Job 28:24-31:24 | KD | STEP | It is veiled from the eyes of all living, And concealed from the fowls of heaven. 22 Destruction and death say: With our ears we heard a report of it. - 23 Elohim understandeth the way to it, And He - He knoweth its place. 24 For He looketh to the ends of the earth, Under the whole heaven He seeth. No living created being (כּל־חי, as ; ) is able to answer the question; even the birds that fly aloft, that have keener and farther-seeing eyes than man, can give us no information concerning wisdom; and the world at least proclaims its existence in a rich variety of its operations, but in the realm of Abaddon and of death below (comp. the combination שׁאול ואבדון, , ᾅδου καὶ τοῦ θανάτου, ) it is known only by an indistinct hearsay, and from confused impressions. Therefore: no creature, whether in the realm of the living or the dead, can help us to get wisdom. There is but One who possesses a perfect knowledge concerning wisdom, namely Elohim, whose gave extends to the ends of the earth, and who sees under the whole heaven, i.e., is everywhere present (תּחת, definition of place, not equivalent to אשׁר תּחת; comp. on ), who therefore, after the removal of everything earthly (sub-celestial), alone remains. And why should He with His knowledge, which embraces everything, not also know the way and place of wisdom? Wisdom is indeed the ideal, according to which He has created the world.

‏ Job 28:24-28

Job 28:21-24 21 It is veiled from the eyes of all living,

And concealed from the fowls of heaven. 22 Destruction and death say:

With our ears we heard a report of it. - 23 Elohim understandeth the way to it,

And He - He knoweth its place. 24 For He looketh to the ends of the earth,

Under the whole heaven He seeth.

No living created being (כּל־חי, as Job 12:10; Job 30:23) is able to answer the question; even the birds that fly aloft, that have keener and farther-seeing eyes than man, can give us no information concerning wisdom; and the world at least proclaims its existence in a rich variety of its operations, but in the realm of Abaddon and of death below (comp. the combination שׁאול ואבדון, Pro 15:11, ᾅδου καὶ τοῦ θανάτου, Rev 1:18) it is known only by an indistinct hearsay, and from confused impressions. Therefore: no creature, whether in the realm of the living or the dead, can help us to get wisdom. There is but One who possesses a perfect knowledge concerning wisdom, namely Elohim, whose gave extends to the ends of the earth, and who sees under the whole heaven, i.e., is everywhere present (תּחת, definition of place, not equivalent to אשׁר תּחת; comp. on Job 24:9), who therefore, after the removal of everything earthly (sub-celestial), alone remains. And why should He with His knowledge, which embraces everything, not also know the way and place of wisdom? Wisdom is indeed the ideal, according to which He has created the world. Job 28:25-28 25 When He appointed to the wind its weight,

And weighed the water according to a measure, 26 When He appointed to the rain its law,

And the course to the lightning of the thunder: 27 Then He saw it and declared it,

Took it as a pattern and tested it also, 28 And said to man: Behold, the fear of the Lord is wisdom,

And to depart from evil is understanding.

It is impracticable to attach the inf. לעשׂות to Job 28:24 as the purpose, because it is contrary to the meaning; but it is impossible, according to the syntax, to refer it to Job 28:27 as the purpose placed in advance, or to take it in the sense of perfecturus, because in both instances it ought to have been יתכּן instead of תּכּן, or at least ותכּן with the verb placed first (vid., Job 37:15). But even the temporal use of ל in לפנות at the turn (of morning, of evening, e.g., Gen 24:63) cannot be compared, but לעשׂות signifies perficiendo = quum perficeret (as e.g., 2Sa 18:29, mittendo = quum mitteret), it is a gerundival inf. Nägelsb. S. 197f., 2nd edition); and because it is the past that is spoken of, the modal inf. can be continued in the perf., Ges. §132, rem. 2. The thought that God, when He created the world, appointed fixed laws of equable and salutary duration, he particularizes by examples: He appointed to the wind its weight, i.e., the measure of its force or feebleness; distributed the masses of water by measure; appointed to the rain its law, i.e., the conditions of its development and of its beginning; appointed the way, i.e., origin and course, to the lightning (חזיז from חזז, Arab. ḥzz, secare). When He thus created the world, and regulated what was created by laws, then He perceived (ראהּ with He Mappic. according to the testimony of the Masora) it, wisdom, viz., as the ideal of all things; then He declared it, enarravit, viz., by creating the world, which is the development and realization of its substance; then He gave it a place הכינהּ (for which Döderl. and Ewald unnecessarily read הבינהּ), viz., to create the world after its pattern, and to commit the arrangement of the world as a whole to its supreme protection and guidance; then He also searched it out or tested it, viz., its demiurgic powers, by setting them in motion to realize itself.

