⁹There’s One who favors not the face of kings, Who knoweth not the rich before the poor; For His own hands did make them all alike.

²⁰So suddenly they die (these mighty ones); At midnight rage the people—rush⁶⁹⁰ they on— And take away the strong; ’tis by no (human) hand.

²¹     For sure His eyes are on the ways of men;

He seeth all their steps.

²²No darkness⁶⁹¹ is there, yea, no shade of death, Where men of evil deeds can hide themselves.

²³He needeth⁶⁹² not repeated scrutiny, When man to God in judgment comes.

²⁴He breaks the strong, in ways we cannot trace; ⁶⁹³ And setteth others in their stead.

²⁵     To this end knoweth He their works;

He overturns them in the⁶⁹⁴ night—they’re crushed.

²⁶[Again]—He smites the wicked as they⁶⁹⁵ stand, In open place, where all behold the sight.

²⁷It is for this, because they turned aside, And disregarded all His ways;

²⁸To bring before His⁶⁹⁶ face the poor man’s cry, That He should hear the plaint of the oppressed.

²⁹When He gives quiet, who can then⁶⁹⁷ disturb? Or who can trace Him, when He hides his face, Whether towards a nation or a man?

³⁰Whether against⁶⁹⁸ the ruling of the vile, Or those who of the people make⁶⁹⁹ a prey?

³¹     For O had he but said⁷⁰⁰ to God:

“I bear it.—I will not offend;

³²Beyond what I behold, O teach thou me; Have I done evil, I will do no more.”

³³On thine own terms,⁷⁰¹ shall He requite [and say], “As thou dost spurn or choose [so be it], not as⁷⁰² I?”

³⁴Let men of understanding say,— Or any strong and wise⁷⁰³ who hears me now.

³⁵Job speaks in ignorance, And without understanding are his words.

³⁶O would that Job were proved to the extreme, For his replies like those of evil men.

³⁷     For sure he adds rebellion to his sin;

Among us in defiance claps his hands, And still at God doth multiply his words.

Chapter 35 ¹And Elihu⁷⁰⁴ answered and said:

²     Dost thou hold this for right?

Thou said’st, I am more just than God.

³     Yes—thou⁷⁰⁵ dost say it: “what the gain to thee?”

What profit have I, more than from my sin?”

⁴I answer thee; And thy companions⁷⁰⁶ who take part with thee;

⁵     Look to the heavens and see;

Behold the skies so high above thy head.

⁶     If thou hast sinned, what doest⁷⁰⁷ thou to Him?

If many are thy sins, what doest thou to Him?

⁷     If thou art just, what givest thou to Him?

What profit from thy hand does He receive?

⁸     To one just like thyself pertains thy wrong;

Unto the son of man⁷⁰⁸ thy righteousness.

⁹     “From hosts of men oppressed⁷⁰⁹ the cries resound;”

[So sayest thou⁷¹⁰]; “they groan beneath the tyrant’s arm.”

¹⁰But no one saith,⁷¹¹ “where is my maker God; Who in the night⁷¹² time giveth songs⁷¹³ of praise?

¹¹Who teacheth us beyond⁷¹⁴ the beasts of earth, And makes us wiser than the birds of heaven.”

¹²Thus⁷¹⁵ is it that He hears not when they cry By reason of the pride of evil men.

¹³For God will not hear vanity; Nor will the Almighty hold it in regard.

¹⁴Yes, even⁷¹⁶ when thou sayest, thou seest Him not, There is judgment still before Him—therefore wait.

¹⁵But now, because His anger visits⁷¹⁷ not, Nor strictly⁷¹⁸ marks wide-spread⁷¹⁹ iniquity, ¹⁶Job fills his mouth with vanity, And without knowledge multiplieth words.

Chapter 36 ¹Then Elihu continued and said:

²A moment wait⁷²⁰ that I may show thee still, That there are words for⁷²¹ God.

³     Unto the Far⁷²² will I lift up my thought;

’Tis to my Maker⁷²³ I ascribe the right.

⁴     Indeed, there is no dissembling in my word;

It is the all-knowing One⁷²⁴ that deals with thee.

⁵     Lo—God is great,⁷²⁵ but nought does He⁷²⁶ despise;

Great in the power of His intelligence.

⁶He will not “let the wicked⁷²⁷ live;” And justice will He render to the poor.

⁷His eye He takes not⁷²⁸ from the righteous man; With kings upon the throne, He makes them sit in glory;⁷²⁹ they are raised on high.

⁸Again, when bound in iron chains,⁷³⁰ And held in sorrow’s bands, ⁹Then showeth He to them what they have done, Their oversteppings,⁷³¹ how they’ve walked in pride.

¹⁰Thus openeth He their ear to discipline, And warns them that from evil they turn⁷³² back.

¹¹If they will listen and obey, Then shall they spend their days in good, Their years in joyfulness.

¹²If they hear not, they perish by the sword, And without knowledge⁷³³ shall, they yield their breath.

¹³     But those impure⁷³⁴ in heart, they treasure wrath;

Such cry not⁷³⁵ when He bindeth them.

¹⁴Their very soul dies⁷³⁶ in them in their youth; Their life, it is a living with the⁷³⁷ vile.

¹⁵Yet in his suffering⁷³⁸ saveth He the poor; In straitening openeth He their ear.

¹⁶Thus thee, too, would He draw⁷³⁹ from trouble’s mouth, To a broad place,⁷⁴⁰ no straitening underneath, With richest food⁷⁴¹ the spreading⁷⁴² of thy board.

¹⁷     But hast thou⁷⁴³ filled the judgment of the bad;

Judgment and Justice will lay hold on thee.

¹⁸For there is wrath;⁷⁴⁴ see lest it stir thee up against the blow;⁷⁴⁵ Then a great ransom may not turn thy⁷⁴⁶ scale.

¹⁹Thy wealth⁷⁴⁷ its price! no treasure here avails Nor all the powers⁷⁴⁸ of might.

²⁰O long not for the⁷⁴⁹ night,— The going up of nations in their place.

²¹Take heed—turn not thy face⁷⁵⁰ to sin, For this thou choosest⁷⁵¹ more than suffering.

²²Lo God exalteth by His power. Who is a teacher like to Him?

²³Who is it that assigns⁷⁵² to Him His way? Or who can say to Him, Thou doest wrong?

²⁴Remember that thou magnify His work, Which men so celebrate.

²⁵With wonder gaze they⁷⁵³ on it, Adam’s race, And every man⁷⁵⁴ beholds it from afar.

²⁶     Lo God is great,⁷⁵⁵ we know Him not;

Unsearchable the number of His years.

²⁷     For He it is who draws⁷⁵⁶ the water drops;

Whence they distil to rain in place of⁷⁵⁷ mist;

²⁸Even that with which the heavens⁷⁵⁸ flow down, And drop on man abundantly.

²⁹Is there⁷⁵⁹ who understands the floatings⁷⁶⁰ of the cloud, The thunderings⁷⁶¹ of His canopy?

³⁰Behold, upon it⁷⁶² spreadeth He the light, Whilst darkening⁷⁶³ the sea’s profoundest depths.

³¹(Yet, ’tis by these that He the nations rules, And giveth food in rich supply).

³²O’er either⁷⁶⁴ hand the lightning doth He⁷⁶⁵ wrap, And giveth it commandment where⁷⁶⁶ to strike.

³³Of this the⁷⁶⁷ crashing roar⁷⁶⁸ makes quick report, While frightened herds announce the ascending⁷⁶⁹ flame.

Chapter 37 ¹At such a sight,⁷⁷⁰ with shuddering fear my heart Leaps wildly⁷⁷¹ from its place.

²Hear ye, O hear the roaring⁷⁷² of His voice, The deep reverberation⁷⁷³ from His mouth;

³As under all the heavens He sends⁷⁷⁴ it forth,— His lightning to the edges⁷⁷⁵ of the earth.

⁴Then after it resounds a voice, The glorious voice⁷⁷⁶ with which He thundereth.

One cannot trace⁷⁷⁷ them when their sound is heard.

⁵     Yes, with His voice⁷⁷⁸ God thunders marvellously;

Great things does He; we understand Him not.

⁶     For to the snow He saith, be thou⁷⁷⁹ upon the earth;

Thus also to the pouring⁷⁸⁰ rain, His mighty⁷⁸¹ flooding rain.

⁷The hand of every man He sealeth⁷⁸² up; That all may know—all men whom He has⁷⁸³ made.

⁸Then go the beasts,⁷⁸⁴ each to his hiding place; And in their dens abide.

⁹From the dark⁷⁸⁵ South proceeds the⁷⁸⁶ sweeping storm, From the Mezarim⁷⁸⁷ comes the chilling blast.

¹⁰From God’s own breath the hoar frost⁷⁸⁸ is congealed; By it the water’s breadth is firmly⁷⁸⁹ bound.

¹¹Through drenching⁷⁹⁰ rain the dense cloud He exhausts, The thin light-breaking⁷⁹¹ cloud He scattereth.

¹²In circling⁷⁹² changes is it thus transformed,⁷⁹³ By His wise laws,⁷⁹⁴ that they may execute All His commands o’er all the sphere of⁷⁹⁵ earth;

¹³Whether as punishment, or for His land, Or in His mercy He appointeth⁷⁹⁶ it.

¹⁴O Job! give ear to this; Be still and contemplate God’s wondrous works.

¹⁵Knowest thou how over these Eloah laid His laws, Or from the cloudy darkness⁷⁹⁷ streams the light?

¹⁶Knowest thou the poisings⁷⁹⁸ of the cloud, The wondrous works of Him whose knowledge has no bound?

¹⁷(Or how it is) what time thy robes are warm; When from the South the land in sultry⁷⁹⁹ stillness rests?

¹⁸Dost thou with Him spread out the skies So strong—so like⁸⁰⁰ a molten mirror smooth?

¹⁹     O teach us what to say!

We cannot speak aright⁸⁰¹,—so dark it grows.^{802 20}Ah, is it told⁸⁰³ to Him that I am speaking! Has one so said?⁸⁰⁴ take care lest he be swallowed up.

²¹And now the lightning⁸⁰⁵ they no longer see,— That splendor⁸⁰⁶ in the clouds;⁸⁰⁷ The wind has passed and made them clear.

²²     From the North⁸⁰⁸ it comes, a golden⁸⁰⁹ sheen;

O, with Eloah there is awful majesty!

²³The Almighty One! we cannot find Him out; So vast His power! So full of truth and right; He’ll not⁸¹⁰ oppress.

²⁴For this do men hold Him in reverence; For He regardeth not the wise of heart.⁸¹¹

Chapter 38 ¹Then Jehovah answered Job out of the whirlwind;⁸¹² and He said:

²Who is it thus, by words makes counsel⁸¹³ dark? Not knowing⁸¹⁴ what he says?

³     Now like a strong⁸¹⁵ man gird thee up thy loins;

’Tis I who ask thee; show me what thou knowest.

⁴     Say, where wast thou when earth’s deep base I laid?

Declare it if thy science⁸¹⁶ goes so far.

⁵Who fixed its measurements, that thou⁸¹⁷ should’st know; Or on it stretched the line?

⁶On what were its foundations sunk? Who laid its corner-stone?

⁷When morning stars in chorus⁸¹⁸ sang; And cried aloud for joy, the sons of God.

⁸Or who shut up the sea with doors, When it gushed forth—when from the womb it came?

⁹What time I made its raiment of the cloud, The dark araphel⁸¹⁹ for its swaddling band?

¹⁰When I broke⁸²⁰ over it my law, And set its bars and doors?

¹¹And said, thus far, no farther, shalt thou come; And here it stops⁸²¹—the swelling of thy waves?

¹²Since thou wast born, hast thou the morn commanded, Or made the day spring know its place?

¹³To reach the utmost limits⁸²² of the earth, When from its face the wicked flee⁸²³ dismayed?

¹⁴Transformed⁸²⁴ like clay beneath⁸²⁵ the seal, All things stand forth a fair⁸²⁶ embroidered robe;

¹⁵Whilst from the wicked is their light⁸²⁷ withheld, And broken the uplifted⁸²⁸ arm.

¹⁶To the fountains of the sea hast thou gone down? Or walked the abysmal⁸²⁹ depths?

¹⁷The gates of death, have they been shown⁸³⁰ to thee? The realm of⁸³¹ shades, its entrance hast thou seen?

¹⁸     Or even⁸³² the breadth of earth hast thou surveyed?

Say, if thou knowest it⁸³³ all.

¹⁹The way,—where is it, to light’s dwelling⁸³⁴ place? And darkness,⁸³⁵ where the place of its abode?

²⁰That thou should’st take it to its⁸³⁶ bounds, Or know the way that leadeth to its⁸³⁷ house?

²¹Thou know!⁸³⁸ It must be that thou then wast born, And great the number of thy years.

²²The treasures of the snow hast thou⁸³⁹ approached? Or seen the store-house of the hail?

²³Which for the time of trouble I reserve,⁸⁴⁰ The day when hosts draw near⁸⁴¹ in battle strife.

²⁴Where is the way by which the lightning⁸⁴² parts?⁸⁴³ How drives⁸⁴⁴ the rushing tempest⁸⁴⁵ o’er the land?

²⁵Who made a channel for the swelling flood? A way appointed⁸⁴⁶ for the thunder flash?—

²⁶To make it rain on lands where no one dwells, Upon the desert, uninhabited?

²⁷To irrigate⁸⁴⁷ the regions wild and waste, As well⁸⁴⁸ as cause to spring the budding grass.

²⁸Is there a father⁸⁴⁹ to the rain? The drops of dew, who hath begotten⁸⁵⁰ them?

²⁹     Out of whose womb came forth the ice?

Heaven’s hoar frost, who hath⁸⁵¹ gendered it?

³⁰As by a stone⁸⁵² the streams are hid from sight, And firmly bound⁸⁵³ the faces of the deep.

³¹Canst thou together bind the clustering⁸⁵⁴ Pleiades? Or loose Orion’s bands?

³²Canst thou lead forth Mazzaroth⁸⁵⁵ in its times, Or guide the ways of Arctos⁸⁵⁶ with her sons?

³³The statutes of the heavens knowest thou? Their ruling⁸⁵⁷ in the earth canst thou dispose?

³⁴To the clouds canst thou lift up thy voice, That floods of rain may cover thee?

³⁵Lightnings canst thou send forth, that they should go, And say, Behold us! Here we are?

³⁶Who hath put wisdom in the inward⁸⁵⁸ parts? Or who hath given discernment to the⁸⁵⁹ sense?

³⁷Who, by his wisdom, rules⁸⁶⁰ the clouds? Or who inclines⁸⁶¹ the vessels of the skies?

³⁸When dust becomes a molten mass, And clods together cleave?

³⁹For the lioness dost thou provide the prey, Or still the craving of her young?

⁴⁰When in their wonted lairs they lay them down, Or in the jungle thickets lie in wait.

⁴¹Who for the raven maketh sure its prey, meat, When unto God her children cry, And wander⁸⁶² without food?

Chapter 39

¹The goats that climb the rock, knowest thou their bearing time? Or dost thou mark it, how the hinds bring⁸⁶³ forth?

²The months they fill, is this thy⁸⁶⁴ numbering? Their hour of travail, is it known to thee?

³They bow themselves, their offspring cleave⁸⁶⁵ the womb; Their sorrows⁸⁶⁶ they cast forth.

⁴Strong are their young as on the plains⁸⁶⁷ they grow, And wander from them to return no more.

⁵Who sent the wild ass free? Or loosed the Zebra’s⁸⁶⁸ bands?

⁶Whose home the desert I have made, The salt and barren waste his haunts.

⁷’Tis sport to him the city’s noise; The driver’s ringing shouts, he hears them not.

⁸     The mountain range his pasture ground;

There roams⁸⁶⁹ he searching every blade⁸⁷⁰ of grass.

⁹The Oryx,⁸⁷¹ will he be thy willing⁸⁷² slave? Or in thy stall contented make his home?

¹⁰As in a furrow canst thou bind his cord? To plane⁸⁷³ the valleys will he follow thee?

¹¹Ah, trust him ! wilt thou? for his strength is great! Or leave to him the produce of thy toil?

¹²Canst thou be sure he will bring home thy seed? Or gather it to form thy threshing floor?

¹³The Ostrich⁸⁷⁴ wing that flaps so joyously! Is it the feathered pinion of the stork?^{875 14}Nay⁸⁷⁶—she it is that leaves her eggs to earth, And warms them in the dust, ¹⁵Forgetting that the foot may crush,— The roaming beast may trample them.

¹⁶Hard⁸⁷⁷ is she to her young, as though not hers; In vain her labor since she has no fear.

¹⁷For God hath made her mindless,⁸⁷⁸ void of thought, No share of knowledge hath he given her.

¹⁸But when on high she boldly lifts⁸⁷⁹ herself, The horse and horseman both alike she scorns.

¹⁹     To the war-horse gavest thou his strength?

Didst thou with thunder⁸⁸⁰ clothe his neck?

²⁰     Or like the locust canst thou make him bound?

There is glory⁸⁸¹ in his nostrils—terror there.

²¹He paws the plain, exulting in his might; And thus he goes to meet the armed⁸⁸² host.

²²He mocks at fear, at panics⁸⁸³ undismayed, He turns not back in presence of the sword.

²³Against him⁸⁸⁴ rings the quiver (of the foe), The glittering lance and spear.

²⁴     With rage and trembling swallows⁸⁸⁵ he the earth;

’Tis hard⁸⁸⁶ to hold him in when trumpets sound.

²⁵     At every blast he says—aha—aha.

Afar off snuffeth he the fight, The chieftains’ thunder and the shout of war.

²⁶From thine instruction soars aloft⁸⁸⁷ the hawk, And for the land of Teman spreads her wings?

²⁷Is it at thy command the eagle mounts, To make his nest on high?

²⁸The rock his dwelling; there he builds his home, The cliff’s sharp tooth, the castle’s battlement.

²⁹From thence his piercing⁸⁸⁸ eye looks out for food, And sees it from afar.

³⁰’Tis there his young ones suck⁸⁸⁹ the blood, Whilst where the slain are lying, there is he.

Chapter 40 ¹And Jehovah answered⁸⁹⁰ Job from the whirlwind and said:

²     As censurer,⁸⁹¹ with the Omnipotent to strive!

Contender with Eloah! let him answer it.

³     And Job answered⁸⁹² Jehovah and said:

⁴Lo I am vile,⁸⁹³ what shall I answer thee? My hand upon my mouth I lay.

⁵     Once have I spoken—I cannot reply—

Yea twice,⁸⁹⁴ but I will add no more.

⁶     Then Jehovah answered Job out of the storm-cloud and said:

⁷     Now like a strong man gird thy loins;

’Tis I who ask thee; tell me what thou knowest.

⁸     Wilt thou annul my right?

Condemn me that thou may’st be justified?

⁹Hast thou an arm like God? Or canst thou thunder with a voice like Him?

¹⁰Put on thee now thy glory and thy pride; With majesty and beauty deck thyself.

¹¹Then send abroad thy o’erflowing wrath; And look on every proud one,—bring him low.

¹²     Behold the lofty⁸⁹⁵—humble him;

Tread down the wicked in their⁸⁹⁶ place.

¹³Together hide them in the dust,— Their faces in the darkness⁸⁹⁷ bind;

¹⁴Then, too, will I confess⁸⁹⁸ to thee, Thine own right hand can save.

¹⁵Behold Behemoth⁸⁹⁹ now, Whom I have made with thee;

Just like the peaceful ox he eateth⁹⁰⁰ grass.

¹⁶Behold, what might is in his loins; The muscles of his belly,⁹⁰¹—there his strength.

¹⁷Like to a cedar⁹⁰² waveth he his tail, Whilst woven firm the sinews of his⁹⁰³ thighs.

¹⁸His bones⁹⁰⁴ are tubes of brass, His limbs like iron bars.

¹⁹     Chief is he of the ways of God;

It is his Maker who brings nigh⁹⁰⁵ His sword;

²⁰     And yet⁹⁰⁶ the hills his pasturage;

Whilst round him sport the species of the plain.

²¹Beneath the lote trees lies he down to rest, In covert of the reed—the (cooling) fen.

²²They weave for him his shade, Whilst round him spread the willows of the stream.

²³     Lo, the flood swells, he startles not;

Fearless although a⁹⁰⁷ Jordan dash against his mouth.

²⁴It is as though he took it with his⁹⁰⁸ eyes, As with his nose he pierceth through the nets.

Chapter 41 ¹With, a hook canst thou draw out Leviathan, Or with a line thou lettest down, his⁹⁰⁹ tongue?

²A rush branch through his nostrils canst thou place? Or with the thorny spine bore through his nose?

³Will he make many prayers to thee? Or will he say soft things to thee?

⁴Or with thee make a covenant, That thou should’st take him for thy slave forever?

⁵Wilt thou disport with him as with a bird? Or bind him (as a plaything) for thy maidens ⁶The caravans,⁹¹⁰ will they make trade for him? And then retail⁹¹¹ him to the⁹¹² Canaanites?

⁷With barbed irons canst thou fill his skin? His head with fishing⁹¹³ spears?

⁸     Upon him lay thy hand;

Think of the battle—do no more.

⁹     Behold the hope (of taking him) is vain;

Yea at the very sight is one cast down.

¹⁰     There is none so desperate to stir⁹¹⁴ him up;

Before Me then (his⁹¹⁵ Maker) who shall stand?

¹¹     Who hath first given, that I should him repay?

Since every thing beneath the heavens is mine?

¹²But I must not in silence⁹¹⁶ pass his limbs, His strength, his well-proportioned⁹¹⁷ build.

¹³His coat of mail,⁹¹⁸ who hath revealed its front? The doubling of his jaws,⁹¹⁹ who enters there?

¹⁴The doors that shut his face, who opens them? The circuits of his teeth—how⁹²⁰ terrible!

¹⁵     ’Tis a proud sight,⁹²¹ the grooves that form his shield;

Each one a seal, shut close and firmly bound.

¹⁶So near do they to one another join, The very wind between them cannot pass.

¹⁷     Each to his fellow cleaves;

Firmly they hold; there is no parting them.

¹⁸His sneezings⁹²² sparkle with the light; His eyes are like the eyelids of the dawn.

¹⁹Forth from his mouth go burning⁹²³ lamps, And sparks of fire set⁹²⁴ free.

²⁰Out of his nostrils goeth forth a smoke; As from a caldron blown, or seething⁹²⁵ pot.

²¹His breath enkindleth coals; A tongue⁹²⁶ of flame seems issuing from his mouth.

²²     Strength dwelleth ever in his neck;

Before him (as a courier) terror⁹²⁷ runs;

²³     His fleshy folds, how firmly do they cleave!

Hard bound upon him—all immovable.

²⁴     His heart is molten as a stone;

Yea, like the nether millstone petrified.

²⁵Whene’er he rises up the mighty are afraid; In breaking terrors go they all astray.

²⁶Though one may reach⁹²⁸ him with the sword, it holdeth not; Nor spear avails, nor dart, nor coat of mail.

²⁷The iron he esteems as straw, And brass as brittle wood.

²⁸     The archer cannot make him flee;

Sling-stones are turned⁹²⁹ to chaff.

²⁹Like stubble are they held,⁹³⁰ the ponderous mace, The shaking of the spear—he laughs at all.

³⁰Sharp pointed shards⁹³¹ beneath him lie; A threshing drag he spreads upon the mire.

³¹Like a caldron causes he the deep to foam, Or like an ointment pot, the⁹³² Nile.

³²     Behind he makes a sparkling path to shine;

One takes the water flood for hoary hair.

³³On earth there is none to be compared with him, Created without fear.

³⁴On all high things⁹³³ he looketh (fearlessly), Himself the king o’er all the sons⁹³⁴ of pride.

Chapter 42 ¹Then Job answered Jehovah, and said:

²I know it now, all things⁹³⁵ are in Thy power, No thought of Thine can ever be withstayed.

³     “Who is this⁹³⁶ that without knowledge counsel hides?”

’Tis I then⁹³⁷ who have spoken foolishly;

Wonders too great for me, that I knew not.

⁴     But hear, O hear me now,⁹³⁸ and let me speak again.

“Tis I who ask” (thou sadist⁹³⁹ it) “let me know”

⁵By the ear’s hearing⁹⁴⁰ have I heard of thee; But now mine eyes behold.

⁶This, then,⁹⁴¹ (mine only⁹⁴² word): I loathe me,⁹⁴³ I repent, In dust and ashes.

⁷And it was so that after the Lord had spoken these words unto Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends; because ye have not spoken unto⁹⁴⁴ me the thing that is firm,⁹⁴⁵ as my servant Job hath.

⁸Now then take unto you seven bullocks and seven rams, and go unto my servant Job, and offer up a burnt offering for you. But⁹⁴⁶ his face will I accept, that I may not deal with you after your folly; for ye have not spoken unto me the right thing, as my servant Job.

⁹Then went Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, and did as the Lord had spoken unto them, and the Lord accepted the face⁹⁴⁷ of Job.

¹⁰And the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed⁹⁴⁸ for his friends. And the Lord increased all that Job had, twofold.

¹¹Then there came unto him all his brethren and all his sisters, and all that had been of his acquaintance before, and they did eat bread with him in his house, and they mourned with him, and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him; every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one a ring of gold.

¹²So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning; for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses.

¹³He had also seven sons and three daughters.

¹⁴And he called the name of the first Jemima, and the name of the second, Kezia, and the name of the third Keren-happuch.

¹⁵And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job; and their father gave them an inheritance among their brethren.

¹⁶And Job lived after this⁹⁴⁹ a hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, even four generations.

¹⁷So Job died old and full of years.

ADDENDA

____________ A SERIES OF DISSERTATIONS on the MORE DIFFICULT PASSAGES OF THE BOOK and on Questions Of Interest Suggested By Them

ADDENDA

______

EXCURSUS I

Job 19:25-27.

I know that my redeemer lives;. And o’er my dust, survivor, shall he stand. My skin all gone, this [remnant] they may rend, But from my flesh shall I Eloah see; Shall see him mine;——

Mine eyes shall see him—stranger now no more.

If this passage were taken by itself, it might be entitled, “A Psalm of Job, the Suffering and the Tempted Man of God.” It might have for its prefatory motto הִגָּיוֹן, a raptuturous Meditation, or an Ecstatic Burst of Joy, at the thought of seeing his Redeemer, his once seemingly alien, but now reconciled, God. There is something in it which suggests the glorious language at the close of the 16th Psalm:

Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades;

Thou wilt not suffer thy Beloved to see corruption.