If we compare Pro 8:22-31 with this passage, we may say: the חכמה is the divine ideal-world, the divine imagination of all things before their creation, the complex unity of all the ideas, which are the essence of created things and the end of their development. “Wisdom,” says one of the old theologians, ^{▼▼Vid., Jul. Hamberger, Lehre Jak. Böhme's, S. 55.} “is a divine imagination, in which the ideas of the angels and souls and all things were seen from eternity, not as already actual creatures, but as a man beholds himself in a mirror.” It is not directly one with the Logos, but the Logos is the demiurg by which God has called the world into existence according to that ideal which was in the divine mind. Wisdom is the impersonal model, the Logos the personal master-builder according to that model. Nevertheless the notions, here or in the alter cognate portion of Scripture, Pro 8:22-31, are not as yet so distinct as the New Testament revelation of God has first of all rendered possible. In those days, when God realized the substance of the חכמה, this eternal mirror of the world, in the creation of the world, He also gave man the law, corresponding to which he corresponds to His idea and participates in wisdom. Fearing the supreme Lord (אדני) only here in the book of Job, one of the 134 ודאין, i.e., passages, where אדני is not merely to be read instead of יהוה, but is actually written), ^{▼▼Vid., Buxtorf’s Tiberias, p. 245; comp. Bär’s Psalterium, p. 133.} and renouncing evil (סוּר מרע, according to another less authorized mode of writing מרע), - this is man’s share of wisdom, this is his relative wisdom, by which he remains in connection with the absolute. This is true human φιλοσοφία, in contrast to all high-flown and profound speculations; comp. Pro 3:7, where, in like manner, “fear Jehovah” is placed side by side with “depart from evil,” and Pro 16:6, according to which it is rendered possible סור מרע, to escape the evil of sin and its punishment by fearing God. “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” (Pro 1:7; comp. Psa 111:10) is the symbolum, the motto and uppermost principle, of that Israelitish Chokma, whose greatest achievement is the book of Job. The whole of Job 28:1 is a minute panegyric of this principle, the materials of which are taken from the far-distant past; and it is very characteristic, that, in the structure of the book, this twenty-eighth chapter is the clasp which unites the half of the δέσις with the half of the λύσις, and that the poet has inscribed upon this clasp that sentence, “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.” But, moreover, Job’s closing speech, which ends in this celebration of the praise of the חכמה, also occupies an important position, which must not be determined, in the structure of the whole.

After Job has refuted Bildad, and, continuing his description, has celebrated in such lofty strains the majesty of God, it can hardly be expected that the poet will allow Zophar to speak fore the third time. Bildad is unable to advance anything new, and Zophar has already tried his utmost to terrify Job for the second time; besides, Job’s speech furnishes no material for a reply (a motive which is generally overlooked), unless the controversy were designed to ramble on into mere personalities. Accordingly the poet allows Job to address the friends once more, but no longer in the extreme and excited tone of the previous dialogue, but, since the silence of the friends must produce a soothing impression on Job, tempering him to gentleness and forbearance, in a tone of confession conscious of victory, yet altogether devoid of haughty triumph, - a confession in which only one single word of reproach (Job 27:12) escapes him. Job 27:1 contain this confession - Job’s final address to his friends.

Job once again most solemnly asserts his innocence before the friends; all attempts on the part of the friends to entice or to extort from him a confession which is against his conscience, have therefore been in vain: joyous and victorious he raises his head, invincible, even to death, in the conviction of that which is a fact of his consciousness that cannot be got rid of by denial. He is not an evil-doer; accordingly he must stand convicted as an evil-doer who treats him as such. For although he is not far from death, and is in sore vexation, he has not manifested the hopelessness and defection from God in which the evil-doer passes away. Job has indeed even expressed himself despondingly, and complained of God’s wrath; but the true essence of his relation to God came to light in such words as Job 16:19-21; Job 17:9; Job 19:25-27. If the friends had not been blind to such brilliant aspirations of his life in God, how could they regard him as a godless man, and his affliction as the punishment of such an one! His affliction has, indeed, no connection with the terrible end of the evil-doer. Job here comes before the friends with the very doctrine they have so frequently advanced, but infatuated with the foolish notion that it is suited to his case. He here gives it back to them, to show them that it is not suited to him. He also does not deny, that in the rule the evil-doer meets a terrible end, although he has hitherto disputed the assertion of the friends, because of the exclusiveness with which it was maintained by them. His counter-assertion respecting the prosperity of the evil-doer, which from the beginning was not meant by him so exclusively as the friends meant theirs respecting the misfortune of the evil-doer, is here indirectly freed from the extreme appearance of exclusiveness by Job himself, and receives the necessary modification. Job does not deny, yea, he here brings it under the notice of the friends, that the sword, famine, and pestilence carry off the descendants of the evil-doer, and even himself; that his possessions at length fall into the hands of the righteous, and contain within themselves the germ of destruction from the very first; that God’s curse pursues, and suddenly destroys, the godless rich man himself. Thus it comes to pass; for while silver and other precious things come from the depths of the earth, wisdom, whose worth far transcends all earthly treasures, is to be found with no created being, but is with God alone; and the fear of God, to avoid evil, is the share of wisdom to which man is directed according to God’s primeval decree.

The object of the section, Job 28:1, is primarily to confirm the assertion concerning the judgment that befalls the evil-doer, Job 27:13-23; the confirmation is, however, at the same time, according to the delicately laid plan of the poet, a glorious general confession, in which Job’s dialogue with the friends comes to a close. This panegyric of wisdom (similar to Paul’s panegyric of charity, 1Co 13:1-13) is the presentation of Job’s predominant principle, and as such, is like a song of triumph, with which, without vain-glory, he closes the dialogue in the most appropriate manner. If God’s life has such a basis, it is not possible that his affliction should be the punishment of an ungodly man. And if the fear of God is the wisdom appointed to man, he also teaches himself that, though unable to see through the mystery of his affliction, he must still hold on to the fear of God, and teaches the friends that they must do the same, and not lay themselves open to the charge of injustice and uncharitableness towards him, the suffering one, in order to solve the mystery. Job’s conclusion, which is first intended to show that he who does not fear God is overtaken by the merited fate of a fool who rebels against God’s moral government, shows at the same time that the afflictive lot of those who fear God must be judged of in an essentially different manner from that of the ungodly.

We may imagine what impression these last words of Job to the friends must have made upon them. Since they were obliged to be silent, they will not have admitted that they are vanquished, although the drying up of their thoughts, and their involuntary silence, is an actual proof of it. But does Job make them feel this oppressively? Now that they are become so insignificant, does he read them a severe lecture? does he in general act towards them as vanquished? No indeed, but solemnly, and without vaunting himself over his accusers, he affirms his innocence; earnestly, but in a winning manner, he admonishes them, by tempering and modifying what was vehement and extreme in his previous replies. He humbly submits himself to the divine wisdom, by setting the fear of God, as man’s true wisdom, before himself and the friends as their common aim. Thus he utters “the loftiest words, which must surprise the opponents as they exhibit him as the not merely mighty, but also wonderfully calm and modest conqueror, who here for the first time wears the crown of true victory, when, in outward victory conquering himself, he struggles on towards a more exalted clearness of perception.”

‏ Job 29

Job 29:1-6 1 Then Job continued to take up his proverb, and said: 2 O that I had months like the times of yore,

Like the days when Eloah protected me, 3 When He, when His lamp, shone above my head,

By His light I went about in the darkness; 4 As I was in the days of my vintage,

When the secret of Eloah was over my tent, 5 When the Almighty was still with me,

My children round about me; 6 When my steps were bathed in cream,

And the rock beside me poured forth streams of oil.