Thou wilt make me know the way of life;

Fulness of joy a in thy presence, Glories at Thy right band forever more. That Psalm is entitled מִכְתָּם which the LXX. have well rendered στηλογραφία, a monumental engraving, or pillar writing, from the Hebrew כתם, to cut in, engrave—not for מכתב, as some think, but an independent root, wrongly rendered maculatus by Gesenius, Jeremiah 2:22. It is rather, “indelibly cut in,” or deeply marked, as E. V. has it—the Syriac sense being wholly a secondary one, and the name for gold, כֶּתֶם, coming from the idea of coining or stamping. The application of these words to Christ by the Apostle Peter would warrant us in styling it the Saviour’s monumental inscription, to be placed on the holy sepulchre, if its site were really known. The internal evidence warrants us in regarding these memorable words of Job in a similar light, whilst the language prefacing it, vers. 23, 24, leaves no doubt of its appropriate monumental character, whether used for the Redeemer or the redeemed. The conjunction ו would not militate against this, since it merely shows a connection as it stands, but becoming redundant when the passage is taken separately, like the Greek ὅτι left untranslated in New Testament quotations. The passage has ever been regarded as a most remarkable one. In order to its right interpretation, the first thing is to determine the points that are perfectly clear. They will give us the meaning of the rest, and of the whole. The ideas which admit of no doubt may be thus stated: 1. Job’s feeling—after a season of great despondency—that he had something most important to announce (vers. 23, 24). An idea has somehow suddenly sprung up in his mind, which he wishes so engraved, so cut in the rock, that it may never be lost. It is something for the world to know. This alone is sufficient to show that it is more than a hope of getting back again his sheep and camels, as some of the lowest Rationalists regard it. 2. There is One whom he calls his Goel, avenger or redeemer, who will be the power of his deliverance. This Redeemer is described as אַחֲרון, one after him, who is to stand, עַל עָפָר, over dust, whether it means his dust, or dust generally, as a name for earth, or for the dead, as is the case in other passages (see שֹׁכְנֵי עָפָר, dwellers in dust, Isaiah 26:19; also Psalms 22:30; Genesis 3:19; Psalms 104:29, et al.). 3. There is a clear allusion to his body, his skin, and something remaining after his skin, which is to be destroyed without destroying him. 4. He is to see God. Language cannot be clearer than that by which this is expressed. Two distinct verbs of sight are used, and the declaration is made three times in the most emphatic manner. 5. He is to see God reconciled, no more a stranger, זר, or an enemy, צר (as he seems to describe him, or some hostile power that God permits, Job 16:9). The view entertained by Gesenius, Umbreit, Vaihinger, Stickel, Hahn and Von Hoffmann (as above), and that of Schlottmann” and Delitzsch, referring זר to Job, come, in this respect, to the same thing. 6. There is unmistakable language expressing an ecstatic rapture at the thought conceived, and an ardent longing for its fulfilment. So far the passage is clear. Now, for particular words. גֹּאֵל, ver. 25. All render this word Redeemer. But the Scripture, uses it in two ways. The oldest sense of גֹּאֵל, the Avenger of blood, comes directly from the primary meaning to be stained, stained with blood. In this sense, the גֹּאֵל is the next of kin (Nachmann), stained with the blood of the murdered man until he avenges him by slaying his murderer. This is the idea on what may be called the criminal side of the ancient jurisprudence. Thence it passes to the civil. Here the Goel, the Nachmann, the next of kin, is the one who buys back (redeems) the lost inheritance. The other is the older usage, and it seems the more strange, therefore, that Olshausen, as quoted by Conant, should say so positively: “Der Bluträcher gehört in keiner weise hieher.” On the contrary, everything points to this idea. Job regards himself as one murdered by a cruel enemy, and the prologue, whether we accept it historically or dramatically, confirms it in the strictest sense. Satan was his murderer, and the Goel is the great Redeemer promised Genesis 3:15, and of whom, as the human Avenger and Deliverer (the θεάνθρωπος, a divine kinsman), some trace is preserved in all mythologies, besides appearing so prominently in the Prophets as the אֵל גִּבּור, the Militant or Hero Messiah. The presence of the avenging idea in his mind is shown by the language, Job 16:18 : O Earth, cover not thou my blood (see note on that passage). And so, too, in regard to the word אַחֲרוֹן; if a Hebrew term were to be invented to express Nachmann, no one would be more appropriate to it than this. For the best interpretation of על עפר see Delitzsch. The pronoun being omitted does not weaken the view. Its absence allows us to regard it as spoken of the human dust generally, all the dead, although Job must have had primary reference to himself. Ch. Job 41:25 shows that the phrase may be taken of the earth, generally, as place, if the context demands it; but here, where Job is speaking of his decaying and already decomposing body, everything points to that mournful sense of dust which is first found in Genesis 3:19, as denoting that out of which man was formed, and to which he returns. From this it pervades the scriptural language, and becomes a name for the material of the human body, even before death: “who am but dust and ashes.” The difficulty in regard to נִקְּפוּ, a strong Piel verb, denoting sharp cutting or biting, comes from overlooking the prínciple mentioned in the note to Job 7:3, and the illustrations there furnished from Job 4:19; Job 18:18; Job 34:20; Psalms 49:15; Luke 12:20, and other places. The same reason prevails here. The agent is something fearful or loathsome, causing aversion to the very mentioning of the name. Our E. V. and the earlier translations took the right general view, whatever may have been their applications. The agent here is most probably worms. It may be that Job thought of the worms destroying his flesh in the grave; but that is not as likely as the reference to the worms then crawling on his diseased body, and of which he speaks Job 7:5. They must have been a source of great torment as well as of loathing, and their being something in open sight would account, along with the other reason, for his not naming them, except by the implied pronoun. There may have been a gesture (δεικτικῶς); but there is hardly need of the supposition, either in regard to the biting worms or the wretched fragment of a body. In the case of such objects, the eyes interpreted everything, and the fewest words were the most impressive. They and this are all that is needed.

After my skin. This denotes the more interior and vital parts of the body until it is all sore and corroded. The view gives force to Schlottmann’s argument, that מִבְשָׂרִי means “without his flesh,” supposed to be all gone in consequence of the process previously imagined. It was thought best to render מִבְשָׂרִי in the most literal manner, from my flesh; since the translator found it difficult to decide, with certainty, which of the views taken of מ is the right one (from as a position, or from as meaning without), and therefore left it in English with the same ambiguity it has in the Hebrew. The weight of evidence, however, is on the side of a total disembodiment. And here it may be remarked, that the true force of the passage, as testimony, would seem actually weakened by overstraining it into a dogmatic teaching or anticipation of the New Testament doctrine of the resurrection. This would involve the idea of an outward supernatural revelation, made directly by an outward divine influence upon the mind; for Job could not have thought it otherwise. The other supposes it an idea brought out of him in his extreme anguish, his experience of the vanishing body with the soul yet vigorous, and his strong yearning after the reconciled presence of God. It is such a sudden flashing up of hope as might be believed to come from such a state. The Scripture has also more power for us in this way, when we feel its revelations to be thus brought out of the depths of the soul—revelations all the more divine by being thus, in God’s providence, pressed out of the human, than if they had been outwardly and mechanically given as dogmatic truths. Shall see him mine; לִי, for me, on my side; a stranger now no more; לֹא זָר, or estranged; or as he might have said, לא צר, no longer an enemy, as he seemed to be Job 16:9. For the interpretation of בחכיכליותי בחקי, there can be nothing happier than that of Ewald, whose rationalizing might be almost forgiven him for the spiritual insight and enthusiastic feeling he manifests in his description of the state of soul these words express: So dass er endlich im höchsten Entzücken wie vergehend ausruft, O ich vergehe fast vor freudigem Beben und höchster Sehnsucht! “So that finally in the highest rapture, like one wholly overcome, he cries out: ‘O I faint, I am almost gone, from joyous emotion and the high intensity of desire.’” (See Introduction Theism, pa. 8, where this passage is more fully treated in connection with Ch. Job 14:14.) That the full rendering given to that impressive word כלו by the translator, is not beyond its fair significance, will appear from its use Psalms 84:3 : “Longs my soul, faints my soul (כלתה),—“my heart and my flesh cry out, O living God, for thee.” So Psalms 63:2 : “Thirsts for thee my soul—longs for thee my flesh—so to see thy glory, as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.” Compare also Psalms 119:81 : “Faints my soul for thy salvation” (כלתה נפּשי). And here it may be well to note what it was for which Job so longed. It goes not only beyond the common worldly good, but also what might be esteemed a high religious aspiration. It is not the recovery of his lost oxen and camels, as observed before; it was not the restoration of his family joys, though he speaks so feelingly (Job 16:7) of his “desolated household;” it is not the thought of living again merely in another existence; it is not the bliss of that Vedaic Paradise of flowers and sunshine which Merx describes as so surpassing the darker Shemitic conceptions (see Int. Theism, pa. 16). The intense desire which makes him faint away is for reconciliation with God, to behold him as a friend, a stranger now no more, as one “whose favor is life, whose loving-kindness is more than life.” This was the Hebrew and Patriarchal piety which we now think so far behind our own. It appears, as has been said (Int. Theism, pa. 5), even in their despondency when the thought of death as the close of their being had its most mournful aspect in the idea of bidding farewell to God: “I said, I shall no more see Jah, Jah (Jehovah the Lord), in the land of the living,” or among the living; Hezekiah’s Prayer, Isaiah 38:11. At other times it is the soul consoling itself with the idea of God surviving. In this very passage, חי would of itself express this, but the context demands it. It is not that the Redeemer lives merely, or is alive, but that he lives after Job, to stand over and watch his sacred dust. This is an idea prominent in that most expressive paraphrase of Watts which some would depise as uncritical and incorrect. It is a question of subordinate importance whether in this passage of Job there is taught dogmatically the doctrine of the resurrection of the body as held in our Christian articles, or whether there is only the thought of a spiritual beholding of the divine presence. “The power of an endless life” (see Int. Theism, pa. 4), a true resurrection power, is in it; and we may, therefore, regard the spirit of the words as expressed in those lines of the unpretending hymnist that may be found engraved, as Job wished it engraved, in so many of our rural burying-grounds:

God my Redeemer aver lives, And often from the skies, Looks down and watches o’er my dust, Till He shall bid it rise.

Though greedy worms devour my skin, And gnaw my wasting flesh, Yet He will build my bones again, And clothe them all afresh.

Then shall I see my Saviour’s face, With strong immortal eyes, And feast upon his unknown grace, With rapture and surprise.

Watts’ “strong immortal eyes” is a happy attempt to give the force of Job’s thrice-repeated beholding; whilst the “rapture and surprise” are justified by the expressive Hebrew words he had employed, כלו כליותי בחקי: “My reins faint in my bosom.” This was a turning point in Job’s experience. He is never afterwards, as Sanctius remarks, exactly the man he was before, or in the preceding parts of this discussion. He never again uses such language as came from him, chap. 3 and 16. Occasionally he relapses into despondency, but it is of an humbler and gentler kind. The dark hour is over; the anger, the impatience, the bitterness, seem gone. He still wonders at the unexplained mysteries of God’s providence towards the righteous, and the still more inexplicable enigma of his dealings with evil doers. This appears in chapters 21, 24 and 27; but in the same connection, he shows that he understands and can describe their final catastrophes as well as those who had wrongly charged him with holding that God actually and personally favors the wicked. In chap. 23, he mourns the hidings of the divine countenance; “O that I knew where I might find him;” but it is still with the great hope, weakened it may be, but not lost: “I cannot trace him, but He knoweth the way that I take, and when He hath sufficiently tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” In chap. 26, he shows that he can talk of the divine power and works as loftily as Bildad, though without his pretension. In chap. 28, we have his sublime soliloquy on the unknown and unknowable in the divine wisdom. In chap. 29, he mournfully recalls “the moons of old,” and mourns at the remembrance of his departed joys. In the most natural way, whilst disdaining all false humility, he recounts the acts which had made “the poor to bless him,” and “the widow’s heart to sing for joy.” Following this, in that most eloquent vindication, chap. 31 where his words come to a close, we find him challenging his accusers to a review of his life, and concluding with a most solemn appeal to the Punisher of falsehood and Vindicator of truth. It is all most truthful, as well as most pathetic, and so far from seeming like boasting, it adds to the power of that most humble confession which is brought from him, not by the arguments of his opponents, but by that divine presence at which he alone is melted, whilst the others stand confounded and amazed. Even here there abides with him the power of that glorious hope, tempering his confession, so as to bring forth the fruit of soothing penitence instead of fell despair. It was, in fact, this utterance of chap, 19, which begins that preparation for complete submission, and for the revelation of the divine favor, which commentators have so variously assigned in their artificial and unappreciative divisions of “the drama.”

EXCURSUS II A Remarkable Difference between the Speeches of Job and those of the other Speakers. The Pausing, Soliloquizing Character of the former, and the seeming Unconsciousness they betray of Surrounding Persons. Bearing of this feature on the alleged inconsistencies of Job 21–28

Job 21:17 How oft goes out the light of wicked men This is the rendering of our English Version, and it is the only one that would have been thought of, if there had not been supposed to he some exigentia loci that calls for another. It is the simplest and easiest translation of plain Hebrew words in the only sense in which they are found, wherever they occur in the Hebrew Scriptures. This supposed difficulty is in the apparently sudden change from a vivid description of the impunity and prosperity of the wicked to an equally vivid painting of their destruction. It may seem less strange, however, when we call to mind that there is a similar transition, Psalms 73. The wicked are there described as prospering: “their eyes stand out with fatness; they are not in trouble as other men;” the pious are stumbled at the sight, etc. Soon we have a very different strain commencing with that most suggestive particle אַךְ: “Yes, verily, Thou dost set slippery places for them; how are they brought to desolation as in a moment! they are consumed with terrors.” The transition, in itself considered, is equally striking; but in the interval, which is unmeasured for us, Asaph had “gone into the sanctuary;” whether it mean the outward temple or tabernacle, or the private sanctuary of his own pious meditations. There he recovered himself; there he saw that there was another side to the matter.

Here there is no interval of outward action, nor is there mentioned any subjective one. But a transition must have taken place. The consistency of the passage, even its dramatic consistency, demands something of the kind. It may have been very short—but a second or two in fact—for the thoughts often travel very far, and that, too, consecutively, in a brief interval of time. Is the supposition of such a pause an arbitrary one? or are there rational grounds to be found for it in the peculiar character of the drama, in the conditions of the speakers, especially the principal one, and in the modes of utterance natural to such conditions? In the very beginning, we are told, the friends sat a long time with Job in perfect silence; “for they saw that his suffering (הַכְּאֵב) was very great.” May we not suppose shorter intervals of a similar character to have occurred in other parts of the discussion, with resumptions seemingly sudden and disconnected? It is easy to imagine the scene. They wait for him while his short panting breath (Job 17:1) forbids his speaking, or when they see him drop his head and voice, and become absorbed in reverie. Such pauses, whether for these or other reasons, would especially occur in the speeches of Job. Those of the friends are direct and continuous. Whether it be argument, or appeal, or sententious and didactic lecturing, it goes straight on to its close; and there are few, if any, cases where we fail to see a direct connection throughout. This comes from their condition as cool, theoretical or oratorical pleaders, with nothing in their circumstances, bodily or spiritual, to produce such musing or ejaculatory pauses. The friends are, indeed, figurative and rhetorical; but Job is vehement, exclamatory, appealing, expostulating—crying out from his extreme anguish—now addressing the friends, then protesting unto God—praying, deprecating, at times talking or muttering to himself like a man in delirium. In one place (Job 9:35), he feels and says, that he “is not his perfect self,” in other words, out of his composed and rational mind. The friends may be always near him; yet he sometimes talks as one hardly conscious of their presence. Chapter 14 seems almost wholly made up of this unconscious soliloquizing. The same may be said of chapter 23. There are times when everything seems lost sight of but his pain and that ever-present feeling of God’s estrangement. Again, it is the haunting idea of some unseen malignant persecutor that breaks up the continuity of his thoughts, and drives him to what seems almost a frantic raving, as in some parts of ch, 16 This spasmodic style, and this unconscious, soliloquizing feature, which make such a difference between the speeches of Job and those of the friends, has not been sufficiently attended to by commentators. In it, perhaps, may he found the solution of many difficulties and a rational means of explaining the inconsequential appearance of many passages. If this be called an imagination, it has its rational warrant. The scene is easily called up. As he sits groaning in the ashes (Job 2:8), with head bowed down, in mournful silence—except when roused by some of their unfeeling taunts, or still more unfeeling exhortations to confession—his thoughts revolve in a way that grammatical rules cannot always connect, nor particles define. He starts from his musing, and, though it may have been but for a moment, his thoughts have drifted far, and, on resuming, they may even seem, perhaps, to be moving in what appears to be an opposite, direction. If we closely study the place, however, there will be found something which reveals the position of these pauses, as well as any stage marks could do. It gives us, too, a glimpse of what he has been thinking of in the interval, and which has deflected the current. This is indicated in various ways. It is sometimes the resuming particle, such as an אוּלָם, an אָמְנָם, an אַךְ, a גַּם, and sometimes a כי, coming in in such a manner that we cannot easily connect what follows with what, to the eye, had immediately preceded: ah yes—so it is—in very truth—yes, this also, etc. They refer to the intervening thought, a protest, it may be, an appeal, a prayer, a deprecation, some new fear, or some sudden hope, which colors all that follows. Sometimes such a pause is to be inferred from the context. It is revealed by an apodosis which has no protasis apparently, unless it can be thus supplied, or, it may be, by the mere abruptness of the language. Job’s religious emotions are to be regarded in the same way: now up, now down—sinking, as in Job 19:20-21; soaring, as in vers. 25–27 of the same chapter—utterly despondent, Job 14:10-12, then praying, ver. 13, finding encouragement from the prayer to put the great question, ver. 14, getting immediate assurance, as appears ver. 15, desponding again, ver. 19, and mourning as though death filled all his thoughts, vers. 21, 22. And so, too, after the great hope of chap. 19, lamenting again the hiding of God’s countenance, chap. Job 23 : “O that I knew where I might find Him.” In the speeches of the friends, we find, indeed, difficulties arising from the obscurities of rare words, or strange idioms; but they are philological, instead of logical. There are none of that peculiar kind we meet with in the musing and passionate appeals of Job. These may be passages perfectly clear in themselves; but the difficulty is that of finding the thought connection between them. The idea of a silent, soliloquizing or musing interval, be it more or less, elapsing between them, and during which the thoughts take a different direction, gives the only way of explaining, whilst furnishing, too, a strong argument that the explanation is real.

Thus here, in chap. 21, the first break of the kind is at ver. 16. To that point the description of the wicked is clearly continuous. Then we find language which certainly seems to make a jar with what precedes. There is something wrong, something to be deprecated, about the wicked after all. He stops and thinks; then raises his head and talks to himself. His language seems introspective, rather than addressed to any outside hearers. A new thought comes up: However prosperous they may sometimes seem to be, bad men have, after all, no security. They are not independent of a higher Power. Even when we see no break in their prosperity, there is something in it which excites distrust. Job “goes into the sanctuary” of his own thoughts. Then “understands he better about their end.” The interjection הֵן with which he begins, shows the new feeling. He calls attention to it as somewhat differing from what he had said, though not contradicting it:

Behold! Their good is not in their owe power; The way of wicked men, O be it far from me.

Another brief pause, and the other view is taken with still increasing confidence; ver. 16 being a transition facilitating its adoption.

One thing is quite clear. The more modern interpreters are right in supposing that in ver. 17, and in what follows, there is a reference to the very words the friends have used in various places, but it is not by way of irony, nor of sharp dissent that he employs them. They come up to his recollection with the feeling that there is truth in them, however one sided they may appear. It is, in fact, an assent, only expressed in a more impassioned way. This greatly one-sided picture of Zophar (chap. 20), leaving out, as it does, some of the most obvious facts belonging to a complete representation of the case, together with Job’s sense of its injustice as cruelly insinuated against himself, sets him strongly in the direction he first takes. He sees only that side. Then comes up the thought that he may be going too far, and committing, perhaps, the same one-sided error. He is proceeding towards the very position they had charged him with, namely that God actually favors the wicked. There is, too, something within him which tells him that he would not, after all, exchange his pain for their pleasure, even as he himself has painted it: “The counsel of the wicked be it far from me” (Job 21:16). And so, we may suppose, comes the intervening check and the confession expressed in brackets as really belonging to the feeling of the passage:

(Yes, truth ye say): How oft goes out the light of wicked men! When cornea upon them their calamity, And God in wrath allots them deadly pains! This third line has every appearance of being intended as a qualifying of what he had said above (2d clause of ver, 13) about their easy death. That may be often so; but other cases come to mind of their dying in pain and horror. So the Psalmist had said: “ There are no bands (or pangs, חַרְצֻבּוֹת, strictures, tortures, a word very similar to חֲבָלִים here) in their death.” But when the vision had been cleared by a higher power, he sees them “standing on slippery places and utterly consumed with terrors.”

What, then, is the fearful thought to which Job alludes, ver. 6, in view of the prosperity of the wicked? Which when I call to mind, then am I sore afraid, And trembling taketh hold on all my flesh. At first view, it would seem to be this prosperity in itself considered, as the object of his jealousy, that seems so awful to him; but what follows, after ver. 17, shows that even there another idea was mingling with this, and contained the real element of horror. The immunity of the wicked seen in one view, their downfall, their utter ruin, sometimes, here upon earth, so frequently seen in another (as shown by examples Job could not have been ignorant of, and that, too, coming often out of the very circumstances of their prosperity), the apparent absence of any rule or distinction in relation to it—all this produced a feeling of utter bewilderment and confusion; especially as called up by the thought of his own unintelligible affliction. Some wicked men prospered all through, others overthrown by the most dire calamities; he cannot understand it; taken in connection with his own case, it utterly dismays him. Is there one that rules over this dark enigmatical world? This is the question that appals him. He is again approaching the verge of that precipice he was so near Job 9:24. It was that dark thought of an undistinguishing physical fatality described Ecclesiastes 9:2 : The all, according as it is to all—one fate to all, The just, the vile, the good, the pure, the one with sin defiled; As to the good, so unto him that sins; As to the perjured, so to him who fears to break an oath. An indifferent Deity! The thought is horrible; he cannot bear it; perhaps there is no God at all. The suggestion terrifies him; trembling taketh hold on all his flesh, ver. 6. But here he is in a better state. The influence of that enrapturing hope (Job 19:25) has not been lost, and his faith in God is strengthened by that idea of a final judgment so clearly expressed ver. 30, notwithstanding the efforts that some have made to pervert it to a different and even an opposite meaning. It is that great idea which has shown itself in all the religious ethics of the world—the thought of a “judgment to come,” more deeply rooted in the moral constitution of man than even that of a future life when regarded irrespective of it. The idea may have accompanying it less of time and locality. It is attended with great eschatological difficulties, which even the Scripture does not fully clear up; but still it holds on. The human mind cannot wholly surrender it. At some time, and in some way, all shall be made right, however dense “the clouds and darkness” that now surround the throne of God. Such thoughts seem to mingle together in the mind of Job, as they are irregularly brought out in his introspective passionate way. In the course of the chapter there are other musings of a similar kind. In vers. 23–26, his thoughts wander to the differences in the deaths of individuals, whether religious or wicked, and there comes up again a similar skeptical feeling:

Alike do they lie down in dust. But it is no more at war with this higher view of the judgment, than the similar language in Ecclesiastes. In ver. 31 there is another seeming transition, describing the wicked man as carried to the tomb, just as the righteous is—and all, of every character, following on in the same thronged way. The conclusion is, “your comforting” (if ye will call it so) is in vain. It is only a partial view ye take, and there is, consequently, much of falsehood and deception in your answer; see ver. 34. In taking such a view of Job’s speeches, not merely in respect to this question of pauses, but in regard to their strange subjective character, their evident soliloquizing, their sudden changes, and the striking differences, in all these respects, between them and those of his friends, the first feeling is one of wonder at the dramatic skill which has thus depicted them. A deeper thinking carries us beyond this. It is not mere dramatic painting that we have before us. No one invented this character. It is a reality—a true soul-experience. A man did thus suffer; he was thus tempted and forsaken; he did thus speak. It is substantially true, as we have elsewhere attempted to show, in respect to the language of chap. 14 and 19 (Int. Theism, pa. 9). No human genius, even though accompanied by the highest skill in dramatic fiction that has been exhibited in modern times, ever so entered into the depths of the soul, or could have drawn such a picture, unless he drew from the life—not the outer merely, but the most interior life laid bare to him by some revelation of the human coming from a sphere above the plane of any mere human experience. We may say this with confidence when we consider what caricatures have been almost all attempts to draw the religious life as mere invented fiction, although taking all the aids they could get from the Scriptures. If such an experience is a thing unknown to writers of fiction now—if all their attempts to set it truly forth are failures—it was still more unknown, it was still more beyond the inventive powers of any ancient writers, if we may suppose any such attempts to have been made in the early day. This story of Job, his sufferings, his speeches, his prayers, his expostulations, his almost frantic appeals, his despondency, his despair, his exalted hope so soon followed by relapses into darkness, his deep penitence, his most pathetic confession, his full submission at the close—all this is from a higher than human pencil. Compare it with any thing in the literature of the world, whether we take the earlier or the later date. What is most remarkable throughout the whole is that cleaving unto God which no vehemence of expostulation can sunder, even though he seems to see the Almighty repelling his approach: “ Let Him slay me, still will I wait”—still “ trust in Him,” Job 13:15. And here we find the very centre of his deepest anguish. It was not mere bodily suffering that most affects him; though that seems to have been indescribably great. It is the thought of God as “ hiding His face from him.” But when it goes beyond even this, to the conception of God as estranged from the world, as utterly indifferent to the affairs of men—whence is in danger of losing the idea of a Providence altogether, and even of a personal God at all—it is this that drives him wild, that “fills him with terror,” and causes “trembling to take hold of all his flesh,” Job 21:6. Then, too, how is the contrast heightened when, in his lowest extremity, after that piteous cry, Job 19:21, there is suddenly let into his. mind the thought that he shall yet see Eloah—when and where he knows not, thinks not—see Him with his own eyes—see Him a “reconciled God,” no longer a stranger or an enemy. The hope fills hi soul with an insupportable rapture, under which his poor diseased body faints away, Vor freudigem Beben und hōchster Sehnsucht, as Ewald describes it without going at all beyond those strong Hebrew words, כָּלְוּ כִלְיוֹתַי בְּחֵקִי. No man, we say, invented this. His friends, men of pure and lofty thoughts, in themselves considered, could not understand it, and no cool writer of fiction could have made even an approach towards describing such an experience. There is nothing known to men by which they could draw such a character by mere dramatic delineation. It is indeed dramatic, but only as a part of God’s acted revelation in the world. The record of it, therefore, though through some human medium worthy of the sacred office, may be supposed to be made under the divine guidance, and in substantially true in the language, as well as in the acts, and in the soul-exercises recorded. In order to avoid what is deemed an inconsistency, and even a contradiction, in the speech of Job, many interpreters give to כַּמָה, in the 17th verse of chap. 21, the sense of how seldom instead of how often, making it almost equivalent to a denial that wicked men are ever visited with calamity at all. They then supply this particle before a number of clauses that follow: “How seldom goes out the lamp, &c.; how seldom does their destruction come upon them; how seldom are they as stubble, or as the chaff, which the wind drives away.” There is no reason, grammatical or philological, why they should not go on, in the same way, to supply it before the clauses of ver. Job 19 : “How seldom does Eloah treasure up his iniquity for his sons? How seldom does He requite (punish) him, so that he knows it?” The tenses and the order of the words are alike, and no reason except this supposed exigentia loci can be given why they should not be rendered in a similar way. Here, however, at ver. 19, the difficulty is supposed to be escaped, by giving the futures—though just like the futures before—the interrogative and imprecatory turns: “Will God treasure up his iniquity for his children (leaving him in prosperous impunity)? Rather let Him requite it to himself (the wicked man), that he may know.” Or the first clause of ver. 19 is taken as Job’s sarcastic quotation, or anticipation rather, of their own language: “God layeth up his iniquity for his children, does he? rather let Him repay it to the sinner himself.” It represents Job as holding that, with very rare exceptions, the wicked man is prospered during his own life, and that it is no answer to this to say that the evil comes upon his children. Job arraigns the divine conduct, and makes bold to say what God ought to do: “Rather let Him requite it to himself”—make him pay his own debts, not bring it on his poor children: “Let his own eyes see his own destruction; let him drink himself of the wrath of the Almighty.” Now this certainly represents Job in an awful light. It is not only a false view he holds of the wicked man’s lot, as unbroken prosperity, but a profane fault-finding with God for letting it come upon his children, instead of punishing the sinner himself. The kind of argument he is supposed to make in showing the injustice of this, is still more profane. “The wicked man is dead,” so is he made to reason—dead without pain (see ver. 13), and it cannot trouble him whether his children suffer or not; he has no will nor wish in the matter; there has been “peace in his day,” what difference does it make to him what comes after him. A more impious sentiment is not to be found in the whole book; a more impious sentiment is not to be found any where, than is here ascribed to Job. His strong language in other cases, with all its seeming irreverence, may be regarded as coming from spasms of intolerable pain, making him to cry out of seeming cruelty. His vehement expostulations with God, though sometimes terrific, do actually show the depth and the preciousness of the divine idea in his soul. It is revealed in his very despair. But here, in respect to matters outside of himself, he deliberately charges, or is supposed to charge, God with the grossest injustice, and profanely, nay, even sneeringly, advises Him as to what would be a more suitable proceeding: “Let Him requite it to the man himself, and not to his children, who are innocent, and about whom, now that he has gone, after having had his own selfish uninterrupted day of prosperity, he cares nothing;” for “what concern hath he in his house after him ?” On this hypothesis, these supposed interrogations of Job, are really the most direct assertions that the wicked man is very rarely, if he is ever, punished; whilst some of his language, thus regarded, is so directly in the face of other Scriptures as to give the Rationalist Umbreit the idea that it was intended for that very purpose: “‘How seldom are the wicked driven away like chaff before the wind?’ as though Job, or the writer of Job, meant to take a position directly in the face of the 1st Psalm.” This is Umbreit’s exegetical wisdom. He actually supposes a polemic intention here with respect to that portion of Scripture: Gegen eine einseitige und lieblose Auslegung dieses Psalms polemisirt recht eigentlich Hiob. Umbreit, p. 167. But to come back to the philological argument; all this is answered by turning to the Concordance of Noldius. This particle כמה is given by him as occurring in eleven passages cited. In no single place in the Scripture has it any other meaning than that of how often, how many, how long, !&c.—quot! quoties ! quanta ! There is not a single one in which the rendering how seldom, how rarely, how few, how little ( quantula ) would not wholly change or completely reverse the sense intended. Psalms 78:40 is referred to by Delitzsch and others, but a glance at the passage shows that it is the other way: כמה ימרוהו “how oft did they rebel against him?” That is, very often, sœpissime. Job 13:23 is cited as though כמה לי עונות should be read: “how few are my sins?” but this is felt at once to be out of harmony with the context and the spirit of the appeal. Whatever Job’s own opinion may have been as to the number of his sin?, the address is evidently made to one who is supposed to regard them as many. This is shown by what every reader must feel, namely, that the substitution there of how few for how many, takes away all the force of the supplication. It is 80 in other languages. Quot, quoties, quanta, ποσάκις, can never be rendered how few or how seldom; for that is a thing we seldom have occasion to ask about, whether the desire be to obtain information, or to express admiration, or wonder. The word for it in Hebrew, should there be occasion, would be מְעַט, with some interrogative or explanatory particle, as Job 10:20, הֲלֹא מְעַט יָמַי, “are not my days few?” (see also Isaiah 29:17); or some such kind of language as we have Psalms 39:5, “Make me to know (or let me know) the measure of my days מה היא what it is, מֶה חָדֵל אָנִי, how transient, how frail I am.” Another mode is resorted to by making Job’s language here to be ironic, but this is so inconsistent with the pathos and dignity of the passage, that it needs no formal answer.

Whatever ingenuity may be shown in such reconciling expositions, it becomes of no avail from the fact that the same supposed difficulty meets us in other places where no device of exegesis can get rid of it. Thus in ch. 27, from vers. 13 to 23, there is given by Job a most unmistakable picture of the doom of the wicked, painted in colors surpassing those of Zophar in ch. 20, or of any other one of the disputants: “His children are destroyed by the sword or by famine; his widow shall not weep; he buildeth his house like a moth; terrors take hold on him; a tempest stealeth him away in the night; as by a storm is he hurled out of his place (see Proverbs 14:32; 1 Samuel 25:29); God casts his vengeance upon himmen hiss him out of his place.” Very numerous and ingenious have been the attempts to settle the difficulty here, if it be a difficulty. Some would re-arrange the text, so as to give the passage to Zophar, in whose mouth they think it would be more consistent. Kennicott would bring in his numerous emendations. For other attempted solutions, see Conant’s very valuable annotation. Rosenmueller solves it in one way; Umbreit in another; some make it an interpolation, and so on. The perplexity is increased by the way in which each solver (Umbreit for example) dwells on the wisdom of his own solution, and so complacently eulogizes the genius of this most “skillful dramatic poet,” to whom he confidently ascribes it, whilst calling other attempts “Cimmerian darkness,” although their authors thought them as wise as his own. Ewald’s view of Job 27:13-23, although it cannot be accepted as a satisfactory solution on this hypothesis, contains some things worthy of note. “It is the turning-point,” he says, “in the development of Job’s dark destiny. The removal of the doubts presented demand, as it were, a new and sure beginning. Job begins to feel what an infinite salvation there lies in the consciousness of innocence, how through it he has been delivered in the most extreme peril, and now, with the great gain of a noble experience, and of inward strength acquired, stands on the threshold of a new time. This consciousness, so hardly won, has a retroactive effect upon his view of the dark side of life, giving him a stand point whence he may see how much there must be in the world and in God that is now incomprehensible, and that, though the wicked may seem to prosper, and the pious to suffer, yet is there an eternal order of development, in which innocence shall not be without its fruit, nor guilt go unpunished. Thus the doubts, not wholly set aside, but made more easy to bear, and deprived of their power to hurt, retire into the back-ground. Job has clearly expressed the yearning anticipations of his soul, and given utterance to the purest and highest truths, thereby gaining a full triumph, and taking the victor’s place in the contest. For he gives up nothing of his fundamental idea; since in reference to the whole matter in controversy, he returns to his first position, where he stands like a rock, maintaining his innocence against every assault.” Ewald, Das Buch Ijob, 2d Ed., pa. 245. This is very well said; but it contains some things far-fetched, however ingenious. It makes Job too logical. It strives too much after a doctrinal consistency, and yet in what is said about the new-acquired consciousness and the taking of new stand- points, there is something which may be claimed as substantially in harmony with what we have here endeavored to set forth, namely: that the emotional in Job, the musing, introspective temperament which is taken up with its own revolving exercises, and thinks little of outward consistency, is predominant in all he says—thereby presenting that striking contrast between his speeches and those of the friends, which cannot be too much insisted on in the interpretation of the Book. To sum up, it may be said, that in such passages as have occasioned this comment, Job is evidently affected by three influences—outward influences we might call them in partial distinction from the inward state on which we have been dwelling. He perceives the falsehood of the strong pictures of the wicked man’s misfortunes in this world, which the friends present as exceptionless and universal. He feels keenly, too, the injustice of their indirect application to himself; and all this sets him on the opposite tack, as we may say. After proceeding some distance in this direction, there comes in that higher consciousness of which Ewald speaks, modifying the description and even turning it the other way. That he does not perceive, and therefore makes no open provision against the logical or rhetorical jar, comes from the musing, pausing, introspective, outwardly unconscious, inwardly self-conscious, mode of thought and speech, so characteristic of him, or from the fact that a good deal of the time he is talking to God, to whom his logical consistency is of no consequence, or to himself, by whom all its defects are consciously supplied. This admitted, the absence of connection is accounted for, and, instead of being surprised at it, we are led to expect what may be called the emotional, rather than the logical, transitions. A third reason for the seeming inconsistency of Job is of a lower kind, but still consistent with purity and integrity of character. The friends seem to assume towards him a higher moral position in picturing the wicked man’s ruin. Job’s desire to repel this false assumption of didactic superiority is a right one. It leads him, however, after he has sufficiently denied what was fallacious in their too one-sided descriptions, to take the other course by way of showing that he understands the case as well as they do—that he has not-been an inattentive or obtuse observer of human life, and that, if he chooses, he can even go beyond them in all such picturings. It is a feeling similar to that which leads him to take down the lofty-talking Bildad, when expatiating, as the latter does in chap, 25, upon the greatness of the divine works, as though he would give Job a lesson here. The one whom he thus assumes to teach properly replies, by showing that he too has thought upon these things, that he too can talk in this strain, should it be necessary, and even outdo him in such an, oratorical effort. To see this, compare chapters 25 and 26. In general, however, Job’s thoughts and words are from his inner world. He cares little for logical consistency, because less than they is he thinking of an audience, or of an antagonist—unless it be that seeming antagonism or divine estrangement over which he is ever mourning. It is over the tumultuous, volcanic flood of his own thoughts, he is constantly brooding, and bringing them out to light. This he does in that irregular, broken way of which we find so many unmistakable examples, leading to the conclusion that in a proper consideration of this dramatic feature, there is found, not only a solution of every seeming hiatus, but also very much of the true impressiveness of this sublime production. It is from this, too, as may be said again, that we get a conviction of the objective reality of the whole action, which no talk about artistical and dramatic skill can set aside.

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EXCURSUS III ON THE יוֹם עֲבָרוֹת OR DIES IRARUM.

Chap. Job 21:30. To the day of doom the wicked man is kept; To the day of mighty wrath are they brought forth The more carefully we study the translation of this passage in our English Version, and as given by Dr. Conant, the more clear will it become that it presents the substantial meaning. It agrees with the old versions, Vulgate, Syriac and LXX., as it appears in its Hexaplar Syriac translation. On the same side is Raschi, also the best of the old commentators as cited in Poole’s Synopsis, together with Gesenius, Pareau, Conant, and others of later times. On the other side, is the formidable array of Heiligstedt, Umbreit, Dillmann, Delitzsch, et al. Had the verse stood by itself, we hazard nothing in saying that no other translation than that of E. V. and Luther would have been thought of. It is its apparent disagreement with a false hypothesis, that has led to the varied comment.

חָשַׂךְ simply means restraint, cohibuit; whether from a thing, or for a purpose, depends upon the preposition, or the context. So הוּבַל simply means brought forth or out; whether from or to, or for what purpose, to be determined in like manner. It may be: held back from danger or harm, in which case the preposition מ, expressed or implied, would seem to be indispensable; or it may mean kept, reserved for, where the preposition ל, would alone give the sense demanded. An example of this, which Gesenius deems conclusive from its exact similarity to the present passage, is found ch. Job 38:23 : “ which I have reserved,” חשכתי,“ to the time of trouble” (לְעֵת צָר),“to the day (לְיוֹם) of battle and war.” So the other verb יוּבָלוּ: “They are brought forth.” How? The context shows. From, to or in? The preposition determines. In Isaiah 55:12 (cited for the later view, but wholly inapplicable),“they are brought forth in peace,” בשלום (ב not ל). The unsuitableness of this reference appears from the fact that it would prove too much. The wicked would be not only brought forth from danger “at the day of wrath” (if that can be the meaning of ליום), but they are also brought forth triumphantly—not merely saved, but saved in a striking or processional manner, as though God made them conspicuous objects of His favor. It cannot mean, brought out of trouble; for on the very hypothesis demanded by this mode of exegesis, Job has been setting forth, and is still setting forth their uninterrupted prosperity. It cannot mean “brought out,” so as to be spared from death, if “the day of wrath” meant that; for such an idea would involve a contradiction on either hypothesis. Most absurd here is Rosenmueller, who interprets it that “in the day of God’s wrath the wicked men are brought to the sepulchre by way of deliverance from evils: Die irarum Dei deducuntur ad sepulchrum (ut supra Job 10:19) malis erepti improbi;” that is, “they are taken away before the evil,” or “from the evil to come.” This is the very thing Isaiah says of the righteous, Isaiah 57:1; whilst Job here ia made to say, or to approve of saying, just the contrary. The insuperable objection, however, to this rendering lies in the preposition employed for both verbs before יום. There is no way of making this mean from, or in, or at. At the day might do sometimes as a rendering of ליום, where the context strongly demanded it; but here to or for the day give such a facile sense that it repels every other. For a context precisely similar, see Proverbs 16:1, רשע ליום רעה, “the wicked man for the day of evil.” Compare also Proverbs 21:31, “a horse for the day of battle;” Isaiah 10:3, “ to the day of visitation;” Jeremiah 12:3, “devote him to the day of slaughter.” Why go away from the plain indication of the preposition, all the more conclusive from the fact that ליום here, and in all these cases, denotes the scene, the event, rather than time? Dillmann feels the force of this, and it almost makes him retract the other interpretation, which only a supposed exigentia loci, arising out of a false hypothesis in regard to the whole chapter, leads him to adopt. “It cannot be denied,” he says, “that for לוים we should rather expect ביום, whilst ל seems rather to denote aim and limit, as חשך with ל, Job 38:23, and יובל, Job 10:19 (‘brought forth from the womb to the grave’) and יובל לקברות, Job 21:32, just below.” Comp. Jeremiah 10:19 : “a lamb brought out to the slaughter;” the same Isaiah 53:7; Hosea 10:7; Hosea 12:2; Psalms 45:15,

Again, does it look like an idea so traditional and universal that wicked men are specially spared in a day of calamity (whether it refer to general or private judgments), and that in days of God’s wrath they are brought forth in processional triumph? Let any one study the Proverbs of Solomon’s collecting, the best ethical authority for this purpose, and he will see in what a variety of ways the opposite idea is set forth: “ The wicked for the day of evil.” How universal the aphorism that, in some way, wickedness will bring ruin upon the wicked. The proverb just referred to is almost in the very language of this passage. Its testimony to the human ethical consciousness would be amply sufficient, if the idea did not meet us everywhere in the so-called Chockma or Hebrew Wisdom. The world’s experience, too, is the other way. There are indeed cases of remarkable prosperity attending wicked men, but it is not general, so as to form the subject of an aphorism in traditional ethics. There is no such universality in the fact, to say the least, as the “signs of the way-farers” thus interpreted would give it. Especially would it be out of harmony with the best views we can get of the early Arabian world. From the earliest Eastern poetry, as well as from the Koran, do we derive just the contrary idea. When Mohammed threatens the robber Kafirs, or unbelievers, with the old dogma that wicked prosperity is in danger of a downfall, they are always represented as replying: “ Ah, that is just what we and our fathers have been threatened with of old; it is all a fable (a saying) of the ancients.” Every scholar is familiar with the Greek doctrine of Nemesis, carried even to the superstitious length of holding that mere prosperity of itself, without crime, was dangerous, or that it indicated some fearful doom to which the prosperous man was reserved. The same eschatological idea, though without time or place, comes forth in the language of the Old Testament: “ The wicked shall not stand in the judgment,” Psalms 1:5; “The upright shall have dominion over them on the morning” (Psalms 49:15), or the great dies retributionis for which the earliest Arabian that we know of uses the same expression.⁹⁵⁰

If, on the other hand, we regard Job’s pictures here as of a mixed kind, irregular and impassioned—now setting forth the prosperity of the wicked, all the more strongly from the remembrance of his own misery, and dwelling on certain items (Job 21:11) from the contrast his vivid imagination finds in them to his own forlorn condition—then checking himself and dilating upon the other view, of which he must have known many examples in his own worldly experience—it is not difficult to account for what follows. The very absence of any visible rule in the present state of things, would lead to the thought of some יום עברות, some great judgment-scene, however indeterminable or inconceivable its time and locality. It was this feeling that created the idea, and led to the ethical lore of “ the way-passers” as the common carriers of the traditions and doctrines of the peoples. The impunity of wicked men is certainly not one of these world sayings; and could it be supposed it would be directly in the face of that Vergeltungslehre of which the Rationalist commentators have so much to say, as the universal doctrine of the ancient world.

There may, perhaps, be the understood meaning: reserved, held back from present evils, for the day of איד, the day of the great calamity, and that may also be gotten from Raschi, and from the servatur of the Vulgate, whether in the sense of preserved or watched for, but this would only the more confirm the idea of the great איד to which such a reserving is preparatory.

According to the common interpretation of Job 42:7, Job is commended for saying of, or concerning, God: what is right (נָכון, firm, constans, consistens). But what a picture of daring irreverence, and of profane scoffing, even, does he present, according to the view some take of this whole chapter‍! It has three aspects: 1. He is supposed to describe the wicked as enjoying uninterrupted prosperity through the present life, then leaving it without pain, and with no concern for any thing that may come after them, which very unconcern is represented as a portion of their good. 2. In what Job says from ver. 17 and onward, where he seems to qualify the sweeping character of the first assertions, he is only sneering at the language of the friends, repeating it insincerely or in a taunting manner, and thus actually giving a stronger emphasis to his first assertions. 3. Not content with this, he adopts, as the supposed meaning of “the way-passers,” that the wicked not only go on with impunity in the common course of life, but that they are specially favored in a time of great calamity, and in the day of wrath (great wraths, wraths, in the plural, which must mean God’s wrath) they are brought out in triumph (יובלו, in a procession as it were). And this is done by God! It is not merely an overlooking (as Paul seems to say Acts 17:30), a letting men go their ways, but a special favoring of the wicked. He brings them out in a sort of processional pomp, and keeps them from harm in His dies irarum. RENAN here goes beyond all others who take this view:

Au jour fatal, le méchant est épargné, Au jour de la colère divine, il est soustrait au châtiment, as though God specially shielded him when the divine vengeance is shown upon the earth. Now add to this Job’s assuming to tell God (ver. 19) what He ought to do, according to this interpretation, namely, to “punish the bad man himself in his lifetime, and not let it come on his innocent children, of whose sufferings he has no feeling”—and there is reached the very climax of impiety. He could not, moreover, have gone more directly in the face of his own caution (ver. 22): “shall a man teach God? teach Him who judges the high ?” And yet all this comes directly from the mode of interpreting this chapter (21) adopted by Delitzsch and others. The extreme Rationalist, Merx, would also represent Job as teaching in this passage, ver. 30, that the wicked are specially favored; but he has a much easier way of doing it. Seeing clearly that the text, as it stands, can only be interpreted of the wicked being brought out for judgment and perdition, he inserts, with his usual recklessness, the negative לא, making it read: “the wicked are not reserved to the day of calamity; they are not brought forth for the day of wrath.” That is the way in which he makes them escape, and that is the strange doctrine he thus forces into the mouths of “the way-passers”. But in doing this he confirms, in the most decided manner, the other sense for which we contend. It is a confession that it is the only one admissible unless the negative לא, for which he has no warrant whatever, is inserted. In his note he does not hesitate to charge the Jewish critics, those worshippers of words and letters, with having, for dogmatic purposes, designedly changed the text.

EXCURSUS IV

Job 22:5-13 The Harsh Criminations Of Eliphaz

These verses present one of the great difficulties of the book. The apparent harshness of the charges made against Job, as they appear in our English Version, and in other translations, seem inexplicable, whether viewed in their moral or in their mere dramatic aspect. The view to be taken of them, however, depends very much on the mode of rendering, and this again takes much of its coloring from the meaning given to ver. 5, and especially the starting particle הֲלֹא. In one view it represents Job as not only guilty of enormous sins, but as so notorious for them as to put denial out of the question: “Is not thy wickedness great, and thine iniquities infinite?” Did Eliphaz actually mean to charge him thus? The difficulties in the way of this are so great, that we are driven to a close study of the language, to see if there may not be some modification, to say the least, of such a rendering.

Much, as has been said, depends upon the right view of the starting word, in itself, and as affected by the context. The Hebrew language having no modal forms, the question whether such an expression as הֲלֹא רָעָתְךָ רַבָּה is indicative (under an interrogative form), and thus directly assertive, or whether it is potential, conjectural (or hypothetical), must depend very much on the particles and constructive forms that accompany or follow. Is not thy evil great? May not thy evil be great? Would not thy evil be great? Either of these might be given as the sense in certain connections. הֲלֹא may express doubt, as in 1 Samuel 21:12 : “Is this David the king?” or “can this be David the king?” It may be a true interrogative seeking information, as 1 Kings 1:2; or it may be a form of most positive assertion, as Numbers 23:26 : “Did I not surely tell thee?” or it may be rendered “perhaps,” as in Deuteronomy 31:17, or “it may be,” denoting conjecture, 1 Samuel 20:37 : “Perhaps the arrow is beyond thee.” There are two strong arguments for the conjectural or hypothetical rendering here—one contextual or circumstantial, the other grammatical. 1st. All the facts of the case are most clearly against the positive or indicative rendering. Though the form is interrogative, it would, in fact, if thus taken, be the most emphatic way of saying, not only that “Job’s wickedness was great, and his sins innumerable,” but that all the world knew it, and that he himself, the very man appealed to, knew it as something that could not be denied. He is not only a sinner, but a most notorious one. Now this cannot be the meaning. It would, in the first place, be in direct contradiction with the clearest assertions of the prologue: “a man pure and upright, fearing God, and departing from evil.” It would, 2d, be inconsistent with the action of the friends themselves, who doubtless knew his reputation for righteousness and purity throughout the East, and who had, therefore, come so far to console him. 3d. It would be at war with that dramatic propriety of which some talk so much, that they should thus fall upon him, especially Eliphaz, who, in what he says Job 4:3-4; Job 4:6, had affirmed all these views of Job’s religion and known integrity. Everything shows that they had formed, and had good reasons for forming, the highest estimate of his moral worth. When and where had they learned the contrary, that he must speak so positively and so undoubtingly about Job’s crimes? See Note Int. Theism, pa. 32. It is a difficulty which Ewald strongly feels. “Whence,” says he, p. 225, “did Eliphaz derive his knowledge of the gross sins he ascribes to Job? Had he detected him in any such acts? Or could he bring any witnesses in proof of his charges? Impossible ! Not only the whole book, but God himself directly contradicts it.” Cocceius had taken the ground that the charges were in their nature conjectural. Umbreit treats this idea with contempt, and yet hardly seems aware of the immense difficulties that attend the other view of a strong positive assertion. Rosenmueller and others proceed in the same way. The conjectural supposition, however, is the most natural. Eliphaz did not know of any such crimes; he had no proof; he sought none; refers to none. The zeal, however, enkindled in the course of the dispute, led him to think there might be sins unknown, and which, perhaps, had slipped from the memory of Job himself in the days of his prosperity. If there were any sins at all, then those specified, he might think, would be the very ones that a man of power (גבר) and property like Job would be most likely to fall into occasionally, whilst maintaining something of a general character for probity. To such the speaker’s partisan feeling would give a heightened coloring of atrocity. Still, they are all stated conjecturally or hypothetically, as the only means of accounting for the puzzling fact of his great losses and sufferings. Unjust as they are, yet, when thus viewed, the seeming accusations are stripped of much of their harshness. They may be the language of an injudicious and mistaken friend, especially moved to reproof because Job shows so little of acknowledgment and repentance. It is as though he had said to him: “There may be more evil in your case than you have probably thought; prosperity may have blinded your eyes; your sins may be אין קץ, not infinite in our mathematical sense of the term, but beyond your numbering—without estimate, that is, many more, and greater, than you have thought.” In his vehemence Eliphaz uses hyperbolical language, but not intended to be taken literally in the sense of actual infinity, or even of anything beyond numbering.

Then there is the grammatical argument. The כי following, both as expressed in ver. 6, and implied in the 7th, and others succeeding, is dependent on הֲלֹא above: may it not be the case that? Then, in the verses following, it becomes specificative or illustrative of the general charge: “May not thy wickedness be so great, that during thy prosperous, unthinking life, thou mayest have wrongly taken a pledge from some poor man, stripped off a garment, not given water to the thirsty traveller, have sent away the widow unredressed, and even, in some cases, wronged the orphan?” There is an air of particularity about them, as though tentative of Job’s conscience, that seems very much to favor the idea that these are just what Cocceius calls them, conjectural and hypothetical. The view thus taken of כי, as specificative, alone furnishes a satisfactory reason for the futures תמנע ,תשקה ,תפשיט ,תחבל, that follow it in the succeeding clauses. The conditional hypothesis, making the construction the subjective, or consequential in the thought, alone accounts for them: “Would not thy wickedness be great,” as הלא רעתך רבה may be rendered, or “would it not be great wickedness in thee,” that thou shouldst take, or shouldst have taken a pledge,” etc. If, on the other hand, we take כי, ver. 6, as independent, or render it for or because, it would not be easy to show a reason why the verb should not have been in the preterite (חָבַלְתָּ); just as in Job 15:25 (which, on that view, would be a precisely similar case),כי is followed by נָטָה, and in ver. 26 by כִּסָּה. The only reason that can be given for the different form of the tenses here is that כי is truly dependent on the conjectural הלא above, whilst the futures are dependent on the specifying power of the particle here carrying the conjecture all through. The 8th verse is parenthetical, and in ver. 9 we have a preterite שִׁלַחְתָּ, “thou hast sent away;” but such an intervening change is not only explicable grammatically, as affected by the previous parenthetical movement, but also rhetorically, as denoting the zeal of the speaker, carried away by his own vivid suppositions, and coming almost to look upon them as actual facts. In regard to these futures, translators and commentators have always found a difficulty if כי was to be rendered absolutely. The whole case is very clearly and concisely stated by Junius as cited in Poole’s Synopsis: Quia status harum criminationum conjecturalis est, et magis in presumptionibus quam certis probationibus positus, futuro utitur: pignus acceperis, nudaveris, etc. In the question, “is not,” or “may not thy evil be great?” there may be a looking back to the previous reflections as well as to the supposed changes that follow. It may refer to that idea of trafficking with God (ver. 2), or getting gain to one’s self from some profiting we may have fancied to accrue to Him from our defective virtue. Something like this is the idea of Good, who contends that תחבל, and the other futures that follow בי, should be rendered: “Thou wouldst oppress,” “Thou wouldst strip,” etc. That is, a man wicked enough (in the estimation of Eliphaz) to vindicate himself as Job does (or to think of profiting God by his religion) might be supposed capable of committing all these acts.” There is a connection between רעה, the evil here (ver. 5), and the religion and righteousness mentioned above, as the things by which Eliphaz would represent Job as claiming to be profitable to God. Even admitting that there might be some such an outstanding account, though far less than Job perhaps imagined, still, in the judgment of Eliphaz, there was another balance to be settled: “Thine evil, too, may be very great,” as well as thy religion by which thou thinkest to bring God into thy debt. All this is very unjust to Job, as we see it; but it prepares the way very naturally for the conjectural or hypothetical style of what follows.

Following this connection, we find a demand for the repetition of the same particle, הְלא, as essential to the complete sense of the sixth verse: “May it not be that thou hast taken a pledge of thy brother for nought?” If its force goes through all these specifications, as both the context and the grammar require (that is, the future forms), then it actually belongs to the translation in each one, as something essential to its fair expression, and not as merely paraphrastic or explanatory. So Cocceius justly regards it, and, therefore, inserts fortassis: Num fortassis pignus cepisti a fratribus tuis sine causa, etc. To which he adds the note: Conjecturaliter et disjunctive explico, nulla repugnante grammatica, ne crudeliores sententias, quam ipsi amici, in Jobum cudam. Instead of nulla grammatica repugnante, Cocceius might have said: grammatica revera postulante.

So, too, ver. 8 is to be taken as language ascribed to Job by Eliphaz:

(Hast Said) the land is for the strong; not in so many words, but as indicated by his supposed deeds, which, the accuser would say, speak louder than words. Thou hast acted as though the land belonged to the strong. It is “the language of the case,” to use a technic of the Arabian Grammarians. It represents the supposed spirit of the one thus spoken of. Thus Rabbi Tanchum in his Arabic Commentary on Lamentations 3:36, maintains that the Hebrew words אַדֹנָי לֹא רָאָה, the Lord not see it (badly rendered by E. V., the Lord approveth not), is, in fact, the language of the wicked to themselves, and not of the prophet, as our translation makes it with a great force upon ראה. “ To subvert a man in his cause,—the Lord does not see it;” so their actions say.

If this general view be correct, then the conjectural or hypothetical idea goes also into the conclusion, ver. Job 10 :

Wherefore, it may be, snares are round thee spread.

Otherwise it would seem like judicial exultation over the misery of Job. It does not, however, relate so much to the fact as to the conjectural reason: It may be that acts like these are the cause of all your trouble. Aside from the grammatical reasons, it may be truly said, that we are absolutely forced to some such view of the hypothetical character of these statements in order to avoid the most revolting supposition of such charges being directly and positively made without a particle of evidence. The warmth of disputation may have very naturally led to an uncharitable expression of suspicion and of harsh suppositions; but all beyond this is a violation of dramatic, as well as of moral, and logical consistency.

EXCURSUS V ON THE HEBREW WORD תּוּשִׁיָּה As occurring Job 6:13; Job 11:6; Job 12:16, and especially Job 26:3. This word is used not only by the Chokma writers, as they are called, but also by the Prophets. Like other Hebrew words of intelligence, it denotes both a form of truth and also the faculty of the mind that perceives it—being, in this respect, like our word reason. That it has the former aspect, Job 26:3, appears from the verb הוֹדָעְתָ and the parallelism which demands for it the sense of teaching. Hence an objection to Ewald’s rendering, feste Einsicht, in that place, as well as to the Verständiges of Dillman and Zöckler. As denoting a power or state of mind, Anschauung would have been a better word. As a form of truth, it is the highest which the Hebrew language affords, unless it be the more general term חכמה regarded as including it. This is seen from its associations. Thus in Proverbs 3:21 it is something higher than מְזִמָּה, sagacity, prudence; Proverbs 8:14 (rendered in E. V. sound wisdom) it is joined with בִּינָה and עֵצָה; Proverbs 18:1, it is the speculative, contemplative wisdom, to which the recluse (נִפְרָד) so earnestly devotes himself. It is ascribed to God, Isaiah 28:29, and in a still more remarkable manner, Job 12:16 (see Note thereon). Truth is the best rendering, if we take that word in its highest and broadest sense for the reality of things (see Webster’s definition), or the truth fixed and necessary, in distinction from the flowing, the apparent, the phenomenal. Delitzsch well defines it from J. H. Michaelis as vera et realis sapientia, although in his version he seems to limit its force. The objection is that this is too metaphysical for the Book of Job, or as J. D. Michaelis states it, nimis a vulgari sensu remota. Such words, he goes on to say, philosophi in scholis condunt non plebs: “schoolmen make them, not the people.” But this only shows that he himself was no metaphysician, in the true sense of the term. What is the sensus vulgaris? The highest forms of truth have their seat in the common mind, as is shown by the fact, that language ever, in some way, makes names (the names that are wanted) before philosophy, as such, is ever heard of. The contemplative soul of Job was as capable of such an idea as that of Michaelis. Plato’s distinction of the ὄντα and the γιγνόμενα, or real being as distinguished from the phenomenal, or ever-changing, is one that belongs to every thoughtful mind. Paul makes it, 2 Corinthians 4:18, though carrying it to a sublimer height than Plato: “the things seen and the things unseen,” the temporal and the eternal; the latter not simply unseen as absent from a present personal sense, but as in their very being supersensual. By giving, moreover, this higher and wider sense to תושיה, there is brought out the contrast evidently intended in the two clauses of Job 26:3 : the first, the teaching of the unlearned, or the practical, the second, the more speculative or contemplative wisdom—the truth of things in their widest sense (לָרֹב). The old derivation of this word was from יש the undeclinable substantive verb, as οὐσία (essence, being) is made from εἰμί, ὤν in Greek. Gesenius departs from this; but the best commentators such as Delitzsch, Ewald, et al., have come back to it, making its true etymological sense to be substantia, ὑποστασις, the solid, the real—true being (see Delizsch on this verse). So the Jewish Rabbinical writers have regarded it. In their philosophical discussions, they use the תושיה of the Old Scriptures as their term for the super-sensual wisdom or philosophy. From it they have also made a technical distinction among philosophers or wise men (חכמים). They are the חכמי תושיה, the metaphysici, the speculative thinkers in distinction, from the חכמי המחקר, the Physici, or natural philosophers who proceed by experiment and induction (see Buxtorf Lex. Chald. 990, 819). Compare Paul’s expression, 1 Corinthians 1:20, συζητητὰι τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου, seekers, inquirers, experimenters (Naturforscher) of this world. Thus also is it used by such Jewish writers as Levi Βen Gerson. Philosophical words formed in this way from the old Hebrew are not fanciful or arbitrary. The idea on which they are founded are in the root words, and they came to the Rabbinical writers out of the demand for them as our own scientific, philosophical, or theological words derived from the Greek and Latin. Fuerst also gives the sense substantia. See Notes on Job 5:12; Job 6:13; Job 12:16.