Since the optative מי־יתּן (comp. on Job 23:3) is connected with the acc. of the object desired, Job 14:4; Job 31:31, or of that respecting which anything is desired, Job 11:5, it is in itself possible to explain: who gives (makes) me like the months of yore; but since, when מי־יתּנני occurs elsewhere, Isa 27:4; Jer 9:1, the suff. is meant as the dative (= מי־יתן לי, Job 31:35), it is also here to be explained: who gives me (= O that one would give me, O that I had) like (instar) the months of yore, i.e., months like those of the past, and indeed those that lie far back in the past; for ירחי־קדם means more than עברוּ (אשׁר) ירחים. Job begins to describe the olden times, that he wishes back, with the virtually genitive relative clause: “when Eloah protected me” (Ges. §116, 3). It is impossible to take בּהלּו as Hiph.: when He caused to shine (Targ. בּאנהרוּתיהּ); either בּההלּו (Olsh.) or even בּהלּו (Ew. in his Comm.) ought to be read then. On the other hand, הלּו can be justified as the form for inf. Kal of הלל (to shine, vid., Job 25:5) with a weakening of the a to i (Ew. §255, a), and the suff. may, according to the syntax, be taken as an anticipatory statement of the object: when it, viz., His light, shone above my head; comp. Exo 2:6 (him, the boy), Isa 17:6 (its, the fruit-tree’s, branches), also Isa 29:23 (he, his children); and Ew. §309, c, also decides in its favour. Nevertheless it commends itself still more to refer the suff. of בהלו to אלוהּ (comp. Isa 60:2; Psa 50:2), and to take נרו as a corrective, explanatory permutative: when He, His lamp, shone above my head, as we have translated. One is at any rate reminded of Isa 60 in connection with Job 29:3; for as בהלו corresponds to יזרח there, so לאורו corresponds to לאורך in the Job 29:3 of the same: by His light I walked in darkness (חשׁך locative = בּחשׁך), i.e., rejoicing in His light, which preserved me from its dangers (straying and falling).

In Job 29:4 כּאשׁר is not a particle of time, but of comparison, which was obliged here to stand in the place of the כּ, which is used only as a preposition. And חרפּי (to be written thus, not חרפי with an aspirated )פ may not be translated “(in the days) of my spring,” as Symm. ἐν ἡμέραις νεότητός μου, Jer. diebus adolescentiae meae, and Targ. בּיומי חריפוּתי, whether it be that חריפות here signifies the point, ἀκμή (from חרף, Arab. ḥrf , acuere), or the early time (spring time, from חרף, Arab. chrf , carpere). For in reference to agriculture חרף can certainly signify the early half of the year (on this, vid., Genesis, S. 270), inasmuch as sowing and ploughing time in Palestine and Syria is in November and December; wherefore Arab. chrı̂f signifies the early rain or autumn rain; and in Talmudic, חרף, premature (ripe too early), is the opposite of אפל, late, but the derivatives of חרף only obtain this signification connotative, for, according to its proper signification, חרף (Arab. chrı̂f with other forms) is the gathering time, i.e., the time of the fruit harvest (syn. אסיף), while the Hebr. אביב (אב) corresponds to the spring in our sense. If Job meant his youth, he would have said בּימי אבּי, or something similar; but as Job 29:5 shows, he meant his manhood, and this he calls his autumn as the season of maturity, or rather of the abundance of fruits (Schult.: aetatem virilem suis fructibus faetum et exuberantum), ^{▼▼The fresh vegetation, indeed, in hotter districts (e.g., in the valley of the Jordan and Euphrates) begins with the arrival of the autumnal rains, but the real spring (comp. Sol 2:11-13) only begins about the vernal equinox, and still later on the mountains. On the contrary, the late summer, קיץ, which passes over into the autumn, חרף, is the season for gathering the fruit. The produce of the fields, garden fruit, and grapes ripen before the commencement of the proper autumn; some (when the land can be irrigated) summer fruits, e.g., Dhura (maize) and melons, in like manner olives and dates, ripen in autumn. Therefore the translation, in the days of my autumn (“of my harvest”), is the only correct one. If חרפּי were intended here in a sense not used elsewhere, it might signify, according to the Arabic with h, “(in the days) of my prosperity,” or ”my power,” or even with Arab. ch, “(in the days) of my youthful vigour;” for charâfât are rash words and deeds, charfân one who says or does anything rash from lightness, the feebleness of old age, etc. (according to Wetzst., very common words in Syria): חרף or חרף, therefore the thoughtlessness of youth, Arab. jahl, i.e., the rash desire of doing something great, which חרף הנפש למות (Jdg 5:18). But it is most secure to go back to חרף, Arab. chrf , carpere, viz., fructus.} which, according to Olympiodorus, also with ὅτε ἤμην ἐπιβρίθων ὁδούς (perhaps καρπούς) of the lxx, is what is intended. Then the blessed fellowship of Eloah (סוד, familiarity, confiding, unreserved intercourse, Psa 55:15; Pro 3:32, comp. Psa 25:14) ruled over his tent; the Almighty was still with him (protecting and blessing him), His נערים were round about him. It certainly does not mean servants (Raschi: משׁרתי), but children (as Job 1:19; Job 24:5); for one expects the mention of the blessing of children first of all (Psa 127:3, Psa 128:3). His steps (הליך, ἅπ. λεγ.) bathed then בּחמה = בּחמאה, Job 20:17 (as שׁלה = שׁאלה, 1Sa 1:17, and possibly גּוה = גּאוה), and the rocks poured forth, close by him, streams of oil (a figure which reminds one of Deu 32:13). A rich blessing surrounded him wherever he tarried or went, and flowed to him wonderfully beyond desire and comprehension. Job 29:7-10 7 When I went forth to the gate of the city,