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EXCURSUS VI

Job 26:5-7 The Shades In Sheol. Abaddon, Or The World Below Sheol. Job’s View Of The Position Of The Mundus, And Of The Earth. In chapter 25, Bildad had been holding forth on God’s glories in the worlds above, and His knowledge of celestial things. It would seem as though he meant to overawe and confound the unconfessing, impenitent man. Job turns the mind in another direction, or to the deeper mystery of the world below. All things, “in the earth, and under the earth,” as well as above the earth, lie naked before the eye of God. Thus ver. 5, though seeming abrupt and unconnected, forms the transition to this deeper and more mysterious region. The argument is that He sees the lowest and most hidden things, as well as the celestial hosts, the καταχθόνιοι as well as the ἐπουράνιοι. It is place, therefore, rather than events, or descriptions of things contained, that is mainly thought of. On this account, the adverb where is not a superfluity in the translation, but a necessary link in the association of thought. The “giant shades” represent the world they inhabit, and all the more impressively from the sudden way in which Job mentions them after his brief reproof of Bildad’s declamation. This is the view of Mede as given in Poole’s Synopsis: Locus ubi antiqui gigantes lugent sub aquis; infernus et locus perditionis patet oculis Dei. He compares it with Proverbs 15:11 : “Sheol and Abaddon are before the Lord.” In both passages Abaddon is the deeper, the darker, the more returnless place. It is the Locus Perditionis, the world of the lost. As thus designating place generally (the world below and the world lowest of all), it leaves a secondary question how far this is mythical, legendary, so regarded by the speakers themselves, or to what extent it was actually believed. It may be used as Paul uses καταχθόνιοι Php 2:10 : “things or beings below the earth,” in distinction from those above, without our supposing in him a knowledge of the Antipodes, or of an actual world below. It is used to denote the great depths and their possible inhabitants, in distinction from the visible things in the heavens, or as a comprehensive mode of denoting all beings “above the earth, and on the earth, and under the earth.” The word רפָאִים is undoubtedly used for manes, umbrœ, the shades, supposed to inhabit the under-world. This comes directly from the primary sense of weakness in רפא when used for רפה. The רפאים, the weak, the powerless. It immediately suggests Homer’s κάμοντες as applied to the dead, the wearied, or εἴδωλα καμόντων, the images, umbrœ, or shades of the deceased. For a similar use of this word in Hebrew see Isaiah 14:10; Isaiah 26:14; Isaiah 26:19; Psalms 88:11; Proverbs 2:18; Proverbs 9:18; Proverbs 21:16. What makes a seeming difficulty, however, is the fact that the same term is used for a race of giants, as in Genesis 24:5; Genesis 15:20; Isaiah 17:5. This naming may have come from some law of contrary association, such as frequently influences language. They were called the feeble very much as the Greek called the Furies Ευμενίδες, the kindly ones, the gracious powers. Here, in fact, the true force of the passage is best given by combining the two ideas: the once mighty men of old now feeble, wailing ghosts. Such a tradition of mighty rebellious powers engaged in a contest with heaven, defeated and cast down, was certainly in the world, and in the most ancient mythologies. The question may arise, whether it is to be regarded as referring to the old antediluvian giants (the “men of renown” mentioned Genesis 6), or to some such war with the higher powers as is shadowed in the Greek fables of the conflict between the gods and the giants, or the gods and the Titans, the latter the helpers of Kronos when dethroned by Zeus, and hurled down beneath the waters of the abyss, as related in Æsch. Prom. Vinct. Job 219:

Ταρτάρου μελαμβαθὴς

Κευθμὼν καλύπτει τὸν παλαιγενῆ Κρόνον

Αὐτοῖσι συμμάχοισι: The deep black pit of Tartarus that hides The old-born Kronos with his helping hosts.

Compare 2 Peter 2:4 : “God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, (ταρταρώσας, a word taken from this Greek mythical language), and delivered them unto chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment.” The New Testament writings (Jude 6, 2; 2 Peter 2:4, and passages in the Revelations) show that the idea of such a conflict existed before the birth of our Saviour, and might be called universal in the world, Jewish as well as heathen—going back, perhaps, if we may judge from the manner of those Apostles speaking of it, and quoting old authorities, to a most remote antiquity. Some great event of the kind, whether regarded as having taken place in the heavenly or in the earthly sphere, seems to have made a deep impression upon the primitive mind in whatever way it was revealed or traditionally transmitted. Hence all early mythology is so full of it, however monstrous and grotesque the forms it has assumed. The Bible has the least to say about it; but the few indications it does give are, on that very account, the more fearful in their character: “The giants groan beneath the waters”—“delivered unto chains of darkness”—“reserved unto the judgment.” There is nothing in the Hesiodean and Homeric Tartarus, or in the stories of Tityus, Sisyphus, and Tantalus, or in the corresponding horrors of Indian and Scandinavian myths, to be compared with this veiled language of perdition and despair. In this passage the Rephaim, or giant shades, are represented as suffering extreme anguish (יחוללו, writhing, torture, travail), and this shows that the reference to them is that of a special case, as of some awful example, and not to the shades generally, who are described as quiescent, inert, rather than as suffering. In the rendering “deep Abaddon,” ver. 6, the epithet is justified by the evidently intended contrast. Abaddon is lower than Sheol, or the underworld. Or if included in the latter term, it is its deepest department, and, in every respect, a more mysterious conception. They are not tautologies. Abaddon seems to bear something of the same relation to Sheol that Tartarus, in Homer, bears to Hades. Compare the Iliad Job 8:13 :

ἐς Τάρταρον ἠερόεντα,

Τῆλε μάλ, ἧχι βάθιστον ὑπὸ χθονός ἐστι βέρεθρον·

Τόσσον ἔνερθ Ἀίδεω ὃσον οὐρανός ἐστ’ ἀπό γαὶης:

—Down to rayless Tartarus, Deep, deep, in the great Gulf below the earth, As far beneath the Shades as earth from heaven.

—Bryant.

Delitzsch says that Abaddon alternates with קֶבֶר, the grave, and cites Psalms 88:12. So in Job 28:22 it is mentioned in connection with מות; just as Death and Hades are mentioned together Revelation 1:18; Revelation 20:14. In the latter place, too, they are both represented, after Hades has given up the souls of the righteous, as being cast into that deeper place, “the lake of fire.” But in Psalms 88:12 the word is used as denoting, generally, all after death, or the most extreme world of death, if we may regard it as synonymous with the expression בְּבוֹר תַּחְתִּיּוֹת, in lacu inferno of ver. 7 just above. It should be borne in mind, however, that there (Psalms 88:12) the terms are taken metaphorically, to express the extremes of darkness and misery. Here, and in Proverbs 15:11 (as used in both cases with Sheol), it evidently makes a climax. The parallelism demands that it be taken as something beyond Sheol, deeper, darker, more hidden and mysterious, yet still open to the all-seeing eye. Comp. Psalms 139:8. So also in Deuteronomy 32:22, there appears this idea of a deeper underworld than Sheol, or of a deeper department of it, as it were, “beneath that lowest deep a deeper still:” “For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn עַד שְׁאוֹל תַּחְתִּיּוֹת, to the lowest hell,” LXX. ἕως Ἄιδου κατωτὰτου. It may be said, that this is merely imagery; but what did it all come from? In Job 31:12 this word is again taken figuratively to denote the deepest destruction “It would be like a fire (the sin of adultery there mentioned) that would consume even to Abaddon” (comp. Proverbs 5:8). It was the moral feeling that carried the imaginations of Jews and Greeks in both directions, up and down. The world must be as deep as it is high. So the Greeks had their spheres above spheres, even to the Empyrean, whilst, in the other direction, the idea of Hades was not complete unless Tartarus was placed beneath it. In like manner, the Hebrew mind had its “heavens” in the plural (Genesis 1:1), then its “heaven of heavens,” and its third heavens (the Rabbins afterwards made them fifty). The complement of the idea was needed. Up and down are, indeed, relative terms, and so thinking men, from Solomon to Aristotle and Newton, have ever regarded them. But the ideas they typify are real. It is felt that there must be in the great system of things a profundity corresponding to the altitude, an evil to the good, a darkness, a risk, and a loss, forming a counterpart to the light, the hope, and the glory. This carried the mind in the opposite direction, first to the grave, then to Sheol, then to Abaddon or the lacus infernus, בּוֹר תַּחְתִּיּות, below all. There can be no doubt that from this came much of the imagery of the Revelation In that book (chap Job 9:11), the name Abaddon is given to the Power of the place, rather than to the place itself; it makes it the King of the Abyss, βασιλέα τῆς ἀβύσσου; whence he is also called Απολλύων (Apollyon) the Destroyer; but it is the same idea and the same destruction.

Even in the Old Testament, as may be learned from passages in Job and the Psalms, there was connected with Sheol some idea of deliverance: “Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades;” but Abaddon was total perdition: “the way of the wicked (Psalms 1:6) shall perish, תֹּאבֵד; that is, it leads to Abaddon, the world of irrecoverable ruin. As is argued in the Introd. Theism, pa. 13; there is, in the Old Testament, a veil cast over the whole idea of existence after death, or over Sheol itself. Still more dense is the covering that enshrouds Abaddon; but even in the Old Scriptures there are, now and then, glimpses of the remoter fearful ruin, too frequently passed over as merely metaphorical. So in the Greek mythology there are cases of return from Hades, however rare and exceptional, but from Tartarus there was no deliverance; the lost were there forever, τὸν ἀεὶ χρόνον (see Plato, Rep. 615, B. Gorg. 525 c). So far, however, as the Scriptures, whether Old or New, give us glimpses of this awful state, it is not one of extinction or annihilation. The figures all point the other way to the idea of existence in perdition. It is ἀπώλεια, utter destruction. It is the world of the perished, of the lost (perditorum). In a word it is אֲבַדּוֹן, existence still having place and state, but one of total and irretrievable disorganization. In verse 7, Job comes back from Hades and Abaddon to the earth and the mundus above. By the North is primarily indicated the north pole of the heavens which seems lifted up and impending over emptiness. Over nothing; improperly rendered, upon nothing; עַל בְּלִימָה, upon not anything; בלי and מה as מה and מה in מאומה, anything whatever. It immediately suggests the description of Ovid, Met. i. Job 11 :

Pen dens in aere tellus Ponderibus librata suis. No wonder need be felt at this language of Job, as though expressing an idea peculiarly modern. No thoughtful mind could ever contemplate the sun’s setting in the evening West, and its rising, a few hours after, in the morning East, without the thought of its having gone under the Earth, or of the Earth’s having turned over. Even this latter view was more ancient than the days of Pythagoras, who had the Copernican idea of the solar system, derived as is supposed, from the Egyptians, or the East. See Note on Ecclesiastes 1:5 and Psalms 19:6 (Lange Com., Vol. x., p. 38), where the sun is represented as “panting” up “the eastern steep.” From this there must have been the conception of an underside, at least, to the earth, or of a body lying in space, with space all around it. Zöckler says: “We must not think of a ball, but of a circular plate or disk;” but he has no authority for saying this. The Latin orbis terrarum is a very different idea, and has a different origin from the appearance of the visible horizon. Once depart from the notion of an indefinitely extended plane, or conceive of a body lying in space, and there is immediately suggested the spherical figure, or something like it. This is not only because it is easiest in its conception (the Scheibe of Zöckler, a flat plate figure, wabbling in space, being difficult as well as incongruous), but because it is, theoretically, the most perfect figure for the mind’s contemplation, as Aristotle reasons in his very clear and conclusive argument (Book, De Cœlo, lib. ii. 13, 14) for the sphericity of the Earth, made long before the days of Columbus. The same thinking has led some, in modern times, to the idea of a spherical Universe. We need not, moreover, give ourselves any difficulty about the apparent inconsistency between this more correct view and the merely phenomenal one, ver. 10, or what is said about the “pillars of the earth,” Job 9:6, or attempt to explain it, as Zöckler does, by making pillars mean something inside the Earth, as its bones or skeleton. In ancient, as well as in modern, times, the poetical or phenomenal conception existed side by side with the more contemplative idea,—if the latter is not, indeed, the more poetical of the two when held without its prosaic arithmetic. Byron speaks of the “sun setting on the wide, wide sea,” just as Homer does. Neither is there any occasion here to talk about the absurdity of some ancient ideas in respect to the Earth’s support, such as that presented in the old worn-out lecturer’s stories of the Earth on the elephant, and the elephant on the tortoise. Men who say that Gravitation supports the Earth—going no further than the name, or its mathematical calculus—are guilty of an equal absurdity; or rather, all the worse, we might say, for the seriousness of its pretension, whereas the old explanations referred to have something of a jocular air about them. Raschi gives us a grand idea here. The support of the world, he says, is ‎‎חזוק זרועותיו ,של הקב׳׳ה “the strength of the arms of the Holy One, blessed be He.” The reference is to Deuteronomy 33:27, מִתַּחַת זְרֹעֹת עוֹלָם, “underneath are the everlasting arms,” or the “arms of Olam,” the “arms of the world,” the arms that hold up the world, whether it be the world in space or the world in time (Olamic, œonian). Rabbi Levi Ben Gerson explains it metaphysically: בְּלִימָה, he says, “is the centre of the earth, called nothing, because it is nothing in itself, being only a point in position, and yet the supporting and supported point of the whole.” In the next verse, there is the same essential mystery as in the suspended earth: the waters in the cloud maintaining their equilibrium in the air.

Ver. 7. The world. So ארץ is best rendered here, as in Proverbs 8:31 (תֵּבֵל אַרְצֹו), and in some other places, where it seems to be put for the visible mundus of which the Earth is the centre, or on which the sky is built (1 Samuel 2:18). In Psalms 18:16, תֵּבֵל is used for the Earth, and so in Psalms 93:1, and some other places (“the round world” as the English Church Psalter renders it). The view connects itself with the visible celestial sphere, and thus the second clause is only an extension of the first: the North Pole over the void, or the whole mundus conceived as having the earth for its nucleus, and thus, as a whole, hanging over nothing. This would not be in conflict with the more limited view of the Earth as itself unsupported in space. It may be called the tellurian rather than the simply terrestrial idea, or than the terraqueous conception, the Earth lying upon the encircling waters, which Delitzsch attaches to the idea.

EXCURSUS VII On The Positions And Connections Of Job 27, 28, 29, 30

Chapter 25 closes the speeches of the friends. In ch. 26 Job replies directly to Bildad. Ch. 27 begins what may be called his closing Vindication, which may be divided into six parts: 1st. Job’s solemn oath by way of protest against the charges really or seemingly made: ch. Job 27:1 to Job 11:2 d. His picture of the wicked man and his doom, Job 27:11 to the end of the chapter. This may be regarded as a more careful statement of the case, and, to some extent, a retractation of former extravagant positions into which he had been driven by the criminations of his opponents, grounded, as they were, upon the opposite extreme (see Excursus II., page 7). 3d. A meditation on the unsearchableness of the divine wisdom as compared with the deepest discoveries of natural and human knowledge, ch. 28 It may be rightly called a meditation, or soliloquy, because it seems addressed to no one, and, taken by itself, would give little or no intimation of any other human presence. Such a character, too, might be given to it from its apparent lack of open logical connection with the chapter immediately preceding. Its emotional connection, however, it is not difficult to trace. More than any direct assertion would have been, is it an admission, by the one who thus soliloquizes, that he has been rash in his complaints of the divine procedure. He “has uttered what he understood not, things too wonderful for him that he knew not,” as he afterwards more expressly confesses, Job 42:3. Its connection is also seen from its leading him, at the close of the chapter, to that submission in which he describes the highest wisdom of man to be “the fear of the Lord, and departure from evil.” 4th. A touching reminiscence of his former prosperity and standing among men—most pathetic indeed, but free from any murmuring spirit, or any rebellious language, ch. 29 5th. A like impassioned representation of the contempt and neglect in which he is now held by the vile, and of the extreme misery of his condition, ch. 30 There are here a few touches of the old feeling, but presented in an exquisitely natural way: “God is hard toward him” (ver. 21), “His hand is still against him;” but, in the main, the spirit of the sufferer is subdued, though exceedingly mournful, and never wholly lapses from that better tone which had come to it from the rapturous hope of the divine presence and reconciliation, Job 19:25 to Job 27:6 th. A most eloquent assertion of his integrity, with a glowing recital of the deeds by which it had been manifested, and a most indignant denial of the charges made against him. Then Elihu speaks, whom we may suppose to have been present, with others probably, during the whole debate. But the most remarkable among these six intervening chapters is the 28. The connection, too, between it and the others is the least easily traced. Chapter 26 had been a reply to Bildad in his own style. Chapter 27 was addressed, in a more general manner, to all three of the disputants; but here, in ch. 28, Job seems occupied almost wholly with his own thoughts. Chapters 29, Job 30:31, again betray the presence of others to whom they seem to be addressed, and by a consciousness of which their mode of thought and utterance seems to be in a measure influenced. Here in ch. 28 the speaker seems to be all alone, so far as any outward indications are concerned, or to be talking only to himself and God. This justifies us in calling it a soliloquy, and in expecting, consequently, an emotional rather than a strictly logical connection. It drives us, also, to the supposition of an interval of silence between the last words of ch. 27, “Men shall hiss him out of his place” (or indeed, the whole picture presented in the latter portion of that chapter), and the כי which so startlingly commences the 28th.: “For there is a vein—yes, surely—there is a vein for the silver,” &c. We would be more struck with, this if we always read the two parts continuously, or without that break which is made by the division into chapters. Such interval of silence may be of the briefest duration, and yet, as is elsewhere observed, the thoughts may have travelled far—always, however, controlled and guided by the underlying feeling which seems never to leave the mind of Job. He is ever brooding over the mystery of suffering innocence, rather than of the impunity or the punishment of the wicked—ideas wholly subordinate to it. With this mystery, a meditation on the unsearchable wisdom of God, such as this chapter is occupied with, stands in closest connection. We are surprised at finding Delitzsch raising an objection to it on the ground, as he says, that “the chapter treats not so much of the wisdom of God as of the wisdom of men.” It is so, apparently, and as far as mere quantity is concerned, but surely this is only preparatory to the great conclusion. From the very beginning, the other idea, with the ever underlying thought that leads to it, has been in the speaker’s mind. The secrets of nature, and the human explorations of nature, are brought in, and dwelt upon at such length, only to impress more strongly on the mind the contrast presented by the deeper mystery,—only to make more startling the question: “Where, then, shall wisdom be found ?” the great, the all-explaining wisdom. The mention of the silver in the beginning is only one of the illustrative facts or examples, having, in itself, no more to do with the connection of thought than “the iron,” or “the stone of darkness,” or the “bread that cometh out of the earth.” It is altogether too slight, therefore, when Delitzsch would make the connection to consist in the mention of the silver here as suggested by the כסף, the bad man’s silver, mentioned Job 27:12; as though this had been retained in mind through all the following verses, and had suggested the deep train of thought which so distinguishes ch. 28. Only keep in view the peculiar character of Job’s speeches, their soliloquizing tendency at all times, and this tendency now increased by the silence, or withdrawal, of the other speakers,—only keep this steadily in mind, and we have the explanation, as we diffidently think, in search of which so many commentators have taken so many different ways.

Why do the innocent suffer? It is ever on his mind. The question is a most difficult one, even when viewed in the fullest light afforded by the Gospel. In some of its aspects it is absolutely appalling: Why do the innocent suffer? Not merely the virtuous man, so called, who is only comparatively righteous: why do children suffer? why do infants suffer? Or, admitting them to have a connection with the common depravity, and the common guilt, why do they suffer so severely? more severely, in some respects, than others; since no diseases are so painful, no deaths so agonizing, to appearance, as those that are sometimes endured when these young, vigorous, acutely-feeling human lives are quenched. The term is not too strong. It is, indeed, a most appalling mystery, at which science, so-called, should lay her hand upon her mouth, and confess her total ignorance, instead of the foolish, stammering talk in which she sometimes indulges about “natural laws,” and certain dim, far-fetched utilitarian ends of pain—thereby only “darkening counsel by words without knowledge.” What problem in nature is to be compared with the moral mystery of the dying infant—dying, agonizing, in the very presence of that science which has so much to say about the Kosmos, and knows so little about the human body with its deep springs of life and death!

Why do the innocent suffer? God only knows—as the old ante-Koranic Arabians were so accustomed to say. Why do I suffer so, says Job—suffer so much more than other men? The higher wisdom of God alone can solve the problem; and to this he turns from that picture of the wicked man which in itself presents so little mystery. The deepest things in nature, as viewed in the light of any science, modern as well as ancient, present only a step in this remoter inquiry: “But where shall wisdom be found, and where is this place of understanding?” “The eagle’s eye (the personification of the keenest sense-intelligence) hath not seen it;” “the Deep saith it is not in me, the Sea saith it is not in me;” nature doth not reveal it. “It is not found in the land of the living;” history does not make it known; the search carries the mind beyond the present world of being; “Abaddon and Death say we have barely heard with our cars a rumor” of the mighty secret. “But God knoweth the way thereof.” He who gave nature her decrees—“He who made a law for the rain, and a way for the thunder’s flash”—can alone look through nature, and beyond nature, to the remotest ends for which she herself was ordained; and it is He “who saith unto man that, for him, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil (moral evil) that, for him, is understanding.” This is the train of thought that springs up at the commencement of ch. 28, or during the brief silent interval, so charged with emotion, that precedes it. The unspoken link connects the two chapters more closely than any formal, logical, or grammatical bond, and the כי, which the silent thought suggests, is the transition note that takes us into the higher modulation: “Yes, so it is—yea, truly so it is:”— For silver, there’s a vein, A place for gold which they refine. The iron from the dust is brought, And copper from the molten stone. To (nature’s) darkness (man) is setting bounds;

Unto its end he searcheth everything,— The ore of darkness, where the death shade dwells. But Wisdom! where shall it be found? That wisdom of which man knows not “the place nor price,” which “gold and pearls can never buy.”

Why do we suffer so? To this deep cry of humanity nature returns no answer. God only knows. The acknowledgment of this is the highest human wisdom, as submission to it is the clearest human duty.

Among all the emendations proposed on account of the alleged want of connection between chap. 28 and chap. 27, as they stand, no one seems more plausible than that of Pareau (Commentatio De Immortalitatis ac Vitœ Futurœ Notitiis ab Antiquissimo Jobi Scriptore, pp. 246–250). He would simply make the two chapters change places. In one aspect of the case, his reasoning might seem entitled to very serious consideration. As he says: “Any one who reads chap. 28 directly after chap. 26, must admit that there is a very natural and easy conjunction—sentiet ipse tantam esse in utroque et consilii et argumenti conjunctionem, ut nexus facilitas in oculos incurrat. What is said in chap. 26 about the greatness and mystery of the divine works, God’s seeing into the Underworld, His glorious beauty in the heavens, and especially the closing thought that these “things that are seen” are but “the endings,” the outstandings, “of His ways,” leads most easily to the train of thought carried on in the first part of chap. 28, and to the transition thence to the unsearchableness of the divine wisdom. But then, again, after giving all due weight to this, we find immense difficulties in the other direction. In the first place, it is not easy to discover the nexus between chap. 28 and chap. 27 regarded as coming right after it. The calming, solemnizing, most sublime, yet tender meditation which closes the one, followed immediately, in uno tenore, or without any interval, by the oath and vehement, if not angry, protest which so mark the commencement of the other. Let a man read them continuously, uno tenore legat, as Pareau says, and he cannot but feel that there is a want of harmony both in the thought and in the diction: “The fear of Adonai, man’s only wisdom,” and in the next breath a charging God with delay or denial of justice, if not an unjust decision in respect to the right of his cause. This cannot be. “Dramatic propriety,” to say nothing of anything else, would demand that between two such declarations there should be some considerable interval of time, marked by the intervention of new trains of thought. In the second place, there is a still greater inharmoniousness between the latter part of the 27th and the beginning of the 29th, which, according to the proposed change, would immediately succeed it: The downfall of the rich wicked man, vividly and even exultingly drawn, and the touching picture of his own happiness in days that are past:

Ch. Job 27:21. The east wind lifts him up, and he is gone; A tempest steals him in the night away;

Ver. 22. God hurls his bolt against him;

Ver. 23. Men clap their hands, And hiss him from his place.

Job 29:1. O that I were as in the moons of old, As in the days when God took care of me.

There may be no direct contradiction; but every reader must feel that that there is a sad discord in it when thus presented. On the other hand, nothing would seem to be more natural, or more fitting, than the emotional transition from this closing meditation of the 28th, as it stands, and the pathetic wish that opens the 29th, although most likely with a brief interval between them. For there, too, is the inserted textual scholium: “And Job again resumed his parable;” resumption certainly implying some intervening silence. The train of thought, to one who enters into the emotion, is unmistakable: “Man’s wisdom is the fear of the Lord; to depart from evil is his understanding.” It makes him think of his own case, of his own perfect submission to the Divine Wisdom, 1:21, and this not in a boastful or self-righteous way, but from a reminiscence which only a false or feigned humility would repel. “A man fearing God and departing from evil;”—just such a man he had aimed to be; just such a man God himself had twice described him as being (יְרֵא אֱלֹהִים וְסָר מֵרָע, Job 1:1; Job 1:8). The “fear of the Lord;” that had been his religious life; “eschewing evil,” departing from evil, that had been his constant aim. How purely this appears in that touching practice of his described Job 1:5 : his rising early in the morning, and offering prayers and sacrifices for his children, lest, peradventure, in their hours of joy, they may have forgotten God. “This did Job continually” (כָּל הַיָּמִים “all his days”). And now that they are all dead and gone, swept away by a providence utterly inexplicable—now that his house lies desolate (Job 16:7), his reverential fear of God, his love of God, as Raschi says, continues still. At the end of this sublime meditation he again asserts it as man’s highest wisdom, his highest duty. He feels that it is his wisdom, his duty, now, as in the days of his prosperity: “But O that it were with, me as in the moons of old,” When shone upon my head the lamp of God, And through the darkness, by its light I walked. For there had been shades even in that season of worldly happiness, as he himself intimates in the close of his opening lamentation;

I was not confident; I did not feel secure; Nor did I careless rest; yet trouble came. In the language of the 131st Psalm: “His heart had not been haughty, nor his eyes lofty; neither had he walked in ways too great or too wonderful for him.” The translator has made it his aim to adhere most strictly to the Hebrew text and order; but if any change could be admitted, it would not be in the text, properly, but in the transition scholia that divide the chapters. These can hardly be said to belong to the text in the same manner as the speeches themselves. They are like the titles to the Psalms, or the note at the end of chap. 31, תַּמּוּ דִּבְרֵי אִיּוֹב, “the words of Job are finished,” such as are found at the closing portions of old manuscripts, like the finis in modern books. Compare the end of Psalms 72. These may have been the work of the original writer; but they have more the appearance of scholia added by later transcribers, though before the time of the ancient versions. In either view, there is an essential difference between them and the text strictly. It should be noted, however, that these scholia, as they appear before chap. 27 and 29, have a peculiar word that is not found in the others: “Then Job resumed his parable, and said.” In the Hebrew it is מָשָׁל, mashal. If we keep the rendering parable, it must be understood as having two senses. Parable, παραβολὴ (παραβάλλω), is a placing side by side. The two things thus placed may be an outward allegorical fiction and the inner sense it represents. Or the figure may be wholly outward, referring, as it does here, to the style of the diction—a placing side by side two sentences similarly constructed and expressing similarity of idea. Thus regarded, the parable, or mashal (Latin similis) is synonymous with parallelism, that is the speaking or chanting in couplets. That it really was a kind of chanting, appears not only from the musical notes in the Psalms, but from the peculiar word here connected with it: “Job added” (resumed), שְׂאֵת מְשָׁלוֹ, “to lift up” (not simply take up) “his parable.” It was the lifting up the voice after a pause, and going on in the chanting measured movement, as Selah (סֶלֶה, a letting down, a pause, or silence) denoted the contrary proceeding. On the naturalness and facility of this in ancient times, and in the eastern world (notwithstanding its seeming strangeness to us), see remarks in the Introduction, or Argument on the Theism of the Book, pp. 41, 42.

There would seem to be a propriety in having such a scholium of resumption, with its implied preceding pause, at the beginning of chap. 28, rather than of chap. 27; but a better way would be to regard it as coming in both places, as it occurs also at the commencement of chap. 29; and so the translator has ventured to give it. It should be noted, however, that these two scholia (chaps. 27 and 29) are peculiar in having this word. mashal (lifting up his mashal), as also from their occurrence, in this way, in the long talk of Job (26–31). It is after the others have ceased to respond, and when he goes on by himself, hardly seeming to heed their presence—being occupied, as it were, with his own deeper thoughts and deeper experience. Elsewhere they mark the close of particular speeches and the commencement of a reply. The fact noticed may be claimed as strongly confirming what the translator has said in other places about such soliloquizing pauses, and as showing that they were is the mind of the earliest writer, or, at least, of the earliest transcribers.

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EXCURSUS VIII On The References To Mining Operations In Certain Verses Of Job 28 And Especially The Difficulties Of Verses 4th And 5th An immense amount of commentary has been written on these passages, and especially ver. 4, which Schultens at first described as “Cimmerian darkness,” though afterwards he seems to have got more light upon it, which has been much used by others since his time. The ancient versions, LXX. and Vulgate, give us little or no help. The Syriac is more to be trusted; but the text there seems to be corrupt, as is apt to be the case with transcriptions of difficult passages. The old commentators, as given in Poole’s Synopsis of the Critica Sacra, seem to present irreconcilable variances. The later commentators, since the days of Schultens, agree in referring it to mining operations, in which they are undoubtedly right, as may be inferred, in a general way, from the first three verses, together with the 9th and 11th. The error, however, into which some have fallen, seems to consist in the minuteness of description they profess to find. Schultens, we think, first gave to דַּלוּ the rendering swings suspended, that is, in the shaft of the mine. It has a pretty good foundation etymologically. It is picturesque, moreover, and that made it at once a favorite. Later commentators have generally adopted it. It is, however, by no means certain. Not suspension generally, like תלה, but a vacillating, tottering motion, from side to side, seems to be the primary meaning of דלל, and the one which most readily explains its other applications. With this, however, suspension easily connects itself, and there mingle with it also certain senses derived from דלה (to draw, as from a well by letting down a bucket), which increase the resemblance. There is, however, no clear example of this sense of suspension, unless the present case is one. In Psalms 116:6, דַּלּוֹתִי is much better rendered: “I was weak (wavering, tottering, halting), and He saved me,” or I was relaxed. So in Proverbs 26:7, rendered by some, “the legs of the lame hang down” (Ges. crura dependent), there is much rather the sense of weakness, vacillation, tottering, and the thing compared to this (in the second clause), namely, “a proverb in the mouth of a fool,” well preserves its adaptedness: it (the proverb) has no force of steadiness in such a mouth. This, too, it should be noted, is nearer the form of דלה, though Gesenius tries to make it from דלל (דַּלְיוּ for דָּלְלוּ). In Isaiah 19:6, the full form of the word we have here is used of streams, and joined with חָרְבוּ (are dried up): דָּלְלוּ וְחָרְבוּ יְֹארֵי מָצוֹר. This suggests for the first verb the sense of diminution, or of weakness (languida sunt, Ges.); but it may, nevertheless, keep the primary meaning of deviation, vacillation. They present the phenomena of streams, of wadies, nearly dried up, with here and there a varying of the shallow channel, a running in devious ways, instead of the strong, direct flowing of a full river. Compare יִלָּפְתוּ, Job 5:18. The derivative meaning of דֶּלֶת, door (valva,) is clearly from the swaying sense without including that of suspension. So, too, the Arabic dalla has no such sense of suspension as Delitzsch ascribes to it. The derivative, daldal, is used to denote a vacillating motion, or swaying from side to side; but this comes from a sort of onomatopic analogy, such as may be recognized in our words dally and dalliance. The Arabic dala has the same meaning with the Hebrew דלה, to draw water by letting down a bucket. This might do here if we suppose דלל to borrow its meaning from it, as is not unfrequently the case with verbs similarly related. And thus we have rendered it generally in this place, swing themselves down, or “let themselves down,” without that forced idea of a narrow mining shaft, the great objection to which is, that it compels the forcing of other very familiar Hebrew words. It might denote a swinging from the rocks of their wild way, or from one precipice to another by means of ropes.⁹⁵¹ The word נעו carries on the same general idea of wandering, roaming (see such passages as Amos 4:8; Amos 8:12; Jeremiah 14:10; Lamentations 4:15), and seems almost synonymous with נדד or נוד, denoting uniformly a moving from place to place. In Judges 9:9; Judges 9:11 (fable of Jotham), it seems to denote the swaying of the branches of trees; though the context would rather demand for it the sense of ruling, like sway in English (to bend, transitive or intransitive), of from some other analogy. It can hardly have there (Judges 9) this image of waving branches, since it is used of the vine as well as of the lofty, swaying trees. In neither respect, however, would it be suitable to this idea of a mining shaft, whilst in other, or roaming sense, so common, and almost universal, it would present a striking incongruity. In that case, too, גָּר and אֱנוֹשׁ would refer simply to the men above in their relation to the other regarded as below them in the shaft; a distinction, as it would seem, too narrow for terms so wide. It would be extravagant as applied to a separation so brief in time, and so short in space; whilst it would take away from that picture of remoteness and of solitary wandering which the whole contour of the passage seems to present. Even as regards our extensive modern minings it would be a gross hyperbole.

It has been admitted that, in itself, this sense of suspension given to דַּלּוּ is not only picturesque, but seems to be possessed of a fair etymological ground. The objections arise from the context. Strongest among these is the necessity such a rendering creates of giving exceedingly forced sense, apparently

Very unusual senses at least—to very plain and very common Hebrew words. It compels us to depart from that simple literal usage which, in such places as this, not unfrequently furnishes the best clue to the idea. We get the thought of something out of the way, and that leads us to overlook the plain sense of words as not adapted to it. So here, this pictorial fancy of suspension once entertained, there must be got for נַחַל the sense of shaft—a perpendicular or, sometimes, a horizontal hole dug or cut in the earth. It might be said, that the verb פרץ, taken transitively, is not well adapted to such an operation, meaning, as it generally does, a sudden bursting rupture or breaking. But waiving that consideration, there is no hazard in saying, that of such a sense for נַחַל not the least trace can be found in any use of the word in any passage of the Hebrew Scriptures, although it occurs more than a hundred times. It is a remarkably clear word, and its application to localities well known and visible such as the nahal Kedron, the brook or torrent Kedron, the nahal Kishon (nahal kedhumim, “that ancient river Kishon”), can leave no doubt in respect to its exact meaning. It is a valley, a ravine, or wady, with a torrent running through it which is often dried up, leaving the valley itself as chiefly represented by the word. See its frequent use in connection with proper names of such places: Nahal Eshcol, Nahal Arnon, Nahal Jabbok, etc. The mere fact of such marked geographical uses would have prevented its being applied to a thing so different as the perpendicular shaft of a mine. Delitzsch seems to feel this when he suggests the treatment of it here as a different word, with a different etymology: נַחַל from חלל, to bore, like חָלִיל, a pipe or flute; but this would be unexampled among Hebrew derivations, whilst it has no support whatever in any Arabic word or usage. It is the same necessity of accommodation to the intruded idea that compels a departure from the usual sense of גָּר before alluded to, and which, in its participle sense of temporary dweller or sojourner, does not differ from the other form, גֵּר, pilgrim or traveller. There is, too, the preposition מֵעִם in its double or intensive form (from, with), denoting a departure from the accustomed or the familiar, the traveler’s common track, into the wild and the unknown— Where breaks the valley from the pilgrim’s view, or from the dweller’s knowledge, whichever rendering we may give to it (see foot-note, Job 28:4).The whole style of the language favors this mode of viewing it: forgotten of the foot;⁹⁵² רֶגֶל being used for the foot-worn way to which these wanderers (הנשכחים with the article) may be said to be lost, or which, as this most poetical diction presents it, has forgotten them. It is almost the language of Æschylus, Prom. Vinct: far removed, ἄβατον εἰς ἐρημίαν—away from the haunts of man, ἀπάνθρωπος (ver. 20), an almost verbal translation of the Hebrew מֵאֱנוֹשׁ. It is the same feeling that is created by the description of the Greek poet. There is about it all an air of solitariness and remoteness, inconsistent with any idea we can form of the shaft of a mine which is generally a well known and much frequented place. In ver. 5, there is the same general idea of the human inquisitiveness to which all else in this part of the chapter is subservient. It may refer to mining operations, or to a search for precious stones in caverns, or deep places of the earth, supposed to lie near the subterranean fires, and of which certain precious stones and metals were regarded, in some way, as the product. Here, also, a too narrow view, which would confine it to the first class of works, seems to have caused violence to the language of the passage, especially in the second clause. The הוּא חוֹקֵר of ver. 3, implied, as it is, all through ver. 4, is to be supplied in this: “He searches out,” or men search out:

Earth’s surface (they explore) whence comes forth bread,— Its depths below, where it seems turned to fire. Its upper and lower regions are both the scenes of the human search for wealth or knowledge. All else in the language is used to express a contrast which does not seem to have been sufficiently attended to. It is that which ia supposed to exist between the products of the two regions—bread above and fire below, or rather something of the nature of fire, כְּמוֹ אֵשׁ, something fire-like, igneous, pyritic, pyrogenous, πυροειδὲς; this being the nearest way by which the Hebrew language could express what in Greek would be denoted by the qualifying termination ειδὴς⁹⁵³ attached to words. It makes quite a difference whether we take the particle כְּמוֹ, in this case, as qualifying the noun אֵשׁ, or the ver נֶהְפַּךְ: something like fire, which the speaker could describe in no other way, or turned up like fire, or as by fire, according to the view of some. כְּמוֹ may, indeed, be merely a particle of comparison when the context so demands: but here everything points the other way. It is the fire itself which is qualified: fire as it were; and so our English translators took it, though they seem to have expressed very obscurely whatever idea about it they may have had in their minds. In this view of כמו אש, it becomes very important to determine the force and relation of the verb נהפך. Does it denote some operation of the supposed miners, their turning up the bowels of the earth like fire (that is, as fire is turned, though that seems to give hardly any sense), or does it mean turning them up by means of fire? The objection to the latter view is grammatical. It would demand a preposition with אֵשׁ, or an established ellipsis of one. Such an ellipsis of ב does indeed occur in connection with words of time and place, as is common in language; but when it is wanted to denote instrument or means, it is met with only in peculiar cases, where the context is such as to allow no possible doubt, or where the instrument is identical with the verb in nature and in action: As, “They stoned of him stones” (Leviticus 25:23), or, “David was girded a linen girdle” (2 Samuel 6:14); or, “They sowed the city salt” (Judges 9:45). In such cases, it resembles, somewhat, the Greek idiom giving a bare accusative of the garment or sword after verbs of clothing or armor. So, too, words uttered, or sounds, may be treated as instruments without a preposition; as, “He cried a great cry” (Ezekiel 11:13), instead of, with a great cry. See other cases presented by Noldius, and involving the same principle. Such an expression, however, as turned up fire, meaning, turned up by fire, is wholly unexampled. So great has seemed this difficulty, that some would solve it by a different reading, בְּמוֹ instead of כְּמוֹ. Some who adopt this view of fire as the instrument, though with so little warrant, carry it out to the most minute details. It is fire as used in smelting, or for breaking rocks igne et aceto, as Rosenmueller holds. So Castalio (quoted by Rosenmuller): Agunt per magna spatia cuniculos, et terram subeunt, non secus ac ignis facit, ut in Ætna et Vesuvio. Delitzsch makes it “a turning and a tossing up of the earth as by fire;” and all this without any preposition, which is all the more demanded on account of the כמו, if the latter denotes a comparison of action having relation to the verb, instead of being qualificative of אש (“turned up,” כבאש, or כמו באש). A strong argument against this, aside from the others that have been mentioned, is derived from the nature of the verb הפך. A careful examination will show that the Niphal here, instead of denoting any action of miners, or of men in any way, simply expresses the contrariety between the two things mentioned, namely bread as the product of the surface, and the fire, or the igneous substances, the quasi fire (כמוֹ אש) that reveals itself, or its effects, in the depths below. To make this clear, there is need of adverting to a few preliminary facts. Such an idea of fire in the earth is not a product of modern science only. There are many reasons for regarding it as a very ancient notion. The appearance of volcanoes, whether in action or quiescent, must have early given rise to it; and we know, from modern explorations, that there must have been such in those regions of the world, even though Scripture, and other history, had been perfectly silent about it. But there are notices of it in the Bible. Sinai was probably a volcanic mountain, and it would be no derogation from the wonder of the Sinaitic lawgiving that God had chosen it on that very account. That similar phenomena were not unknown in Judea and Arabia, is evident from such passages as Psalms 104:32 : “He but looks at the earth and it trembles; He toucheth the mountains and they smoke.” Hence the old idea of subterranean rivers of fire, to which there may have been allusion in the נַחֲלֵו בְלִיַּעַל, rivers of Belial (torrentes inferni) of Psalms 18:5, the טִיט הַיָוֵן and the בּוֹר שָׁאוֹן, the “pit of noise,” or the roaring pit, of Psalms 40:3, the יְוֵן מְצוּלָה, Or “boiling mud” of Psalms 69:3, all of them, indeed, used metaphorically, but presenting primary ideas suggesting something very like the imagery by which Socrates, in the Phædo, 111, D, describes the subterranean regions: ἀεννάων ποταμῶν ἀμήχανα μεγέθη ὑπὸ τὴνγῆν, καὶ θερμῶν ὑδάτων, πολὺ δὲ πῦρ, καὶ πυρὸς μθγάλους ποταμούς, πολλοὺς δὲ ὑγροῦ πηλοῦ βορβορωδεστέρου: “immensemagnitudes of ever flowing rivers beneath the earth, and of boiling waters (בור שאון, the crater of noise, or the hollow resounding crater), and of vast fire, and of great rivers of fire, and many rivers of flowing mud boiling with turbulence.” We cannot keep out of our minds “the horrible pit and the miry clay,” by which the Scripture may be supposed to represent this awful conception of subterranean fire, and of boiling floods, with which it is mingled. There were volcanoes in the Arabian peninsula; the land of Idumea presents the strongest evidence of old eruptions, and they may have suggested to Job, or the author of Job, the same ideas that Ætna gave to Æschylus:

ἐνθεν ἐκραγήσονταί ποτε

Ποταμοὶ πυρὸς δάπτοντες ἀγρίαις γνάθοις,

τῆς καλλικάρπου Σικελίας λευρὰς γύας.

There is then a double contrast here : 1st, between the upper surface of the earth, called simply ארץ and the earth below, תחתיה 2d, between the productions of the surface, of which the bread is the general representative, and the fire, or quasi fire, which seems to affect the nature of things below, showing itself not only in the striking outward phenomena referred to, but in the subterranean productions, metals, precious stones, sapphires, etc., supposed to have in them more or less of the fire-like or pyrogenous element.⁹⁵⁴ One class of things is turned into the other, the process being conceived in either way, or in both ways. For the expression of such a contrast and such a transformation, there is no word in Hebrew, or in any other language, better adapted than this verb הפך. The primary idea of this root, and one which it never loses, is that of reversal, metamorphosis, transformation. As a word of action, or motion, simply, it is the turning of a thing upside down, or completely reversing its position; as Hosea 8:8, the turning of a cake as it is baked in the fire, 2 Kings 21:13, the turning over a dish when it is wiped. In this sense, it is applied figuratively to the complete overturning (καταστροφὴ) of Sodom and Gomorrah, to which there is such frequent reference in the Bible. As denoting change, it expresses a complete reversal of condition, in which sense it is more completely and more literally applicable to this notable case of Sodom and Gomorrah than in the first. It was not only a subversion locally, but the bringing into a state the direct opposite of the former, so that land becomes water, fertility barrenness and salt, fragrance and freshness a vile and loathsome putridity (see Note on the Destruction of the Cities of the Plain. Lange, Gen., p. 443). This is the real force of that oft-used noun מַהְפֵּכָה as go repeatedly applied to this event. So that it becomes a kind of proper name, and passes traditionally into the Arabic mention of the catastrophe, occurring frequently in the Koran (see the note aforesaid). These cities are called the overturned, Mow-te-fe-hat, VIII. Conj. Participle of the root אפך, which is the same with the Hebrew הפך. What is worthy of note is that in Arabic this is the only application of the word in which the archaic sense is retained. In other cases, it has the idea of falsehood and lying, which, though not. found in the Hebrew, except a bare trace of it Proverbs 17:20, is common in the Arabic אפך, and comes most naturally from this same old primary idea of reversal or contrariety, only changed from action to speech. It is the saying of that which is just the contrary of what is. From this idea of reversal comes another, or third usage of the word which occurs in many places, and seems to give the true meaning here. It is, as has been said, that of transformation, metamorphosis, or of one thing turning into another. In none of these uses can it be employed as some would translate, that is, for digging up the earth, tossing it to and fro, as Delitzsch says, or splitting rocks with fire and vinegar. When regarded in this last sense, it is totally inapplicable to any such idea. This sense of transformation has many examples; as Leviticus 13:3 : the hair (of the leper) turned white, with many following examples; Exodus 7:15 : rod turned to a serpent; Exodus 8:20 : water turned to blood; Psalms 105:26, the same; Psalms 105:25, heart turned to hate; Psalms 114, rock turned to pool of water; Isaiah 34:9, valleys turned to pitch; Joel 3:14, sun turned to darkness; Job 19:19, friends turned to enemies, though there it may have the local sense: are turned away (their faces) at the shocking sight of the sufferer. For other examples, see Amos 5:8, morning to shadow of death; Psalms 66:6, sea to dry land; Psalms 32:4, my moisture to the summer drouth; with other places in all of which it will be seen that there is the idea of a transformation to something of a different, and, in general, of a seemingly opposite nature. In such cases, the Niphal is equally used with the Kal, just as in English the transitive sense, turns into, and the passive, is turned into, have the same meaning. Or they might all be rendered, in English, without a preposition: rod turned serpent, water turned blood, etc.

Besides its own inherent fitness, the difficulties in the other translations seem to drive us to this sense of transformation, so well established in so many other cases. Taking the other view, as presented by Delitzsch and Rosenmueller, the subject of נֶהְפַּךְ would seem to be אֶרֶץ, but there the gender is in the way. If we take תַּחְתֶּיהָ forthe subject, there is a similar difficulty with the number; not insurmountable, indeed, as it may be taken collectively for the interior of the earth. The impersonal rendering, it turns, or there is a turning, would do, but it suits the sense of transformation rather than that of a turning up by the miners. All grammatical difficulties are obviated by taking for the subject לֶחֶם (bread or food) in the first clause, just as it is joined to this same, verb, and in this same sense of transformation, Job 20:14 : לַחְמו בְּמֵעָיו נֶהְפָּךְ, his bread in his bowels is turned, changed, transformed to something else, becoming the poison of asps, as appears in the second clause. So here לחס נהפך כמו אש, bread is turned to fire, or to the כמו אש, the fire-like (igneous,⁹⁵⁵ πυροειδές); bread and fire being taken as contraries, or, at least, very different forms of matter. The idea being somewhat strange, or out of the usual way, this mode of expression is adopted: as it were fire, as though this subterranean fiery energy must be something different from common fire, yet having so much of a similar elemental nature as to demand a similar name. The translator has used the word seems as a corresponding expression for an idea hypothetically strange. The examples of הפך and נהפך show that, in this sense of transformation, they may have a subject after as well as before them, or a double nominative—being, in this respect, like the substantive verbs of being and becoming. In this way, כמו אש, taken as one compound idea, may be regarded as the post-subject of נהפּך. The preposition ל, coming as it does, in the majority of the cases cited, does not affect this principle, since it does not denote approach merely, but the one thing actually becoming the other. In some of the most striking of these cases, however, there is no preposition, as in a number of those from Leviticus 13, and no difference is made, in this respect, between the active and the passive, or between the transitive and intransitive usage, as Leviticus 13:3, שֵׂעָר הָפַךְ לָבָן; ver. 25, נֶהְפַּךְ שֵׂעָר לָבָן, hair turned white. In other places, it is ללבן to white; but the idea is the same, and calling it the second subject does not alter the case. It might more properly be rendered whiteness; but the real change is from the black hair to the white hair, or from the diseased to the healthy. Psalms 114:8, however, presents two distinct substantives without any preposition : הֹפְכִי הַצּוּר אֲגַס מָיִם turned the rock pool of waters; the passive would have been, הצור נהפך אגם the rock turned pool of water. We have, to some extent, the same idiom in English, as he turned Mohammedan, or as Shakspeare says, “to turn husband.” In Job 20:14, we have an example of such a construction all the more striking from the fact that the leading words are the same with those of the passage before us. It is the same verb, the same noun, and the same idea of transformation. It has already been partially cited:

לַחְמוֹ בְּמֵעָיו נֶהְפָּךְ

מְרוֹרַת פְּתָנִים בְּקִרְבּוֹ In consequence of the rythmical division, made by the accents, we take the second subject in the second member of the parallelism: His bread in his bowels is turned, The poison of asps within him. To make it clear, translators insert a substantive verb in the second clause: it is, or it becomes, the poison of asps within him. But it is virtually the same with the other examples above given, and so Luther renders it: Seine Speise inwendig im Leibe, wird sich verwandeln in Ottergalle. Delitzsch is hypercritical on Luther, here. “The מְרוֹרַת, he says, is not equivalent to לִמְרוֹרַת, but we see that this can be expressed without the preposition, and certainly there are cases where the construction is carried from one member of the parallelism to the other. He would supply the substantive verb in the second clause; but his own translation shows that the poison is but the bread changed in its form, and therefore in its nature. The idea, therefore, is precisely what Luther gives: “His food in his body is changed into (becomes) the adder poison”—his bread turns poison. Job 20:14 is rendered by Junius and Tremellius in accordance with this idea: cibus ejus in visceribus ejus conversus fel aspidum in ipso fiet. The passage, Job 28:5, is also so given by them as to preserve the idea of transformation, although the construction is not clearly seen: Terra ex qua prodit cibus, quamvis sub ea diversum fiat, velut ignis ardeat. In verse 9 below, הפך (Kal transitive) has the first of the senses above named, that is, the local, or sense of subversion, instead of conversion; הָפַךְ מִשֹּׁרֶש הָרִים, “he overturneth the mountains from the root.” This might seem to furnish an argument for the sense some would give to the Niphal here; but a careful look at the two places shows that the inference is the other way. In ver. 9 everything is perfectly clear. There is the subject, man, the object, the mountains, and the kind of action, whether hyperbolically expressed or not, quite unmistakable. “Why could it not have been so expressed, ver. 5, or with simply a change to the passive? The sense of subversion in the first passage involves great difficulty and obscurity in these respects, as we have already seen. It is much increased by the particle כמו. The rendering, turned up as fire, gives no meaning; as by fire demands the instrumental preposition, of whose ellipsis, in such a case as this, there is no example. If earth is taken for the subject, the gender is in the way; if תַּחְתֶּיהָ, taken as a noun, then the number; if לֶחֶם, no other meaning can be given to it than that of transformation. The clearness in the one case, the difficulty in the other, shows that some out of the way idea was intended.

Another argument is that throughout the Hebrew Bible the Niphal has everywhere the sense of transformation, and is used in the manner of a deponent. Out of more than thirty cases, there are but two which even seem to present any other meaning, and they, on examination, immediately resolve themselves into the common idea. There is the prediction against Nineveh, Jonah 3:3, נִינְוֶה נֶהְפָּכֶת. This, however, does not so much denote a local subversion, though that may be a part of it, as a complete change of state, from grandeur to ruin and desolation, as said above of Sodom, from fertility to barrenness and salt, from being like “the garden of the Lord” to the blasted waste and putridity of the Dead Sea. Another such seeming case is Psalms 78:57 : “changed like the deceitful bow,” or the relaxed bow, springing back to the old state from which it had been violently bent; verwandelt, as it is rendered by Hupfeld. So Joshua 8:20, “the pursued transformed or changed to pursuers;” 1 Samuel 10:6, נֶהְפָּךְ לְאִישׁ אַחֵר “Saul transformed to another man.” In Proverbs 17:20, the idea is not subversion, but contrariety, the opposite of what is, as in the Arabic sense of אפך. These examples have been dwelt upon so minutely to show that in this obscure place, Job 28:5, the sense of transformation is not only allowable, but demanded, and that the Vulgate rendering, igni subversa est, which has been the source of all similar translations, has not only its intrinsic difficulties, but is opposed to the almost exceptionless usage of this Niphal verb.