Prepared my seat in the market, 8 Then the young men hid themselves as soon as they saw me,

And the aged rose up, remained standing. 9 Princes refrained from speaking,

And laid their hand on their mouth. 10 The voice of the nobles was hidden,

And their tongue clave to their palate.

When he left the bounds of his domain, and came into the city, he was everywhere received with the profoundest respect. From the facts of the case, it is inadmissible to translate quum egrederer portam after Gen 34:24, comp. infra, Job 31:34, for the district where Job dwelt is to be thought of as being without a gate. True, he did not dwell with his family in tents, i.e., pavilions of hair, but in houses; he was not a nomad (a wandering herdsman), or what is the same thing, a Beduin, otherwise his children would not have been slain in a stone house, Job 1:19. “The daughter of the duck,” says an Arabian proverb, “is a swimmer,” and the son of a Beduin never dwells in a stone house. He was, however, also, not a citizen, but a hadarı̂ (חצרי), i.e., a permanent resident, a large landowner and husbandman. Thus therefore שׁער (for which Ew. after the lxx reads שׁחר: “when I went up early in the morning to the city”) is locative, for שׁערה (comp. צא השּׂדה, go out into the field, Gen 27:3): when he went forth to the gate above the city; or even, since it is natural to imagine the city as situated on an eminence: up to the city (so that צאת includes in itself by implication the notion of עלות); not, however: to the gate near the city (Stick., Hahn), since the gate of a city is not situated near the city, but is part of the city itself. The gates of cities and large houses in Western Asia are vaulted entrances, with large recesses on either side, where people congregate for business and negotiations. ^{▼▼Vid., Layard, New Discoveries, p. 57.}

The open space at the gate, which here, as in Neh 8:1, Neh 8:3, Neh 8:16, is called רחוב, i.e., the open space within the gate and by the gate, was the forum (Job 5:4). Job 29:11-14 11 For an ear heard, and called me happy;

And an eye saw, and bear witness to me: 12 For I rescued the sufferer who cried for help,

And the orphan, and him that had no helper. 13 The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me,

And I made the widow’s heart rejoice. 14 I put on justice, and it put me on;

As a robe and turban was my integrity.