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EXCURSUS IX

Job 29:18 And Like The Palm Tree Multiply My Days

Besides the rendering above given, and in the text, there are two other modes of translating this verse, each well supported by the best authorities. Good reasons, therefore, should be given for departing from them. There is, first, that of the common English version, supported by Conant. It has in its favor, among the moderns, Umbreit, Stickel, Vaihinger, Hahn, Renan and others. Among the ancient authorities, there are the Targum, Syriac, Arabic. So also Luther, Tremellius and Junius, with others given in Poole’s Synopsis. It seems plausible and easy, but is open to quite strong objections. In the first place, it makes an incongruous simile. Heaps of corn collected in vast quantities (Genesis 41:49), promises of immense posterity (Genesis 32:12; Isaiah 48:18), great multitudes of people (all Israel, etc., 1 Samuel 13:8; 2 Samuel 17:11; 1 Kings 4:20), are well expressed by sand, since, in general, it is intended to denote the numberless, or what it is useless to attempt to count. There is an extravagance, however, in applying it to the years, or the days, of any human life, however long. It is, moreover, applied to visible objects, or conceived as visible, that strike us by their multitude, whereas time, however divided, presents no such conception of countless particles. Again, to the comparison כחול, there is almost always added the sea (הים), or the sea shore. Out of twenty examples there are only two exceptions, Habakkuk 1:9, “gather captivity like the sand,” and Psalms 139:18, in both of which cases the idea of number is so clear as not to need the addition. In Isaiah 48:18, the sea is mentioned right before and after. This, however, although having weight, is not conclusive, since Job may have meant the sand of the desert. In the third place, it makes strongly against this rendering, that it is out of harmony with what follows, even if we take it as an independent assertion (my root was open), instead of a continuation of an idea, or of a state preceding as would seem to be denoted by the participle פָּתוּחַ (my root laid open, etc.). Ver. 19 is in any way most abrupt and void of connection, if we render חוֹל either sand, or the phœnix bird, and this is the more strange in a passage so emotional, and especially when we consider the wonderful beauty of the language following. The second rendering is that adopted by Ewald, Dillmann, Delitzsch and Zöckler. Delitzsch, in particular, goes into a labored defence of it. They regard חוֹל as meaning the phœnix, the fabulous bird said to live a thousand years, then to die, or go out in its nest through some sort of spontaneous combustion, after which it had a kind of second birth, and lived the same round again. Hence the argument of Delitzsch, and which is really the best he offers, that the bird is so called from the Arabic חול, meaning a circuit or round, though there is no evidence that the Arabians themselves ever used this word for the phœnix, and it has no such meaning in Hebrew. The great authority for this rendering is derived from the Jewish Rabbinical commentators, and from the Talmud. This is suspicious on the very face of it; for, however excellent these commentators in some respects, yet nothing is so apt to lead them into extravagance as a story about some fabulous animal, especially some monstrous creature of a bird. The only thing in the context which seems to favor it in the least is the mention of the word nest, קֵן, in the first clause of the verse; but this is so used for habitation (as in Numbers 24:21, where it is taken as synonymous with מוֹשָׁב seat, and Habakkuk 2:9, where it is in parallelism with בַּיִת, house), that the figurative may be regarded as nearly out of sight, not suggestive of any comparison, or as itself suggested by what Job had said, a few verses above, about his own domestic felicity when his young children were round about him as the parent bird in its nest. If we regard it as suggestive of, or suggested by this monstrous phœnix story, then we must carry it through. It was not merely a dying in his nest, his home, like an aged man with his offspring round him, but dying in flames, like the phœnix to live again. The association of ideas would be monstrous, far removed from the simplicity characteristic of the book, whether we regard it as a later Solomonic invention, or as a true patriarchal history. The Greek fable was a late thing, comparatively, and there is no evidence whatever of its having anything Shemitic about it. If the phœnix was chosen for the comparison, it must have been on account of these marvellous incidents of combustion and revivification, since in other respects, or the mere domestic image of the nest, there are other birds that would have done much better. It is, however, this idea of revivification which commended it to some of the earlier Christian interpreters, who found in it the doctrine of the Resurrection. In the same way, φοῖνιξ, in the LXX. version of Psalms 92:13 (palma in the Vulgate, תָּמָר in the Hebrew), was also turned into the phœnix; as Bochart says, Hieroz. Job 819: Nonnulli Patries avide arripuerunt quia videbatur facere ad resurrectionis fidem. “The righteous man shall flourish (revive) like the phœnix.” It may be said, too, that in this place the rendering, phœnix (meaning the fabulous bird), disrupts the two verses, more even than the rendering, sand. How it reads! “Multiply my days as a phœnix—my root laid open to the waters, and the dew lodging all night upon my branch.” It is not only a most abrupt change of figure in two clauses closely connected by the form and dependence of their words, but a most inharmonious succession of ideas, especially if we carry along what is most prominent in the fable, the images of combustion and of revivification out of the ashes. The third rendering, and the one which the translator, after the most careful study, has found himself compelled to adopt, is that of the LXX. and of Jerome in the Vulgate. The former renders חול not simply φοῖνιξ, which might be taken to mean either the palm or the bird, but removes all ambiguity by using the words ὤσπερ στέλεχος φοῖνικος , “like the stem of the palm tree.” The Vulgate has simply sicut palma. The authority they had for this could have been nothing else than the standing Jewish tradition about the word, before the Targum, the Talmud, or those Rabbinical expositors who delighted in such stories as that of the phœnix and the roc. See what a monstrosity they make of שֶׂכְוִי, Job 38:36, rendering it the cock; “Who hath given intelligence to the cock?” in defiance of all the harmonies of the passage. It was not so with the older Jews when the LXX. version was made. Jerome, too, as he tells us in many places of his commentaries, relied much upon his Jewish teacher, who often gave him clear and consistent renderings for words, but nowhere. such wild fables as these. From such an earlier and better source must he, as well as the LXX. translators, have derived their rendering of חוֹל. It is much more likely that the later Jewish rendering of phœnix, as a bird, came from a perversion of the LXX., than to suppose the reverse, as Delitzsch seems to do; namely, that the Greek translators, not understanding the Hebrew idea attached to חוֹל, or why they rendered it phœnix, took it for the tree, instead of the bird. This is incredible. It should be borne in mind, too, that the Jewish Talmiudic and Rabbinical writers connect this with other fables about the phœnix bird, such as that it did not eat of the forbidden fruit which Eve gave to all the other birds (see Bochart, Hieroz. II. p. 818), and other strange things told about it in the ark. These stories show that this phœnix translation which was mingled with them must have been later than that purer source from which these earlier translations were made. But why should the palm tree be called חוֹל which elsewhere means the sand? Is there the semblance of a philological reason for it, or any reason aside from that beautiful fitness of such a rendering here which all must admit? We think there is. The common name for palm tree in other books of the Old Testament is תָּמָר (Thamar), a name given for its straightness, its towering figure. This name does not occur in Job, which would seem strange as it is so common an object, and presents such a beautiful comparison, unless it is presented by some other word. There may have been one of those dialectical variations which became so numerous in the later Arabic. In Job’s surroundings there was a fitness, too, in naming it from the sand, as its more common Hebrew name in Palestine came from its stateliness. There were, moreover, other things suggestive of similar ideas that characterized the palm tree. It was not only an inhabitant of a sandy soil, the beach, or the desert, but it also loved the water. Hence its favorite seat was where these two things were combined, as in, or on the borders of, an oasis in the desert, such as Tadmor, named from its palm trees (תּתְמר=תַּדְמר, in 1 Kings 9:18, written תמר), and, on this very account, called Palmyra, the city of palms. Here met together both of those characteristics which so adapt the palm tree to this comparison. It is the tree of the sand; its root loves the water, lies open to the water, which it instinctively finds beneath the sand, whilst its stately towering stem (or στέλεχος as the LXX. render it, having this in mind probably), presents its isolated branch (קציר here in the singular, branch, or top, instead of branches) to receive the nourishing dews of heaven. The sand tree, or the sand tree near the fountain, and an indication of its presence; this seems a good ground for a poetical name, if it is any more poetical than that which names it for its stateliness. In the Greek version of the Book of Sirach 24:15, Wisdom says, “I was exalted like the palm tree ἐν αἰγιαλοῖς on the sea shores,” the sandy beaches, or margins of streams running through deserts, like the Jordan near Jericho anciently famous for its palms. Its other quality is attested by Pliny, Lib. 13, ch. 4, as quoted by Bochart: Palma gaudet riguis toto-que anno bibere amat. So Theophrastus, ἐπιζητεῖ τὸ ναματιαῖον ὓδωρ “it seeks the fountain water.” These two qualities, loving the sand, and loving the water, might seem inconsistent, but it is in fact this compound property which makes it the fertilizer of the desert, by drawing up water that may lie below, and thus becoming the creator, as it were, of such oases as Tadmor or Palmyra, Both, however, meet us in that clear passage, Exodus 15, where the station Elim, in the desert, is so strikingly described as “twelve fountains of water and seventy palm trees.” The sand tree had made the fountains by which in turn it was nourished. It may be said, in short, that whilst the literal interpretation, the sand, here greatly weakens the figure evidently designed to be carried through both verses (18, 19), the other rendering of the fabulous phœnix utterly destroys it; and the wonder is that men like Ewald and Delitzsch could have tolerated it for a moment. It cannot be denied, that the translation of the LXX. and Vulgate presents perfectly this exquisite association of ideas. The palm lives long. That adapts it to the first verse, and immediately suggests the charming imagery that follows: the deep root drinking the water in the earth below, the lofty top inhaling the dew of heaven; earthly prosperity crowned with the divine favor.⁹⁵⁶ We cannot wonder that it was a favorite text with old divines, who sought to accommodate (and justly, too, for no other book than the Bible seems so made for such a purpose) places and figures of this kind to the inward religious experience. They were learned men, and knew more about the letter of the Scriptures than many a boasting Rationalist; but they also heard in it a voice the latter cannot hear. The thought is called up by a passage in the dying experience of Thomas Hallyburton, Professor of Divinity University of St. Andrew’s, and author of a most learned and acute work on the Insufficiency of Natural Religion (ed. 1714). When near his end, and in the most acute pain, he was asked one morning how he found himself. “Och, sirs,” he replied, “sore enough in body, but sweet in soul, my root spread out by the waters of life, and the dew lay all night upon my branch.”

It confirms the comparison and the rendering given in the text, that the palm, as has been said, is a long living tree. Any one can see how much better it suits the simile of growing years than the sand, which is suitable only to the comparison of visible objects confusing the eye by their number, and thus becoming countless (numeroque carentis arenæ, as Horace says, Odes, Lib. 1:24). It is illy adapted to denote succession of any kind, especially that of a flowing quantity like time, or the years and days of life. The beautiful propriety of the figure, Psalms 92:13, where it is joined with the cedar in expressing the idea of a hale old age, furnishes also a strong argument in support of the rendering adopted here: “The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree (ὡς φοῖνιξ), like a cedar in Lebanon shall he grow (יִשְׁגֶּה, LXX: πληθυνθήσεται Vulg. multiplicabitur); they shall yet bear fruit in old age; they shall be resinous and green.” They shall be evergreens.—To sum up the comparison of the sand is defective and incongruous, as we have shown; that of the fabulous phœnix, monstrous and unscriptural; this suits every aspect of the figure.

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EXCURSUS X On The Supposed Locality Of Job 30

If there were scenic directions in the Book of Job, as in modern acted dramas, this chapter might, perhaps, have had appropriately placed before it the inscription:

Scene—The Border of the Desert.

Such a direction would seem to have some plausible ground of support from internal evidence. The imagination, if it be called such, is not only admissible, but has much to make it rational. Nothing is told us to that effect; but certainly it would be a very natural supposition, that the wretched Job, now become an outcast, stripped of property and children, abandoned by his wife, and afflicted by this terribly loathsome and infectious disease, had removed himself, or had been removed, to a distance from the scenes of his former life. It is to the credit of his three friends, notwithstanding the harshness appearing in some parts of their argument, that they ran the risks, and bore the disagreeableness, of remaining with him under these circumstances. Such a view in regard to his location is quite consistent with many things in the preceding chapters. It would very naturally suggest some of the wild frontier scenery Job describes in Ch. 28, especially the first part. It would vividly recall, by way of contrast, the scenes of his former life, the abundant “milk, the flowing streams of oil” (Job 29:5-6), now coming before his imagination like the Sharab (שָׁרָב, Isaiah 49:10), or mirage of the desert. So we might say, too, in respect to the brilliant nocturnal images presented in such passages as Job 22:12; Job 25:5; Job 26:13. The stars and constellations come out most gloriously in the clear, dry atmosphere of the desert. It gives them, too, a more imposing appearance of height when seen as the only striking objects visible from an extended barren plain:

Lo! where Eloah dwells! the heaven sublime!

Behold ! the crown of stars! how high they are ! This is language much more likely to be used in the vast solitary sahara, than in scenes crowded with the sight, or the memory, of well known multifarious objects. So Ch. Job 26:13, where Bildad says: “Look to the moon, behold !” or where Job, in his reply, points to the brilliant constellation of the serpent nearly overhead (Job 26:13). It is probable, too, that these discourses mainly took place by night, as the cooler, calmer hour, the season of contemplation, of “good thinking,” as denoted by that beautiful word Ευφρόνη, the Greek poetical name for the night. We know, too, from other sources (Hariri, and other Arabian Seance writers), that the Nightly Consessus was, among the early Arabians, a favorite mode of grave discussion, so established, in fact, that it gave rise to a peculiar verb and noun employed in the Ante-Koranic times for that very purpose, samara, to discourse by night, noctem confabulari lucente luna, with derivatives carrying the same idea, and denoting manner and place. The chief argument, however, for supposing such a scenic location here comes from this 30th chapter itself. These vagabonds, so graphically pictured to us, these Troglodytes, or dwellers in holes of the earth, as ver. 6 represents them, could never have so haunted Job had he been at or near his old abode in the vicinity of the city (Job 29:7) or castle, or in the fertile country adjacent. When they came out of their desert holes, and visited this fertile region, it was only as beggars driven by want, and to whom, on account of their incapacity for labor, or their general shiftlessness, even the meanest employments were denied (Job 30:1-2). These wild, famished, uncouth creatures now find him on the border of their own desert homes, and crowd around him in a sort of stupid wonder at his deplorable appearance. Their astonishment at the strange, emaciated man is soon turned to the most brutal scorn. They make his defenceless condition the object of their senseless, savage mirth—of gross insults, and, at last, of violent assaults. See a similar description of the same, or a similar crew, chap. Job 24:5-8.

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EXCURSUS XI מַלְאָךְ מֵלִיץ The Angel Intercessor

Job 33:23-24 And is there then an angel on his side— The interceding one—of thousands chief— To make it known to man—His righteousness; So will He show him grace, and say:

Deliver him from going down to death; A ransom I have found.

Gesenius renders מלאך מליץ angelus intercedens pro hominibus apud Deum, μεσίτης, tutelaris, and refers to Matthew 18:20. In this idea of a supernatural being, or a divine messenger, he has agreeing with him Ewald, Schlottmann, Dillmann, Delitzsch, Zoeckler, and, among the older commentators, Mercerus, Scultetus, Cocceius and others. The Vulgate has angelus loquens, but meaning a celestial being, which Luther follows: ein Engel, einer aus tausend. To this corresponds Renan:

Mais s’il trouve un ange intecesseur, Un des innombrables êtres célestes. On the other hand, Umbreit, Rosenmueller and Conant maintain that it is a mere human messenger, and that by it, most likely, Elihu intends himself. The reasons against this latter part of the idea are most conclusively given by Schlottmann and Delitzsch. It is not to be imagined, that Elihu, whatever some may say of his vanity and forwardness, should dare to represent himself as a divine or prophetic messenger to Job, sent in this way to announce to him the divine will, and to promise him the divine forgiveness. The word לְאָדָם, as Cocceius observes, forbids it. To announce to man seems to imply something higher than a human messenger. But מלאך, by itself, would be sufficient. The almost universal usage of this word makes it the representative of a heavenly messenger. The comparatively few cases in which it is used for a human herald, such as 1 Samuel 16:19; 1 Samuel 19:11; 1 Samuel 19:20; 1 Kings 19:2; Job 1:14, ever present a context forbidding any other idea. Compare Job 1:14; Job 4:8. Everything in this passage suggests the latter rather than the former, and throws the burden of proof upon those who contend for the human character. Delitzsch remarks that there is more of angelology in Elihu’s speeches than in other parts of the book; but a better argument is drawn from the close connection of this account with the vision-warnings mentioned just above (vers. 14, 15), as among the modes of the divine instruction. The transition is very easy from these to angelophanies, if they are not, in fact, identical—that is, the angel appearance occurring in vision. The language, too, “one of a thousand,” coupled with the epithet, Mediator, or Intercessor, shows that something more is meant than an ordinary angel, to say nothing of its being human. It seems to denote the chief of a mighty host. It immediately calls to mind the מלאך יהוה so often mentioned in the Bible as the divine representative, the angel of whom the patriarchs speak, Jacob’s הַמַּלְאָךְ הַגֹּאֵל, Genesis 48:6, “the Angel that redeemed him from all evil,” the “Angel of the Presence” mentioned in the Pentateuch, and, lastly, carries our thoughts to the Great Intercessor of our Christian faith, and of whom all the rest are prefigurations. It may be here but the germ of the idea; but it may be regarded as containing all that is afterwards unfolded. It is, in truth, a very old idea, and dates back to that early promise of one who was to be the avenger of the murdered human race, and the great champion of the divine mercy. Job may have had in mind this theanthropic idea in the remarkable declaration Job 19:25, where he speaks of his Goel or Redeemer as surviving kinsman, and in Job 16:19, as his “Witness on high,” שָׂהֳדוֹ, his Attesting Angel, as the same name is afterwards used in the Arabian Ante-Mohammedan theology. See Koran Surat 11:21.

What seems strongly to confirm this view of the מלאך מליץ is the mention just above, of another class of superhuman beings, the מְמִתִּים, or slayers, ver. 22. The manifest emphasis of the passage, and the manner of using this latter word, show that something more is meant than diseases, or the pains of the last moments. It indicates a belief, to say the least, such as is found in the early Arabian theology, and referred to in the Koran Surat 79, entitled An-naziat, “The Angels who tear forth the souls of men with violence,” as distinguished from others called An-nashetat, or “those who take them away with gentleness.” There is in the Old Testament more than one glimpse of a terrific idea, namely of some outward invisible violence at the death of the wicked, or of invisible powers, whatever may be their character, who are present to take them forcibly away. It is intimated in that passage (before referred to, Note 2, ver. 3, chap. 7), Luke 12:20, by the word ἀπαιτοῦσι (they demand, exact), used without any expressed subject as though the real agents were too fearful to mention. So in the other passages there quoted, Psalms 49:15 and Proverbs 14:32. In the first, some unseen and unnamed powers are represented as putting (שַׂתּוּ, a strong Piel word), forcing, “driving, the wicked into Sheol,” where Death is their shepherd (feeds them), in strongest contrast with Psalms 23:4, where the Good Shepherd (the Mediator Angel) walks with the just in the terra umbrarum. In the other passage (Proverbs 14:32), no beings are mentioned; but the contrast is all the more striking between the death of the righteous man, full of hope of some kind, and the violent ejection from the body, or their “being driven away in their wickedness,” that befalls the other class. According to Rabbi Tanhum, one of the most acute of Jewish commentators, there lies the same thought in the passage, 1 Samuel 25:29. It is the contrast between “the soul of David bound up in the bundle of life,” and the souls of his enemies, whom Abigail speaks of as destined to be “cast out violently,” as though “slung out of a sling.” It is the language of a questionable woman making a questionable prayer, but still is it valuable, the Rabbi remarks, as showing the common belief of the common mind in Israel. He himself regards the expression, “slung out of the middle of the sling,” as interpreted by its opposite, “bound up in the bundle of life.” It is everlasting security and rest in the one case, an everlasting unrest in the other—a violent driving forth, “the sport of nature,” as he strangely styles it, “tossed evermore on the waves of matter, or projected into infinite space, or whirled round eternally, and never finding any termination to its wanderings.” It is something like the interpretation that Al Beidawi gives to the passage of the Koran, Surat 79, before cited. See Pococke, Notes to Maimonides, Porta Moses, p. 92, 93. To one who thus holds that the ממתים (vers. 22) denote the death angels (as do the best commentators even among the Rationalists), it would seem to follow, a fortiori, that the מלאך מליץ of the next verse must be also superhuman, though far excelling in goodness and power. This makes it the more strange that the interpretation thus given to ממתים should be rejected by Schlottmann, whilst he argues so strongly for the angel meaning in the latter place. Delitzsch dwells at length upon the passage referred to in Genesis, and elsewhere, in support of the view here taken of the Angel Mediator, and makes a very conclusive argument. So in regard to the ממתים, he refers to the “destroying angel”, הַמַּלְאָךְ הַמַּשְׁתּית, 2 Samuel 24:16, and “the evil angels,” מַלְאֲכֵי רָעִים of Psalms 78:49. For the “one of a thousand” he refers, in like manner, to Psalms 34:8, the מלאך יהוֹה, the “Angel of the Lord who encampeth (as though head of a host) round about them who fear God, and delivereth them.” The words “one of a thousand” cannot denote a choice man. There is no occasion nor ground for saying any such thing here, and Ecclesiastes 7:28, which is sometimes cited, is far from supporting it. Still less, as before remarked, is there ground for holding that in the use of such distinguishing language Elihu has reference to himself. Whether it be real modesty which he professes, or mock modesty, such as those who under-rate the character charge upon him, it would be equally inconsistent with such a claim.

There is another expression in the passage which suggests an evangelical idea, or the germ of one, as furnishing the easiest interpretation. It is the word יָשְׁרוֹ, his righteousness, or his rectitude. The idea of anything due the patient here described, either as merit or as any uprightness of his own that needs to be revealed to him, would seem wholly out of place. He is represented as a penitent who turns to God from warnings given in dreams, or in consequence of sore chastisements. His character, as estimated by himself, is given in ver. Job 27 :

I sinned, I made my way perverse.

Neither can it mean his profit, as Delitzsch renders it: “to declare unto man what is for his profit.” Its most simple and literal rendering is: “ to show unto man his justice,” and this must be God’s justice. Such an interpretation would seem to be demanded by the word לְהַגִּיד, to reveal. If, however, the pronoun is taken as grammatically belonging to man—though there is nothing which compels such a view—it is his righteousness (man’s righteousness) as made and given to him by God; just as the spirit which God gives to man, Genesis 6:3, is called by Him רוּחִי, my spirit, or as the animation given by him to the animals is called (Psalms 104:29) their spirit, רוּחָם. It, however, need not be confined to the stricter evangelical sense of justification. יָשְׁרוֹ may be taken, in a general sense, as denoting God’s merciful dealing with the penitent man in not judging him according to his sins, whatever may be the ground for so doing. Taken either way, it comes to the same thing. And this is “the righteousness of faith,” as we find it all through the Old Testament, namely, the feeling of acceptance on some other ground than that of human merit, although what that other ground might be were almost wholly unknown. Whether it was the obedient offering of the sacrifice as a symbol of something unrevealed, or a hope in God’s pure mercy, it was clearly distinct from works as a ground of debt. It left to God “to provide the Lamb” that truly “ takes away sin,” in His own unknown, yet most heartily trusted way.

This, it may be said, is “a finding of evangelical ideas in the Old Testament.” But what is there strange or inconsistent in such a mode of interpretation if such ideas are really there, having their deep seat, in fact, in the human conscience ever demanding something out of itself as the ground of the divine accceptance? It may be defended on the rational principle, that if the Bible is, in any true and hearty sense, “the Word of God,” or in any sense which would authorize the Rationalist to call it Sacra Scriptura, as he is patronizingly fond of doing, then, in order to be worthy of such a title, it must be a one book, as truly as it is a divine book. If there is any meaning in such a characterization, it follows that every part bears upon every other part—shadow here, substance there, a gleam in one place, the noon-day light in another—and every part upon the whole. Otherwise we deny to God’s highest gift to man a wholeness which is deemed essential to the lowest physical organism. Especially does this hold in respect to all connected with the promise, the office, and the work of the Messiah, or the great redeeming power so early predicted in “ the roll of revelation,” בִּמְגִלַּת סֵפֶר, Psalms 40:8. Says Delitzsch: “The Angel of Jehovah of primeval history is the oldest prefigurement in the history of redemption of the future incarnation, without which the Old Testament history would be a confused quodlibet of premises and radii without a conclusion and a centre” This was the principle on which the learned and pious commentators of the seventeenth century proceeded in all their interpretations: The Bible is a one book, every part bearing more or less on every other. In their applications of the idea they sometimes stumble us. We draw back from following Cocceius, Vitringa, and Caryl in the extent to which they would carry it. They find too much in a passage; so we think; they discover resemblances our eyes, sometimes, fail to see (it may be, because we lack the measure of their spiritual insight), but we cannot help feeling that they often strike out a wondrous light, such as we cannot ascribe to any accidental accommodations. They are, at least, accommodations, if we will call them such, that no other book, and no other literature, could ever furnish, whatever amount of pious or æsthetic imagination we might apply in the attempt to produce a similar effect. Let a man try it on the Koran, or on any classical production. The book of Job especially may, in this way, be regarded as a nursery of evangelical ideas, though, in many cases, just appearing in their germs. They grow out of the extreme condition of the sufferer, his utter want of help, and the inability of his friends to meet his case with any of the ordinary methods of reproof or consolation. They are pressed out, as it were, by the need that is felt of some ground of justification or support stronger and higher than the soul can elsewhere find. The reading of the whole Bible shows that this is God’s mode of revealing truth through the human itself, instead of the dogmatical way of abstract precept, having no connection with any actual experience. Such cases may surprise us, sometimes, by their apparent isolation, and yet when an emotional idea is thus brought out of the soul itself, there is ever some word to sustain it, some hint, some strange thought, seeming to stand alone in the older scripture, as something dimly revealed, but appearing in all its glory in the later revelations of the divine and human characters.

“To declare unto man His righteousness.” The Genevan version annexes a note to this: “ To declare wherein man’s righteousness standeth, which is through the justification of Jesus Christ, and faith therein.” Dr. Conant cites this, though we hardly know whether as agreeing with it, or as implying that it goes too far. It would certainly be going too far as a translation, or even a paraphrase; but so evangelical a man as Dr. Conant would not object to it as a fair inference from Scripture taken as a whole, or as a comparison of this, germinal idea with other and fuller parts of the Bible. When we take into view the whole book of Job, whether in respect to the claim made for it of some divine authorship, or of mere dramatic consistency, the idea very naturally arises, that this מלאד מליץ, here mentioned as the comforter of the penitent in extreme affliction, and whom Elihu would especially regard as the intercessor in such a case as that of Job, is one of the בני אלחים, or “sons, of God” mentioned Job 1:6 and Job 2:1, or rather אלהים בן, the son of God pre-eminently. Such would be the idea suggested by the description, “the one,” or the chief, “ among a thousand.” Something like it would seem to have been in the mind of the Targumist, and to have suggested his rendering פּרקליטא, παράλητος (the Comforter). The opposite of this in the Targumic dialect is קטיגור, Gr. κατηγορος, the Accuser. The opening super-earthly scene at once presents itself. Even from that date, this Ben Elohim, son of God, or Paraclete, may have been commissioned to sustain the sufferer in the great and unequal conflict he is called to wage with Satan, the Accuser, the Adversary, who is permitted to try Job to the uttermost. This brings to mind the scenes described in the New Testament, the Temptation, the sore conflict of the Mediator himself when representing humanity, and his great triumph over that same hostile power with which he has been contending since the announcement in the Protevangel. Whether such is a rational mode of using Scripture depends altogether upon the settlement of this question which may be said to form the dividing line between the Rationalistic and the Evangelical mode of Scriptural exposition: Is the Bible a one book? Is there a one mind throughout, or is it a mass of isolated fragments, having no more connection than the separate parts that go to make up what we might call a Jewish or a Greek literature? Is it a grand epic having a true epic unity: The Book of the Wars of Messiah with Satan the Enemy of Mankind? or is it a fragmentary Iliad, a collection of ancient songs or ballads without any uniting idea, as some of these same Rationalists falsely characterize the great Grecian epic?

“A ransom I have found,”—a covering, an atonement—a cancelling or blotting out (putting out of view) as the etymological image (obduxit, oblevit, Genesis 6:14) would more exactly denote. It is not easy to keep away the idea of something evangelical, or protevangelical, when we read these words in such a connection. It is God’s representation, capable of being spread over a wider or a narrower view. There is no language of which the scriptural writers seem more fond than this of blotting out, covering, putting away from the divine eye, or hiding, as it were, human sin. What more do we want than this image connected with the hearty belief that there is a true ground for it, out of man, and in something done by the Mediator by whom it is effected, some transcendent virtue in him, or some ineffable deed of glory, so bright that it turns the divine eye to itself, and away from the sin of him who pleads it—covering it over as it were, blotting it out, or hiding it as something lost and unremembered in the depths of the sea.

O happy is that man, and bleat, Whose sins are covered o’er.

—Scotch Version Psalms 32:1.

It may be called an anthropopathic figure; but volumes on “The Philosophy of the Atonement” could not so penetrate the intellect by first penetrating the affections. It should be remembered, too, that whatever may be the nature of the atonement, it is God’s provision. “I have found,” מָצָאתִי. Delitzsch well remarks on this word, that it denotes not a mere casual meeting with a thing, but a finding after seeking—in other words, a providing. The language here, he says, is suggestive of Hebrews 9:12, αἰωνίαν λύτρωσιν εὑράμενος, “having found an eternal redemption (an eternal ransom) for us.”

“Deliver him,” ver. 24. The language may be applied to a wider, or to a narrower deliverance. It may be a recovery from bodily sickness, or from spiritual disease, or from both combined; it may have reference to the temporal or the eternal; but it is the same essential salvation. Noah when he watched the ascending flame of the burnt-offering, Job when he said, “I know that my Redeemer liveth,” David when he said, “Blessed is the man whose sins are covered,” the woman who touched the hem of Christ’s garment that she might be healed of her bodily disease, and Paul when he said, “There is now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus,” had, each of them, the same essential “righteousness of faith.”

EXCURSUS XII The Whirlwind, Job 38:1; And The Person Spoken Of, Job 38:2 The fact that סערה here has the article attached to it is not to be disregarded in determining the plan and connections of the book, although it may not be deemed absolutely conclusive. The whirlwind (הַסְּעָרָה) seems certainly to suggest something known, or of whose presence, or approach, the reader has, in some way, had intimation. So Schlottmann: “The article shows that that very storm is meant, the coming up of which Elihu has already described.” Instead of being weakened, this is rather strengthened by the view of זהב (the golden sheen) as presented in the translator’s notes to Job 37:22-23. The סופה, or thunderstorm, is the forerunner of the סערה, just as the tornado, as now witnessed, often has such a predecessor. Whether natural or supernatural, or a combination of both (since the Scriptures, as we have seen, Lange Gen. Special Int. to Chap. I., page. 145, does not make that sharp distinction which our philosophy does), it would be equally consistent with the view of the book as a drama, or as an actual narrative of fact. Like the pillar of cloud and fire in the wilderness, or the volcanic flames of Sinai, this סערה may have had mingled with it more or less of meteorological causation, and this warrants an appeal to the peculiar electric or amber hue that is sometimes seen in such wind clouds, giving them an appearance majestic, yet more awing than the darkest nimbus charged with rain.

Delitzsch, however, thinks that the article is to be taken generically, namely, the whirlwind, as distinguished from other species of winds, and so equivalent to a whirlwind. Conant and others of our best commentators take the same view. It may, doubtless, be so regarded, and therefore the article by itself is not conclusive. There is, however, another argument equally strong, whether we read with the article or without it, and that in the great improbability of such a declaration: “The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind,” or “out of a whirlwind,” if no mention had been made, and no intimation had been given, either in the narrative, or in the dramatic action, of any such event. The improbability of it is not diminished—it is rather greater—if we suppose such announcement to come right after Job’s words, Job 31:40, or even some of the verses above supposed to be misplaced in order to favor such a theory.⁹⁵⁷ The very fact that this undramatic abruptness, as it would in that case be, is not seen or felt by the reader, comes from the Elihu portion, and the effect it has upon the minds even of those who reject it as spurious. Indeed, a very strong and conclusive argument for the genuineness of this Elihu portion, is the very fact, that it makes such an appropriate preparation for the Theophany and the whirlwind by which it is attended. This we have endeavored to show elsewhere (see Int. Theism, Note p. 26, 27). The view intended to be enforced here is, that this is felt all the more powerfully from its having been thus brought in dramatically, without any intervening narrative clause, such as occurs in other parts. But that there should have been no announcement, not even of the narrative kind, would be a singular thing. It would be especially so in a drama where all the events explanatory of the great action are so minutely given in the prologue and in the appendix, to say nothing of the narrative account of Elihu, his country and his kindred, previous to his speaking. It has been charged that he appears too suddenly, and with too little mention of the manner and reason of his coming. God’s speaking out of a whirlwind, with nothing said or hinted of a whirlwind, or of any theophanic accompaniment, would seem a much stranger fact, especially if we regard the book as a drama. However different the forms of dramatic representation, it is a universal characteristic that some preparatory warning, either by speech, or action, or by something called machinery, is given of celestial appearances. In truth, nothing could be more undramatic than the other view, especially if we read chap. 38 as coming directly after chap. 31. We have a sententious moralizing on the divine ways; no intimation is given of approaching deity; when all at once it is said: “The Lord answered out of the whirlwind,” or a whirlwind, מן הסערה, a Hebrew word for the most violent tempest, tornado, procella, רוה סערה (see Psalms 107:25; Ezekiel 13:11; Ezekiel 13:13; Isaiah 29:6; Jonah 1:4; Jonah 1:12; Jeremiah 23:19; Jeremiah 25:32). Had it been said: The Lord answered from heaven, as the angel called to Abraham, or from the skies, or from a cloud, or from the air, or from any common constant condition of physical surroundings, it would not have been so remarkable, although, even in such cases, not according to scriptural usage, which always prepares us, in some way, for such a divine speaking.⁹⁵⁸ It is very much as though the sixth verse of Exodus 3 had come directly after the first: “And Moses was feeding the flock, etc.; and God said, I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Or had verse 6 read: “and God spake out of the burning bush,” or “a burning bush,” when no intimation whatever had been given of any such appearance, then the case would be perfectly parallel to this in its strange abruptness. In like manner, had Exodus 20:1 : “And God spake all these words saying,” etc., come directly after Job 19:1 : “The same day came the children of Israel into the wilderness of Sinai,” the leaving out of all the intervening appearances would not be more strange, or contrary to Bible usage. There, too, as in the other case, would the wonder have been enhanced, had chap. 20 commenced: “and God spake out of the fire,” when nothing had been said or hinted in respect to any fire natural or supernatural. So too in 1 Kings 19:11, God’s speaking to Elijah in the still small voice that followed the earthquake, the wind, and the fire, might just as well have immediately followed his speeches to the priests of Baal. Compare other theophanies of the Old Testament, as also those of the New, such as Matthew 3:16-17; Acts 9:3, and the difference will be seen at once. The attending circumstances differ in each case; but the reader cannot fail to see the point of the parallel. In like manner, the divine declarations⁹⁵⁹ to the prophets have their preparatory narrative announcements. Surely there would have been something here like the mention of the gathering phenomena out of which the Lord spake to Moses and Elijah, had there not been dramatic intimations which, when rightly understood, prepare us for the voice. Such, we think, is the effect of reading the 36 and 37 chapters (the latter part of Elihu’s speech). The most unlearned reader, without any helps of exegesis, though having a very inadequate view of the meaning of many verses, gets such an impression. It is in the very atmosphere of the style and language, we may say. It is an impression, growing more and more vivid till the close, of something fearful present and approaching. There is felt to be a naturalness in Elihu’s cry, ver. Job 22 : “With God is dreadful majesty;” and this is the reason why so little surprise is felt by such a reader at the words “out of the whirlwind,” at the opening of chap. 38. The exegete would get the same impression should he take the poem according to its plan, and give up his uncritical effort to discredit the very part which, more than all others, proves the dramatic unity.

Another question arises out of this portion of the book: Who is the person addressed, or rather spoken of, as one who darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? In the Int. Theism, p. 25, 26, a few reasons are given for referring it to Elihu, to which something more may here be added. Delitzsch thinks that the use of the participle form מַחְשִׁיךְ denotes its reference to some one who has just stopped, or been stopped speaking. The remark is in the main just, and if the genuineness of the Elihu portion is maintained, it would follow that Elihu was intended. Delitzsch, however, uses it for the other purpose, namely, as showing that Job was the last speaker, who, he says, “is interrupted⁹⁶⁰ by Jehovah without any intervening speaker having come forward.” The word “interrupted” (unterbrochen) is certainly at war with the impression made by the close of ch. Job 31:38-40. Job seems to bring what he intended to say there to a full rhetorical and most impressive close. Even without the formula: “The words of Job are ended,” on which we have elsewhere remarked (see Note 45 to ver. 40 of ch. 31), everything goes to show that he was done, that he meant it for a final defence, to which he would add no more. Elihu, on the other hand, towards the close of his speech, shows appearances of embarrassment and confusion: “O teach us what to say: we cannot order our speech by reason of darkness; is it told Him that I am speaking?” Then there is the cry at the appearance of the golden cloud, the Allah Akbar (God is great) that follows, and the finishing word as of one overwhelmed by the sense of a near divine presence, and of the insignificance of all human wisdom, and human counsel in comparison with it: “He regards none that are wise in heart.” The words are on his lips when the awful voice breaks forth. Such is the scene, briefly but faithfully sketched from the graphic outlines of Scripture. To those who are fond of calling the book a drama, and of praising its artistic merit, it may be said, that nothing could be more artistic, more dramatic, unless it be that actual reality which exceeds all art. If it be a work of fiction, then “the later poet,” as Delitzsch calls him, is the equal of the older, and by his skill in the difficult work of perfectly adapting an interpolated portion, shows that he might well have been the author of the whole. The expression “darkening counsel,” if we suppose it to refer to Elihu, may be taken as descriptive of this perturbation. We need not regard it as the language of censure, but as a mere passing notice of the last trembling speaker and his confused utterance, before the voice directly turns to Job, who, though silent, is yet the principal figure in the scene. Again, the style of the language: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” do not seem to characterize well the close of Job’s speech, chap. 31. They might have been charged as bold and confident, or as impious perhaps, but they were very plain words, very clear, and, as against the friends, very pertinent. They were, too, most true, as his inmost conscience testified. Ver. 37 of that chapter is simply a most solemn appeal to God, an oath or attestation. It is not repelled as impious. God meets the appeal, and evidently treats it with respect, as appears in the next verse, Job 38:3, which, beyond all doubt, is directly addressed to Job: “Gird up now thy loins like a man” (like a hero man, כגבר). It is as though, in comparison with other men, the Almighty declared him a worthy antagonist whom He frankly meets, and meant to give him some intimation of a sterner encounter than he had yet known: It is not thy three misjudging friends, it is not the young Elihu, with well-intentioned but imperfect and darkened counsel, it is I who ask thee now (the emphasis in אשאלך is on the first person as we have endeavored to give it in the translation), and to Me art thou to make answer, if thou canst. There are certainly fair grounds for maintaining that this new style of language in ver. 3, and the coloring given to it by נָא, the particle of respect and entreaty, indicate a turning away to a new object after Elihu had been disposed of in the previous verse. Some attention had to be given to him as the last speaker, and immediately the great matter of the address is brought up: “But as for thee, Job, now prepare thyself for a sharper questioning.” That the words of ver. 2 are spoken of Elihu may be inferred from the word עֵצָה, counsel; though the argument may not be deemed conclusive. The primary and most usual idea of this noun is that of counsel in the sense of advice, instruction, which it derives directly from the universal usage of the verb יעץ, as 1 Kings 1:12, where both are found, איעצך נא עצה, “I will counsel (advise) thee a counsel,” or a counselling; for the one sense easily passes into the other, the instructing or the instruction. In this very usual acceptation, it well describes Elihu’s counsel or instruction to Job as pronounced here dark and inadequate. Another frequent sense is prudence, wisdom or skill in counselling. In this way it is ascribed to Deity along with other attributes, such as בינה ,חכמה. For examples of this, see especially the book of Proverbs. So in Job 12:13, “with Him is counsel and strength,” Isaiah 28:29, and other places. But it may be questioned whether it ever means the divine purpose, or plan, or providence (as Renan renders it), whether general or special. Yet this is the sense given to it by those who make Job the object of these words of seeming reproof. “It is the divine decree, or plan,” says Delitzsch, “full of purpose or connection, which Job darkens, that is, distorts by judging it falsely, or, as we say, places in a false light.” One would hardly get this idea from reading the speeches without any reference to any such supposed censure. It might have some good application to the speeches of the three friends, for they, in their wisdom, assume to know something of the divine purpose, and that it must be to punish Job for his sins. Elihu maintains the idea of discipline, but all are equally wide of the real purpose, which is wholly super-earthly and superhuman, as set forth in the prologue. It is to show to Satan, and the Bene Elohim, that a man on earth “could serve God for nought.” It was not a purpose either of punishment or of discipline, primarily, or for any good or evil to Job considered as the direct object, but, through his sufferings (see Ephesians 3:10; John 9:3), to make this fact, or this truth, “known to the Principalities and Powers in the Heavens, κατὰ πρόθεσιν τῶν αἰώνων, according to the purpose of the eternities.” But Job knew nothing of any such purpose. He could not understand it at all; he could form no conception of it because it had not been revealed to him. Neither had he expressed any opinion about it, as the others, in their wisdom, had done, and, therefore, he could not be said to darken it. His language throughout is a righteous protest against their unjust expositions of the case, mingled with a constant moan over his own misery, so acute in itself, and rendered still more intolerable by a sense of some mysterious estrangement of one whom he had loved and served. It was God, in fact, with all reverence be it said, who had made dark his own counsel to Job, and on account of this he so touchingly mourns: “O that I knew where I might find Him;” “He hideth His face from me;” but He knoweth the way that I take.” This was his consolation, though all was dark to him in respect to the ways of God,—“when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold;” “for truly the purpose concerning me (חֻקִּי my decree) He will accomplish, and many such (unfathomable decrees) are with Him,” Job 23:3; Job 23:10; Job 23:14. Surely there is nothing in such language as this that can be called “a darkening counsel by meaningless words,” or as Delitzsch says, “a distorting, or perverting, or placing it in a false light.”⁹⁶¹ In the Introduction on the Theism of the book, the opinion is maintained, that the language Job 42:7 : “the saying what is right to, or respecting, God,” refers solely to Job’s humble confession, Job 42:1-6. But certainly those who hold that he is commended for saying what is right in the general discussion, as most commentators do, should hesitate in applying to him reproving words that seem of a directly opposite character, and especially as contrasted with the respectful and encouraging words in the language that immediately follows (ver. 3). It should be remembered, too, that in the whole course of that discussion there is nothing more noble, more clear, or more commanding the sympathy of the reader, than that eloquent vindication of chap. 31. If there is here a reference to it at all, it would seem to be, not in the 2d, but in the 3d verse of chap. 38, after the momentary notice of Elihu. This does indeed look like a reminiscence of that pathetic appeal (Job 31:35): “O that one would hear me.” And now the reply comes: “Gird up thy loins now like a man; it is I who ask of thee,” not thy dark and erring friends: “It is I,” who have come (as the whole purport of the language following warrants us in paraphrasing), not to reveal any plans or counsels, not to solve a problem, or to decide a debate, but “to make my glory to pass before thee,”—not to teach thee my wisdom or skill in nature, but to strengthen thy faith in my Omnipotence: “Fear not, thou worm, Job;” “I am El Shaddai,” the Almighty one, stronger than Satan, and all the powers of evil that are permitted to contend with thee, and to try thee so sorely: “I can do all things” (Job 42:2); therefore “fear thou not; only believe.” One thing further may be remarked under this head: Had the purpose or plan of God been intended by עֵצָה, and not the advice or instruction given by Elihu and the others to Job, it would have been עֲצָתִי, my counsel, placing the meaning beyond all doubt, instead of the general term used abstractly. The reference to Isaiah 26:11 (קִנְאֲת עם supposed to be for קנאת עמי) does not bear out the objection of Delitzsch, since עם is a sufficient limitation of קנאת, preventing of itself any misunderstanding of the idea. An argument in favor of its being Job who is addressed in ver. 2 might seem to be derived from his own language Job 42:3; but a careful examination renders doubtful any such inference. There is something strange in the way these words are there repeated with a slight change, of מעלים for מחשיך. It does not follow, however, that because in the deep humility of his confession he seems to take them to himself that they were originally so intended. Job takes all to himself. He is the only man among them who makes confession. The words have been ringing in his ears, and now, in his awe-struck, soliloquizing style, he repeats them over to himself, as though conscious alone of his own faults, and having no thought of any other parties: I am the man; it is I, then, “who have uttered what I knew not,” “things too great and too wonderful for me.” The inference is strengthened from the fact that in a like musing way, like one overwhelmed with the deepest conviction of the divine condescension, he repeats the words of God himself, אשאלך והודיעני, “I will demand of the and answer thou me.” To take these as a demand that Job makes of the Almighty produces utter confusion. Hence some have been led to regard the passage as an interpolation, or a misplacement. But viewed as the language of one in amazement, and talking to himself, as it were, they have a wonderful dramatic force. So Conant very justly regards “this second member as quoted from the words of the Almighty.” We think, however, that he errs in taking them directly here as Job’s own language, and giving as their sentiment: “Let me now demand of thee, and be instructed.” The objection to it is that no questions follow as really made by Job. This is answered on the unsatisfactory ground that only “the general sentiment was intended.” But the dramatic significance is greater on the other view. It is a kind of silent exclamation of amazement: In this new feeling that has come upon him, he says these words over to himself, but as God’s own language He utters them just as they were spoken, but to the reader the real feeling and the real significance come through a change of the persons: “Thou ask of me! I answer thee!” And this it is which prepares us for the language that follows: “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear,”—that is, I have had traditional knowledge of Thee—“but now mine eye seeth Thee.” The new knowledge excels the old, even as the sense of sight excels that of the ear; “wherefore I reject myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” The view here maintained in respect to the object of Job 38:2 is held by Lyra, one of the most judicious of the older commentators: Sed quis hie reprehenditur? He answers: Elihu, quem his verbis tacere jubet; Jobus autem jampridem siluerat. And so another authority quoted by Mercerus: Hunc taxat Deus, vel quod non satis efficaciter Jobum argueret, vel quod, cum homuncio esset, de majestate Dei orsus est agere.” See Poole’s synopsis. Others of the same opinion are referred to by Caryl. It must be admitted, however, that the great majority of commentators refer the words to Job. This is done, of course, by those who reject the Elihu portion. Even they, however, who admit it (and they are the larger number, if we take into view not only those who hold to its original authenticity, but also men, like Delitzsch and others, who accept it as canonical, though from a later author), may consistently do so, and yet feel no great difficulty (arising from this intervention) in regarding the divine address as overlooking Elihu, and referring directly back to Job’s concluding words, chap. 31. The same may be said of the great mass of ordinary readers who know nothing of the critical doubts in relation to this part. Very satisfactory reasons may be given for this. The speech of Elihu seems long from its division into five chapters, and from the mass of commentary with which it has been loaded; but the real time occupied by its utterance could not have exceeded twenty minutes, or half an hour at the utmost. What is of still more importance, Job all this time is the principal figure. A painter of the scene would place him in the foreground, barely distinguishing Elihu, and throwing the others altogether into the shade. Again, although Job is not the last speaker, he is the last one spoken of, and his own hardly suppressed manifestations help to bring him into prominence. Elihu keeps him in view continually. Eight times does he expressly address him by name (Job 33:1; Job 33:31; Job 34:5; Job 34:7; Job 34:35-36; Job 35:16; Job 37:14), besides sharp personal appeals in almost every verse. Much of his language intimates an actual part taken by Job, either by way of look, or gesture, or some sign of impatience, as though he was on the point of speaking himself. The critical insight of old Caryl discovers this, and he gives it as a reason for the prompt intervention of the divine voice, silencing Elihu, and preventing that reply on the part of Job which threatened to render the controversy interminable.

Much of what we have thus said may be condemned as conjecture; but, even when thus regarded, it shows how natural this Elihu portion is, and how consistent with the dramatic unity of the book, even if we regard the divine address as wholly overlooking it. A close study, we think, will carry us beyond this, and force the conclusion that it is not only a consistent, but a necessary part of a work claiming to be a dramatic whole, and that, without it, this “artistic plan and unity” of which “the higher criticism” has so much to say, would be far less easily traced. 

Footnotes: 

[1]Ver. 4. Used to hold. הָלְכוּ וְעָשׂוּ, went and made. הלך has frequently in Hebrew the force of an auxiliary verb, giving to the verb that follows it the sense of constant or habitual action. Comp. Gen. 26:13; Judges 4:24; 1 Samuel 2:26; Gen. 8:3, and many other places. We have a similar idiom in common English: He went and said.

[2]Ver. 5. And it was the way of Job. “And it came to pass” will not do for the rendering of ויהי here, since that would denote only a single event.

[3]Ver. 5. Came round. On account of the Hiphil form הִקִּיפּוּ, some would make sons the subject, giving it a permissive sense, as Conant does: They let the feast days go round. There are examples, however, of Hiphil verbs used intransitively, and it may here have the sense of Kal, Isaiah 29, although the Kal, in its primary idea, seems to have a very different significance namely, that of cutting, as in Isaiah 10:34; Job 19. The incongruity of the apparently intransitive Hiphil would probably disappear if we knew the exact connection between the primary and secondary senses of the root. We may still give it something of a Hiphil rendering, and yet keep יְמֵי הַמִּשְׁתֶּה for the subject: When the days had made their round—their end or section. Or it may borrow its sense from the unused root קוף, whence תְּקוּפָה, Ps. 19:7, a circuit, or occursus, κατάντημα, a meeting, as the Vulgate and LXX. have it in that place.

[4]Ver. 5. It was a saying of Job. The general aspect of the passage demands the frequentative sense for אמר; or it may be rendered he thought (אָמַר בְּלִבּוֹ, He said in his heart, Gen. 17:17: Ps. 14:1); or it may be thus taken without the ellipsis, like φῃμὶ in Homer.

[5]

Ver. 5. And cursed God. This is the old rendering of the Syriac (צהיו), favored by the LXX. κακὰ ἐνενόησαν πρὸς τὸν θεὸν), although the Vulgate renders it benedixerunt, which Luther follows. Junius and Tremellius, maledixerint, although in the other place, 2:9, they very inconsistently render it benedicendo. Aside from the strong demands of the context, the argument for the older rendering is found in the analogy of languages. The primary verbal sense of ברך (whatever may be the order of its connection with the noun sense of בֶּרֶךְ, the knee) is to pray. Hence, in Piel to bless, to pray for good, or, as here, for evil, that is, to curse (the English word itself, according to Webster, having had a good origin in cross—to pray evil in the name, or with the sign, of the cross). In like manner, the corresponding verbs, both in Greek and Latin, ἀράομαι, precor (the latter with the same radical letters as the Hebrew verb, PRK, BRK) have, also, the two senses of prayer and malediction, although the bad sense, from the greater cursing tendency of the Greeks, is so much more frequent than in Hebrew. So also κατεύχομαι, joined with ἀράομαι, Æsch. Sept. Theb. 633—

οἵς γ’ ἀρᾶται καὶ κατεύχεται τύχας.

Hence ἀρὰς ἀρᾶσθαι, found frequently (or some similar phrase) in the dramatic poets, may have the benedictory or the maledictory sense. The former is the more ancient (as we have it Herodotus 1:132, ἀρᾶσθαι ἀγαθά, and just above in the same section, κατεύχεται εὖ γίνεσθαι), the latter the more common. It is true, that they generally have an object expressed, or a substantive noun, like ἀρὰ ἀρὴ, which seems to determine their application; but then there is the same peculiarity about the noun itself. Thus ἀρὰ more commonly means a curse; but it has also the older sense of blessing or prayer; as in Herodotus 6:63; ἀρὴν ἐποιήσαντο παῖδα γενέσθαι, “they made a prayer that he might have a son;” and therefore he was called Demaratus, “the people-prayed-for” king. If the context helps to determine which sense is to be given to the Greek verbs, there may be said to be the same demand of the context in such passages as these Job and in 1 Kings 21:10. At all events, the facility with which these verbs are used in this double way furnishes an argument for those who hold to a similar tendency in Hebrew. It might, perhaps, be thought that, in some of the verbs referred to, the imprecatory force came from the compounded preposition, as in καταράομαι κατεύχομαι, imprecor. The preposition, however, only gives direction to the action of the verb, and may be consistent with either sense—blessings upon, or curses at.

Besides, in the case of the Greek ἀράομαι and the Latin precor, the cursing sense occurs, when the context demands it, without any preposition—bene precari or male precari being equally independent uses. It is worthy of note, too, that, according to Lane, the corresponding Arabic verb in the 8. Conjugation (אבתרך) has the sense of vituperation, reviling, detraction. There is, moreover, the analogy of other similar words in Latin. Sacro, for example, may mean, to consecrate or to make accursed. So sacer may mean holy, sacred, or impious, accursed, horrible. Virg. auri sacra fames, “accursed hunger for gold”. In this way sacro and exsecror (execrate) come to be used in the same way. The same law of contraries seems to prevail in respect to some other Hebrew words of a similar kind. Thus the verb קָדֵשׁ purus mundus fuit—holy, clean—and קְדֵשָׁה meretrix, one polluted, consecrata in the bad sense of the Latin sacrata. So חרם (as a verb, or as a noun) may carry the idea of something holy, consecrated, or something doomed, accursed, ἀνάθεμα. There is the same equivoque in the Arabic haram. It is not without a natural ground, this diversity and almost contrariety of meaning. It comes from the fact, that the feelings of reverence and of awe, on the one hand, and of fear, detestation, and even of abhorrence, on the other, do sometimes approach each other. The terms are thus used in respect to things or ideas to which we cannot stand indifferent. This is the case with the idea of a personal God. Fearful as is the thought, yet experience, as well as Scripture, teaches that where there is no love for Him, there must be aversion. Not to bless, as Job does, ver. 21, is to curse. The argument for the old translation is strengthened by the invalidity of the reasons given for the new. In the first place, there is no evidence that the Hebrew בָּרֵךְ ever means “to bid farewell,” like the Greek χαίρειν, or ἐᾶν χαίρειν, unless this place is found to bear testimony to it. And, secondly, there is but slight evidence that the Greek phrase itself is ever used in malam part m. Its etymological signification, to rejoice (like the Latin vale, Greek ἔῤῥωσο, be well, be strong), is out of harmony with such a use. it is a bidding farewell, and may thus come to mean abandoning, giving up, especially when connected with ἐάω, but ever with sorrow, never with bitterness. It does not mean to renounce or denounce in this harsh way. And if it did, that would be so near to cursing as to take away all its value as an explanation of the seeming difficulty. Such a formula would be most peculiarly inappropriate to the charge against Naboth, 1 Kings 21:10, “Thou hast said farewell to the king,” as a mode of renouncing. There is not a particle of evidence in the Old Testament that treason or rebellion was ever expressed in that way. The Vulgate and the LXX. in rendering it literally ἐυλόγηκας and benedixisti. thou hast blest the king, either misunderstood it or regarded it as a sneering irony on the part of the witnesses. Here, too (1 Kings 21:10), the faithful Syriac renders it cursed (נבות צחי). Profanity of some kind, some evil speaking, careless or presumptuous speaking about God (mala dictio) would be the sin the young men would be most likely to fall into when heated by wine; and this was the very thing that made Job so solicitous about them, even as he was ever solicitous for the honor of God whom “he feared.” It shows, too, how justly he was entitled to the character given to him as one who not only feared God, but shunned evil—everything that had the appearance of evil, or that might lead to it. See his own description of the highest human wisdom, 28:28. See also the remarks on this touching-recital of his God-fearing, paternal solicitude, Excursus 4., p.

[6]Ver. 6. The day. The article, as Conant says, denotes here a particular time, as set for this purpose. The rendering, therefore, of E. V., there was a day, called for amendment.

[7]Ver. 6. The Lord. The translator has followed E. V. in this rendering, instead of the rendering Jehovah which Conant gives whenever יהוה occurs. His is the more faithful translation undoubtedly, and yet it was something entitled to a better name than superstition which led our old translators to avoid the frequent mention of this highest of the divine appellations. We can hardly condemn the Jews for carrying the feeling still farther, even to the avoidance of the writing it, except in copies of the Holy Scriptures. It is the great and ineffable name, and the effect must be bad if its pronunciation is repeated everywhere in the numerous cases of its occurrence throughout the Scriptures. What would make it sound worse is the fact of its being the proper name of Deity, as it were, in distinction from others which are descriptive. If used thus, it would come to sound like Zeus in Greek, Jupiter in Latin or Ormuzd among the Persians, or Thor of the Scandinavian mythology, and that is the reason, doubtless, why the scoffing infid ls are so fond of giving the name in full in their offensive and irreligious caricatures. The thought is of importance at the present time, when Bible revisions are so much talked of. Dr. Conant’s, or the new Baptist version, is, in many respects, an improvement on the old, and we can only hope, therefore, that, before it goes into common use in that denomination, there may be a change back to the old method. Still more exceptionable are the new modes of writing and pronouncing this sacred name such as Jahveh, Jehveh, etc. Etymologically, they may be more correct than that given by the vowels long attached to it; but it disturbs the sacred feeling that inheres in the name as pronounced on solemn occasions, and as it appears in the few cases of its expression by our old translators. Some of the German Rationalists seem to delight in being especially offensive in this way. It occurs a number of times in this Prologue, and comes again in the Epilogue, or the two closing chapters, but in the dramatic, or spoken part, it occurs but once, 12:9, and that in a ceclaration more than usually solemn and emphatic. If we regard them as actual discourses, it is evident that the speakers shunned the utterance of the name. If it is a poetical invention merely, then the writer must have felt that its frequent introduction in the dialogue parts would have been a violation of a sacred dramatic propriety. There is one occasion, as it occurs in the Prologue, in which it was deemed best, by the present translator, to give the name itself. It is in Job’s most solemn act of submission, ch. 1:21, where strong emotion causes him to break out into the chanting style.

[8]Ver. 6. The Accuser—the Adversary. The meaning of the name is given here on the ground that it would be suggestive to the reader in those passages of the dialogue where Job speaks of “his enemy,” and would give a deeper significance to what he says, 19:25, of his Goel, Avenger, Redeemer.

[9]Ver. 7. Going to and fro—walking up and down. Dr. Conant’s version, roaming over-walking about, is undoubtedly more in accordance with modern speech, and therefore, an improvement; but the present translator must confess his preference of the old English, as more graphic. Compare the language, 1 Pet. 5:8: “The Accuser, like a roaring lion, walks about seeking whom he may devour.” It must have come from the Apostle’s familiarity with this language in Job.