Thus imposing was the impression of his personal appearance wherever he appeared; for (כּי explic.) the fulness of the blessing of the possession of power and of prosperity which he enjoyed was so extraordinary, that one had only to hear of it to call him happy, and that, especially if any one saw it with his own eyes, he was obliged to bear laudatory testimony to him. The futt. consec. affirm what was the inevitable consequence of hearing and seeing; העיד, seq. acc., is used like הזכּיר in the signification of laudatory recognition. The expression is not brachylogical for ותּעד לּי (vid., on Job 31:18); for from 1Ki 21:10, 1Ki 21:13, we perceive that העיד with the acc. of the person signifies to make any one the subject of assertion, whether he be lower or higher in rank (comp. the New Testament word, especially in Luke, μαρτυρεῖσθαι). It was, however, not merely the outward manifestation of his unusual prosperity which called forth such admiration, but his active benevolence united with the abundant resources at his command. For where there was a sufferer who cried for help he, relieved him, especially orphans and those who had no helper. ולא־עזר לו is either a new third object, or a closer definition of what precedes: the orphan and (in this state of orphanhood) helpless one. The latter is more probable both here and in the Salomonic primary passage, Psa 72:12; in the other case ואשׁר אין־עזר לח might be expected. Job 29:15-17 15 I was eyes to the blind,

And feet was I to the lame. 16 I was a father to the needy,

And the cause of the unknown I found out, 17 And broke the teeth of the wicked,

And I cast the spoil forth out of his teeth.

The less it is Job’s purpose here to vindicate himself before the friends, the more forcible is the refutation which the accusations of the most hard-hearted uncharitableness raised against him by them, especially by Eliphaz, Job 22, find everywhere here. His charity relieved the bodily and spiritual wants of others - eyes to the blind (לעוּר with Pathach), feet to the lame. A father was he to the needy, which is expressed by a beautiful play of words, as if it were: the carer for the care-full ones; or what perhaps corresponds to the primary significations of אב and אביון: ^{▼▼There is an old Arabic defective verb, bayya , which signifies ”to seek an asylum for one’s self,” e.g., anâ baj , I come as one seeking protection, a suppliant, in the usual language synon. of Arab. dachala , and thereby indicating its relationship to the Hebr. בּוא, perhaps the root of בּית (בּתּים), the ת of which would then not be a radical letter, but, as according to Ges. Thes. in זית, used only in the forming of the word, and the original meaning would be “a refuge.” Traced to a secondary verb, אבה (properly to take up the fugitive, qabila - l - bı̂ja) springing from this primitive verb, אב would originally signify a guardian, protector; and from the fact of this name denoting, according to the form פּעל, properly in general the protecting power, the ideal femin. in אבות (Arab. abawât' and the Arabic dual abawain (properly both guardians), which embraces father and mother, would be explained and justified. Thus the rare phenomenon that the same אבה signifies in Hebr. “to be willing,” and in Arab. “to refuse,” would be solved. The notion of taking up the fugitive would have passed over in the Hebrew, taken according to its positive side, into the notion of being willing, i.e., of receiving and accepting (אבּל, qabila , e.g., 1Ki 20:8, לא תעבה = la taqbal); in the Arabic, however, taken according to its negative side, as refusing the fugitive to his pursuer, into that of not being willing; and the usage of the language favours this: abâhu ‛aleihi , he protected him against (Arab. 'lâ) the other (refused him to the other); Arab. abı̂yun = ma'bin , protected, inaccessible to him who longs for it; Arab. ibyat , the protection, i.e., the retention of the milk in the udder. Hence אביון, from the Hebrew signif. of the verb, signifies one who desires anything, or a needy person, but originally (inasmuch as אבה is connected with Arab. byy) one who needs protection; from the Arabic signif. of Arab. 'abâ , one who restrains himself because he is obliged, one to whom what he wants is denied. To the Arab. ibja (defence, being hindered) corresponds in form the Hebr. אבה, according to which אניות אבה, Job 9:26, may be understood of ships, which, with all sails set and in all haste, seek the sheltering harbour before the approaching storm. We leave this suggestion for further research to sift and prove. More on Job 34:36. - Wetzst.} the protector of those needing (seeking) protection. The unknown he did not regard as those who were nothing to him, but went unselfishly and impartially into the ground of their cause. לא־ידעתּי is an attributive clause, as Job 18:21; Isa 55:5; Isa 41:3, and freq., with a personal obj. (eorum) quos non noveram, for the translation causam quam nesciebam (Jer.) gives a tame, almost meaningless, thought. With reference to the suff. in אחקרהוּ, on the form ehu used seldom by Waw consec. (Job 12:4), and by the imper. (Job 40:11), chiefly with a solemn calm tone of speech, vid., Ew. §250, c. Further: He spared not to render wrong-doers harmless, and snatched from them what they had taken from others. The cohortative form of the fut. consec., ואשׁבּרה, has been discussed already on Job 1:15; Job 19:20. The form מתלּעות is a transposition of מלתּעות, to render it more convenient for pronunciation, for the Arab. ṭl‛ , efferre se, whence a secondary form, Arab. tl‛ , although used of the appearing of the teeth, furnishes no such appropriate primary signification as the Arab. lḏg , pungere, mordere, whence a secondary form, Arab. ltg ; the Aethiopic maltâht , jawbone (maxilla), also favours מלתעה as the primary form. He shattered the grinders of the roguish, and by moral indignation against the robber he cast out of his teeth what he had stolen. Job 29:18-20 18 Then I thought: With my nest I shall expire,