[10]

Ver. 10. Made a hedge about him. Among the striking epithets which the Greek poets affix to the name of the supreme god Zeus, no one is more suggestive of certain scriptural ideas than that of Ζεὺς Ἑρκεῖος (derived Latin Jupiter Herceus) literally, “the God of the household,” of the enclosure” (from ἕρκος, a fence, hedge, or wall)—the “God of families,” of the domestic relations. It is thus the style of Scripture not to shrink from placing side by side, as it were, the two extremes in the divine idea: the “God Eternal, Almighty, Most High” (see the names El Olam, El Shaddai, El Elyon, as they occur in Genesis) in close connection with epithets denoting patrial, local, and even family relations. He is the God of the universe, παντοκράτωρ, and at the same time, a θεὸς πατρώϊος, God of Israel, the God of His people, of his elect, in a closer sense than was ever dreamed of in any Grecian mythology. This epithet is a gem from the ancient mine of ideas. The thought it carries is from the patriarchal days. “Thou hast made a hedge about him and about his house, and all that he hath.” God does not deny what Satan says, although, for his own transcending reasons, He gives him permission to enter that sacred enclosure, and lay it waste for a season, that it may be restored to a state of more perfect security. He is called Ζεὺς ‛Ερκεῖος, say the Scholiasts, because his statue stood in the ἕρκος, and that these frigid souls, and many modern critics with them, think to be enough. They never think of asking the question that lies back of this: why was his statue placed in that spot? There was in it the same idea that is represented in those words of the Latin poet:

“Sacra Dei, sanctique patres”— so pregnant with a meaning of which he himself perhaps had a very inadequate conception,—the sacred family idea, now so fiercely assailed in some quarters—those holy domestic relations so closely allied to religion, and where Righteousness lingers last when taking its departure from the earth:

“extrema per illos “Justitia excedens terris vestigia fecit.”

[11]Ver. 22. Cruelty, תִּפְלָה: enormity. Any thing abnormal, anomalous, inexplicable. See the note on the word, ch. 24:12.

[12]Ver. 4. Skin after Skin. Heb. עוֹר בְּעַד עוֹר, or skin for skin, if we wish to take בעד in the same way as at the end of the verse, בעד נפשׁו, for his life. But it comes to the same thing. From the sense of after, which certainly belongs to בעד, and, in Arabic, is the prominent sense, comes that of exchange, one thing after another, or taking the place of another; the preposition coming before either the price or the thing exchanged. But what is the meaning of it? It would require a large space to give the different views that have been entertained. The reader will find a very full list of them, as given by Dr. Conant: Skin for skin—skin of another for skin of one’s self—skin for the body—skin for skin, a proverbial saying, like for like—skin after skin, as Schultens erxplains it: that is, a willingness to be flayed over and over again, that is figuratively, to be stripped of all his possessions, etc. It seems strange that none of them seek the explanation of the language in any thing beyond itself. After so much discussion, it is with diffidence the translator makes the suggestion that the whole difficulty is cleared up by simply adverting to the words עַצְמוֹ and בְּשָׂרוֹ (“his bone and his flesh”) in the next verse. עֶצֶם bone is used for the very substance of a thing, in distinction from its outside, or incidental properties. See Exodus 24:12. So גֶּרֶם, sometimes. But take it here for bone, as something more interior than the skin, or as containing the medulla, or as connected with the flesh which has in it more of the life, the feeling, than the skin, and we have just the comparison desired. It is the interior flesh, the quick flesh, as contrasted with the less sensible skin. So in 19:25, it is the contrast between the raw flesh to which he points (זֹאת), as yet remaining, and the skin which the crawling worms, bred by his disease, had already nearly devoured. The comparison seems obvious. The skin is outside to the bone, and to the quick or tender flesh. It represents the outside goods, τὰ ἔξω, such as property and even children. These may be stripped off, like one cuticle after another, but the interior life, the bone and the quick-flesh, is not reached. Touch that and see if he will not cry out in a different strain. Satan wanted to try the effect of severe bodily pain. He knew how intolerable it was, and that other afflictions, though deemed greater, perhaps, when estimated as matter of loss, could more easily be borne. The history shows that it was not the fear of death that was so terrible to Job, since he sometimes expresses a desire to die. נַפְשׁו then, here rendered the life (end of ver. 4) is not life, as existence, but life as feeling, feeling of severe pain. At the end of ver. 6, the context demands the other sense. He will give any thing, says Satan, to get relief from that when it becomes excruciating. See Remarks on this idea of unendurable pain in the Introduction on the Theism of the Book, p. 28.

[13]Ver. 9. The reasons for this rendering are still stronger here than in the other passage, 1:5. The wife’s vehemence, and apparent bitterness, demand the strongest expression.

[14]Ver. 10. Accept. This is a more suitable word, and denotes more than receive. The latter word does not determine the manner, being, like the Hebrew קִכֵּל ּלקח occurs in Daniel and Ezra, and may be called an Aramaism; but such examples, as has been fully shown, prove little or nothing in respect to the date of the Book. There are still more decided Aramaisms in Genesis and Judges. There are reasons, in some cases, for regarding them as marks of antiquity rather than of the contrary.

[15]Ver. 10. With his lips. The Jewish commentators infer from this that while Job preserved correctness of speech, he was already sinning, or beginning to feel a want of submission, in his heart. But there hardly seems any good warrant for this. See Int. Theism, p. 28.

[16]Ver. 13. Pain was very great. כְּאֵב, means, properly, bodily pain, although used sometimes for affliction generally, or dolor cordis, the aching of the soul (see Isaiah 65:14). But even this is on account of the dolor corporis. which may become so great as to overpower everything else. This has not been sufficiently attended to by commentators. See remarks Int. Theism, p. 28, etc. Job’s grievous cry, ch. 3., was simply the expression of this intolerable pain, which the fell disease was bringing upon him. Satan was now touching his bone and his quick-flesh, instead of his skin, that is, any outward good. See Note on ver. 4. The conduct of the friends shows this. Had it been mental sorrow alone, however severe, there would have been no reason why they should not have spoken to him. But to a man writhing in such extreme bodily anguish, speech would be useless, if not an aggravation.

[17]Ver. 3. אִוָּלֶד בּוֹ. When I was to be born.—We follow Raschi, who gives the future here its prospective significance. The post-anticipating imagination goes back of birth, and takes its stand before the coming event, as though deprecating, praying against, its appearance. “The day on which I was going to be born,” he renders it ואז לא הייתי נולד “and was then not yet born.” Unless there had been some such idea as this it is not easy to see why the preterite would not have been used, as it is in the parallel passage, Jerem. 20:14: אָרוּר הַיּוֹם אֲשֶׁר יֻלַּדְתִּי בּוֹ, “cursed be the day in which I was born.”

[18]Ver. 3. The night that said.—More grammatical as well as more significant than our English Version. Night is personified. This is now generally acknowledged.

[19]Ver. 5. Call it back.—Umbreit, einlösen, redeem it, buy it back. Darkness and Tzalmazeth are called upon to take it back as something which had been loaned or mortgaged—reclaim it as their own—a terrific image.—The other sense of גאל, namely, that of staining, which some give it here, will not do at all.

[20]Ver. 5. Dire eclipses.—כְּמְרִירֵי. Patach shortened to Hirek in the construct, state. The other rendering makes כ comparative, and takes מריר as equal to מאריר Hiph. part. of ארר: like those who curse the day. This, however, would make what follows in ver. 8 but a tame repetition, which is not likely. From כמר we get the sense of convolution, wrapping or rolling together. Hence the image of any great obscuration, veiling or darkening of the heavens.

[21]Ver. 8. Doomed.—The primary sense of עתיד is a near futurity, something impending, hence prompt, prepared, and from that the sense of skilled which, however, does not occur elsewhere in Hebrew, and seems to have been made by Gesenius and others, for this one place. The primary sense, given nearly in E. V., will do here, and, in connection with it, it is easy to take Leviathan in its usual sense of some great monster, and the whole passage as denoting persons exposed to some imminent danger, or in the extreme of misery: let it have the cursing of such—that is, the deepest cursing. Delitzsch, and others, refer it to a superstition built upon the fable of the dragon swallowing the moon in fin eclipse. Those who rouse Leviathan are enchanters, who, in this way, are supposed to produce eclipses. It seems very far-fetched, and has about it an aspect of artificiality quite alien to the deep passionateness of the passage. There is, besides, not the least evidence of any such superstition among the Jews or the ancient Arabians.

[22]Ver. 12. The nursing knees.—An affecting image of the preparation made for the coming birth. The tenderest care becomes the object of the direst imprecation.

[23]Ver. 14. Mouldering Monuments.—חרבות. Delitzsch, ruins. So Umbreit. Monuments so called because now abandoned to neglect,—mouldering like the memories of those who built them. There is here a bitter irony, as Umbreit says.

[24]Ver. 16. Had never lived.—לא אחיה in sense connects back with ישנתי, ver. 13, and what intervenes may be regarded as parenthetical comparisons: The first או, ver. 15, is simply connective of vers. 14 and 15.

[25]Ver. 20. Why does He?—God is evidently the subject of יתן. It is as though Job feared to name him otherwise than by the pronoun. There is no need of taking it passively, as in E. V., and thereby destroying much of the power and pathos of the passage. Such avoidance in Hebrew of the direct naming of the subject almost always denotes something fearful in the thought of the act or the agent.

[26]Ver. 23. Were it not for the Masoretic accentuation and division, קבר, end of ver. 22, might be taken with the clause that follows: the grave is for the man, etc. In that case, however, the preceding verb would have needed an objective suffix representing מָוֶת, ver. 21. The force of the word קבר may, at all events, be regarded as carried over into the following verse, as the still sounding refrain: the grave—it is for the man whose way is hid, etc.

[27]Ver. 25. Did greatly fear.—The language is soliloquizing. It may be regarded as a resuming, after a pause in which there occurs to the mind of Job this silent protest, anticipating, as it were, something of the kind of charge that might, perhaps, be brought against him by the friends. I was not presumptuous, he seems to say; this trouble could not have come as a punishment for any such feeling. He had thought of adversity in the midst of his prosperity; “his heart had not been haughty, nor his eyes lofty.” He may refer to a fear he had had of this awful disease, the elephantiasis, which had, at last, come upon him. It is not easy to discover the reason why some commentators turn these distinct preterite verbs of fear, יגרתי ,פחדתי, into presents, as though he then feared some other terrible thing as coming upon him. So Delitzsch renders it, although the verbs in the next verse, having precisely the same form, and standing in precisely the same grammatical connection (namely, שקטתי ,שלותי, etc.), he takes in the past. It seems like treating the Hebrew tenses as though they could be made to mean anything which a commentator might wish to bring out.

[28]Ver. 6. Pious fear. The epithet is used in order to give the distinctive meaning. יראת יהוה is the Hebrew phrase for religion, and becomes used elliptically.

[29]Ver. 7. The emphasis here is on the verb, אבד and נכחדו, both strong words. The first might be rendered lost, utterly gone. The second is well expressed, in the English version, by the Jewish phrase, cut off. Instead of as yet charging Job with crimes, or even insinuating them, this language is meant to be encouraging. “The just, such as thou claimest to be, and as we believe thee to be, are never utterly lost, destroyed, cut off from God’s people. Therefore, hope thou for healing and restoration.”

[30]Vers. 10 and 11. Merx puts these verses in the margin of his text, in smaller letters, and regards them as a displacement. They certainly have that look, unless we may regard them as a specimen of the way in which animated Arabian speakers run out their comparisons, as Homer sometimes does, until they seem to lose sight of the primary idea. What seems, too, to favor this view of Merx is the apparent lack of any verb, or verbs, for the nouns in the first clause, unless they are connected with נִתָּעוּ, which seems only applicable to the teeth. The translator has endeavored to supply this by the words in brackets. Such ellipses seem allowable when it is easy to understand a verb agreeable to the nature of the nouns, and suiting the context. It may, however, be regarded as a case of zeugma.

[31]

Ver. 12. Although the Hebrew here is so very short in expressionוְאֵלַי דָּבָר יְגֻנָּב, only three words, the translator would defend his version as neither superfluous nor deficient. The latter charge would seem to be against the omission of the conjunction: but ו, here, is only a transition particle. It connects nothing, and, therefore, as any full English conjunction would only encumber the thought, the ו is best rendered by being left out (see note on the omission of the conjunction 14:2). The Pual יְגנֻּבָ is rendered deponently; the passive form denoting merely ease or gentleness of motion, as though from no agency of the subject. Literally was stolen; but the idea is evidently the same as we sometimes express by the active steal, as in Milton’s lines: A soft and solemn breathing sound Rose like the scent of rich distilled perfumes, And stole upon the air. At times. This is justified, and even demanded in order to give the true conception of the future form in יְגֻנָּב. It is the frequentative future, denoting repeated happening, a coming of things, one after another, and therefore future to each other as a picture, though all past as a narration. The pictorial Hebrew language uses this future in prose, sometimes, as well as in poetry. There is an example of it, ch. 1:5: “Thus did Job continually,” ככה יעשה איוב (thus would he do, כל הימים “all the days”—time after time). We may render it by a past tense; but there is a subjective or relative futurity in it. There is, moreover, something in this form, as here used, that gives an anticipatory, a looking-out sense to the whole passage. It is painted as something coming on, as though the speaker placed himself in medias res, or rather back of all, and regarded the events as they appeared to him in each time of his having this clairvoyant experience; for the whole style of the language seems to convey such an idea; as in the case of the δαιμόνιον of Socrates which so frequently appeared to him, though not always, perhaps, in the same way. The plural nouns in the first clause of ver. 13 confirm this view: “in seasons of serious thought—in visions of the night;” as though it had often happened. To render יְגֻנָּב in the past, without any wau conversive, or any affecting particle, or any thing in the context to justify it, seems very arbitrary, besides overlooking the whole spirit of tie passage. As the formal future (“will steal”) would not suit our idiom, or our Occidental modes of expressing relative time, the best thing we can do is to imitate the pictorial manner by putting it in the present, with some word to denote its repetitive idea as an experience, and something to express the subjective anticipatory feeling. To this latter service, no word is better adapted than our word seems, as used in vers. 12 and 15.

Similar remarks are applicable to the futures that follow, namely, יַחֲלֹף, a peculiarly visionary word, and הְּסַמֵּר, ver. 15, and יַעֲמד, ver. 16. The præterites mingled with them (קְרָאַנִי and הִפְחִיד) have more of the narrative in distinction from the descriptive style; but these, too, may be regarded as subjective retro-transitions, or shiftings of scenic event. It may be maintained, also, that they are all affected by the peculiar subjective character given to the whole passage by the starting future יְגֻגָּב, ver. 12.

[32]Ver. 12. Warning word.—דָּבָד, here, has its sense oraculum, as in Num. 23:5, 16, and frequently in the Prophets.

[33]Ver. 13. Vision-seeing.—On the propriety of this word, see remarks Int. Rhyth. Ver., p. 51.

[34]Ver. 14 Thrill with awe. הִפְחִיד is an intensive verb of fear, but does not, of itself, mean to shake, as E. V. renders it. The Hiphil form makes it here peculiarly strong.

[35]

Ver. 15. A breathing form. Some render רוח here a spirit (a spectre, phantasm); others, simply a wind. The rendering above given combines both ideas—not for the sake of compromise, but because it is supposed to be most descriptive of the fact intended: a stirring, or movement in the air, produced by a spiritual presence, thus, as it were, taking form and position for the sense, or, in this way, announcing itself. Walter Scott may not have thought of Job, but he has something of the same conception in respect to the effect produced by the presence of spirits, when William of Deloraine disturbed the grave of the wizard. Michael Scott (Lay of the Last Minstrel, Cant. 2:16):

Strange sounds along the chancel past, The banners waved without a blast.

We have, along with this, that most peculiar verb חלף, generally denoting some mysterious, indescribable change. The simplest word, however, answers the purpose here. It was a stirring in the air, just making, or seeming to make, itself perceptible to the sense.

[36]Ver. 15. made my hair rise up: תְּסַמֵּר. There is no reason why this Piel verb should not have its transitive sense, though most commentators render it intransitively, making hair the subject. If taken transitively, רוח (wind or spirit) is the subject: or the feminine may denote a general or indefinite subject, the event itself.

[37]Ver. 16. It stands. יעמד—takes position after the breathing motion, and before the announcement.

[38]No face. מַרְאֶה, aspectus, visage, something that has features. It is a more distinct word than תְּמוּנָה in the next clause, and makes a contrast with it stronger than the words form and image as used by E. V. and Conant. It is the mere outline without any look, or any internal lineaments.

[39]Ver. 16. Deep silence! דממה might, perhaps, be taken interjectionally, as we sometimes use the noun silence for hush! as though the narrator, in his vivid apprehension, is carried back, and loses himself in the scene: “Hush! ’tis a voice I hear!” or, am about to hear (subjective future אֶשְׁמַע).

[40]Ver. 17. The announcement of the Spirit is put in capitals; but it is not certain where it ends, or where Eliphaz resumes his moralizing. Ver. 19, beginning with אַף, looks as though it might be the application that the speaker makes of the Spirit’s message, which either stops here or goes through the chapter.

[41]Ver. 17. Boasting man. The epithet is used to mark the contrast intended between אֱנוֹשׁ, weak man, mortal man, and גּבר, strong man, hero, ἀνήρ, vir.

[42]Ver. 18. Defect: תָּהֳלָה ignorance.

[43]Ver. 19. לִפְּנֵי; justly regarded by Conant and others as comparative.

[44]Ver. 21. Their cord of life. יתְרָם בָּם. This rendering is adopted by the most modern commentators. It gives us the same image as the mournful language of Hezekiah, Isa. 38:12, מִדַּלָה יבֲצְּעֵנִי. Life, as a cord or thread, is a common figure in many languages.

[45]

Ver. 21. Still lacking wisdom. וְלא בְחָכְמָה literally, but not in wisdom, or with wisdom. It may be taken as referring to the deep wisdom of God, Job 28:13—“not found in the land of the living,” that is, among mortal men at all. Or it may be referred to the highest wisdom of which man is capable, “the fear of God,” 28:28, but which comparatively few men possess.

It is not exactly certain where the metaphor ends. Critics of the Lowthian school might deem this a fault. In the sacred writings, however, metaphors are not employed for embellishment. It may be thought, too, that in this case the effect is strengthened by the very uncertainty. We hardly know where the moth ends and the man begins, or where the one fades away into the other.

[46]Ver. 3. The foolish. אויל here, if taken in the milder yet still morally culpable sense of foolish, may be personally applicable to Job for his violent outcry, although Eliphaz does not sufficiently consider, or understand, his extreme bodily anguish. In the harsher sense of great criminality, such as seems to be denoted in the description following, we cannot regard them as imputing great crime to Job, or holding him out as a fit subject, for such a retribution. The controversy has not a yet come to that, and such a sudden and unwarranted imputation upon one who had been known as “sincere and upright, one who feared God and eschewed evil,” even as God Himself describes him, would certainly be a gross dramatic inconsistency, to say the least. Job’s outcry astonishes them. Whether rightly or not, they understand him as implying that God is unjust, that He even favors the wicked, or, at least, that He has no regard, in His providential dealings, to the character or destiny of men. It is a defence of God against such a supposed charge rather than an attack upon Job personally. In this idea we find a key to much that is afterwards said, though it must be admitted that as the dispute grows warm there comes more and more of personal crimination.

[47]Ver. 5. Even from the thorns. This intensive rendering is demanded by the union of the prepositions אל and מ—to and from. They glean close, even the stray heads of grain that grow among the thorns. צַמִּיםis best made here from צמם with the sense of צמא to thirst (Zöckler, Umbreit, Ewald, Merx). One version has robber, with little or no authority, unless regarded as metaphorical from the idea of the thirsty, with which we have combined it in the version above. Dillmann, Davidson, Conant, render it the snare, as in 18:9, though it seems quite forced here, and entirely out of harmony with שאף to gape or pant after. The Vulg. has armatus for robber. The Syrian renders it thirsty, Which certainly seems to make the clearest contrast with hungry (רעב), and therefore to be preferred notwithstanding 18:9.

[48]Ver. 7. Ah, no! כי is not only strongly adversative here, but evidently implies a negative; οὐ μὴν ἀλλά, Children of the flame; literal rendering of בגי רשף, whether regarded as metaphorical of sparks, or of ravenous birds, as Gesenius and others take it.

[49]Ver. 12. Reality, תושיה. See Note 7, 6:13.

[50]Ver. 20. Death here is represented as a tyrant or a conqueror, and therefore there is used the word פדה to redeem.

[51]Ver. 22. Forest Beasts: חית הארץ, beasts of the earth; wild beasts in distinction from חית השדה, beasts of the field, or domestic animals.

[52]Ver. 24. לא תחטא. E. V., not sin. Primary sense here: not miss.

[53]Ver. 2. Poised. ישאו, implying weight—lifting up, so as to hang in free suspension. יחד here may refer to the grief and suffering laid together, or as denoting coincidence; at one—like יחדו; the two ends of the beam in one horizontal line; expressive of great exactness. הַיָּה for הַוָּה, great misfortune,—extreme wretchedness—a sighing onomatope, like our word woe. See Hupfeld’s very full explanation of the word Ps. 5:10.

[54]Ver. 3. Incoherent. Primary sense of לעה is swallowing, as our translation gives it. The secondary sense is confused and difficult utterance, as though the words were choked or swallowed.

[55]Ver. 6. The white of eggs. This comparison that seems so little poetical, is evidently significant of the unsavoriness and tastelessness of the counsel just given. How vapid is all your moralizing as contrasted with the pungency of my insupportable anguish! See the remarks of A. B. Davidson, a late but most admirable commentator, who is very full on this and the following verse.

[56]Ver. 7. דוי לחמי. Lit., diseases of my food,—sickness of my food, or food of sickness—unsavory, or that makes me sick.

[57]Ver. 9. Comp. 4:21, and Isaiah 38:12.

[58]Ver. 10. Endure; ואסלדה. Most modern commentators follow Schultens in his deduction of this once occurring word from the Arabic צלד, to paw the ground as a horse, thence getting the sense of exultation. It seems extravagant, and out of harmony with the other language. Better take it from the Chaldaic סלד, which has the sense of burning. Hence also, as senses in use, those of contracting drawing ones-self firmly up. See the example given, Buxtorf, Chald. Lex. 1481, from Bereschith Rabba, ונפשו סולדת עליו. anima ejus contrahitur, retrocedit in eo. Our Eng. Ver. harden myself is not far from this idea. Though He spare not, or, let Him not spare. The 3d clause. Literally: For I have not denied the words of the Holy One.

[59]Ver. 13. תושיה, from the substantive verb יש. Anything substantial and real in distinction from the failing and the evanescent.

[60]Ver. 14. Such is Dr. Conant’s clear rendering of this difficult passage. מם; primary sense, melting. Hence failing (liquescentem), allegoria pereuntis. See Glass. Philologia Sacra, 1712.

[61]

Ver. 16. Hide themselves. It does not represent a frozen stream, but a dark scene of winter, or of the rainy season, when the wadys are full. It is the snow falling on the swollen waters and immediately disappearing; the same exquisite image that Burns so happily employs: Or as the snow falls in the river, A moment white, then gone forever.

[62]Ver. 17. Deserted of their springs. נצמתו—cut off from their fountains. The word זרב occurs but once. It is best derived from the Syriac זרב coarctavit. The sense drying up is closely allied to this, and also to that of heating, which is commonly given to the verb. See Dillmann and Umbreit.

[63]Ver. 18. Zöckler here, we think, is right in referring ארחותto the themselves, instead of rendering it caravans like many others. The process is by way of evaporation; “they go up into tohu,” the waste atmosphere. It is not easy to apply this language to the caravans, though it is admirably descriptive of the drying up of the streams. The verb ילפתו, they twist to one side, well represents an abandoned channel.

[64]Ver. 20. They reach the spot; עדיה. Right up to it—on its very brink.

[65] יחפרו, literally, blush with shame. The expression is not too strong when we think of the sickening disappointment of men travelling days in the desert, sustained by the hope of the cooling water, and finding at last only the parched bed of the wady.

[66]Ver. 22. For my sake, בַּעֲדִי. A wider sense than לי: For me, pro me—propter me, as though by way of ransom or deliverance from an enemy. See note 953 to Noldius’ Concordance of Hebrew Particles.

[67]Ver. 23. Hostile hand. Job seems to be ever thinking of some great and terrible enemy, who is not God. Comp. 16:9, 11.

[68]Ver. 27. As though. The language is evidently comparative.

[69]Ver. 27. Or traffic made. כרה with the sense emit, like the corresponding Arabic, and as used Deut. 2:6; Hos. 3:2. So Schlottmann und verhandelt euern Freund.

[70]Ver. 29. The rendering of Delitzsch.

[71]Ver. 30. Conscience. חֵךְ the palate, when used metaphorically, denotes the moral rather than the intellectual judgment.

[72]Ver. 2. Labors end; Merces, reward, is sometimes the ellipsis to פֹּעַל, work; but end suits better here.

[73]Ver. 3. מִנּוּ לְי. Number out; the active used for the passive, say the grammarians; but that explains nothing. There must be a reason for the idiom. Compare Job 4:19; 18:18; 19:26; 34:20; Ps. 49:15. In these and similar cases, it will be seen that the real or supposed agent is something fearful, or repulsive, as in Job 19:26. There is a kind of superstition in it; an aversion to the mention of the name, as the Greeks feared to speak the name of the Furies. As remarked in note on 6:23, Job seems to be haunted by the thought of invisible tormentors, as he had good reason to think from what is said in the introductory narrative, and as appears in the terrible language of ch. 16:9, 10. This fearful allusion appears, Ps. 49:15, כַּצֹּאן לִשְׁאול שַׁתּוּ, “Like sheep they put or thrust them (the wicked) into Sheol”—stabulant in Orco. The idiom passes into the Greek of the New Testament, Luke 12:20: τὴν ψυχήν σου ἀπαιτοῦσιν ἀπὸ σοῦ—“they demand thy soul of thee.” Who are they? Fiends, evil beings, said the old interpreters; “they will come after thee.” No good reason can be given why it is not the true interpretation. In some cases this reason does not appear so evident. It may be reverence or admiration rather than shuddering fear. As in Isaiah 60:11, the glorious description of the New Jerusalem: “Thy gates shall stand open day and night”—literally: “they shall keep them open.” Instead of passive, it is the piel, most intensely active, וּפִתְּהוּ. Who are they? The holy angels, or warders of the New Jerusalem. If not this precisely, something very glorious and mighty was in the mind of the prophet, leading him to use the expression. It is quite evident, however, that in Job 17:18: “They shall thrust him out from light to darkness,” as also in Job 34:20, and Ps. 49:15, the evil or fearful agents are in the thoughts. See Glassius Phil. Sacra., 817.

[74]Ver. 4. How Long. When shall I arise expresses eagerness, which is not wanted here. How long. See the passionate places where it occurs in the Psalms.

[75]Ver. 4. Be o’er, be gone; מִדַּד for full form מּנְדָּד

Verbal noun from נדד.

[76]Ver. 5. Worms; רִמָּה. Many commentators would render it rottenness; but there is no need of departing from the usual sense.

[77]Ver. 5. Heals up; the Arabic sense of רגע suits well here, to return, hence to he restored. מסס = מאם. See Ps. 58:8. This is the interpretation now given by most commentators.

[78]Ver. 6. Gleam of hope. אֵפֶם the least particle, the very extremity; hence used as a negative to denote total privation—all gone.

[79]Ver. 8. I shall be gone. Compare remarks in the Introductory Argument, p. 5: The pious soul’s despondent grief at the thought of bidding farewell to God. Here the converse idea.

[80]Ver. 11. Let me speak; אדברה. Paragogic future: Language of entreaty.

[81]And moan, שיח, to make a low murmuring sound—talk to ones-self.

[82]Ver. 13. Taken from Dr. Conant’s Version, which is often rhythmical, although he did not aim at making it such.

[83]Ver. 15. These bones. So Conant, Davidson, and most modern commentators.

[84]Ver. 16. The meaning of this verse has been much discussed. The old rendering “I would not live always” seems too sentimental when unqualified. Schlottmann and others take from it the idea of suicide. I loathe life; I will not live. But this is repulsive. The version given exactly suits the condition of the sufferer.

[85]Ver. 19. The rendering usually given is the literal one; and its correctness is put beyond doubt by the Arabic usage (see Hariri, Seance xv, pp. 164, 167, Do Sacy’s Ed.) It denotes impatience: Let me have time to swallow. The version here adopted is merely a substitution of another expression giving the same idea. It is one of the very few cases in which the translator has thus attempted to modernize.

[86]Ver. 20. Burden unto thee. We follow Delitzsch here, who adopts the Jewish traditional reading of עלי־.

[87]Ver. 3. The God above; the Almighty one. The emphasis here is on the divine names, אל and שדי. Had it been on the idea of perversion (יעות) the verb would have been changed, as is usual in the second member of the parallel. The idea most earnestly depreciated is that of Omnipotence perverting justice,—or might making right.

[88]Ver. 5. Suppliant prayer. Intensive form התחנן.