And like the phoenix, have a long life. 19 My root will be open for water,

And the dew will lodge in my branches. 20 Mine honour will remain ever fresh to me,

And my bow will become young in my hand.

In itself, Job 29:18 might be translated: “and like to the sand I shall live many days” (Targ., Syr., Arab., Saad., Gecat., Luther, and, among moderns, Umbr., Stick., Vaih., Hahn, and others), so that the abundance of days is compared to the multitude of the grains of sand. The calculation of the immense total of grains of sand (atoms) in the world was, as is known, a favourite problem of antiquity; and in the Old Testament Scriptures, the comprehensive knowledge of Solomon is compared to “the sand upon the sea-shore,” 1Ki 5:9, - how much more readily a long life reduced to days! comp. Ovid, Metam. xiv. 136-138; quot haberet corpora pulvis, tot mihi natales contingere vana rogavi. We would willingly decide in favour of this rendering, which is admissible in itself, although a closer definition like היּם is wanting by כחול, if an extensive Jewish tradition did not secure the signification of an immortal bird, or rather one rising ever anew from the dead. The testimony is as follows: (1) b. Sanhedrin 108 b, according to which חול is only another name for the bird אורשׁינא, ^{▼▼The name is a puzzle, and does not accord with any of the mythical birds mentioned in the Zendavesta (vid., Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, 1863, S. 93). What Lewysohn, Zoologie des Talmuds, S. 353, brings forward from the Greek by way of explanation is untenable. The name of the bird, Vâresha, in an obscure passage of the Bundehesch in Windischmann, ib. S. 80, is similar in sound. Probably, however, אורשׁינא is one and the same word as Simurg, which is composed of si (= sin) and murg, a bird (Pehlvi and Parsi mru). This si (sin) corresponds to the Vedic çjena, a falcon, and in the Zend form, çaêna (çîna), is the name of a miraculous bird; so that consequently Simurg = Sinmurg, Parsi Cînamru, signifies the Si- or Cîna-bird (comp. Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, 1859, S. 125). In אורשינא the two parts of the composition seem to be reversed, and אור to be corrupted from מור. Moreover, the Simurg is like the phoenix only in the length of its life; another mythological bird, Kuknus, on the other hand (vid., the art. Phönix in Ersch u. Gruber), resembles it also in rising out of its own ashes.} of which the fable is there recorded, that when Noah fed the beasts in the ark, it sat quite still in its compartment, that it might not give more trouble to the patriarch, who had otherwise plenty to do, and that Noah wished it on this account the reward of immortality (יהא רעוא דלא תמות). (2) That this bird חול is none other than the phoenix, is put beyond all doubt by the Midrashim (collected in the Jalkut on Job, §517). There it is said that Eve gave all the beasts to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree, and that only one bird, the חול by name, avoided this death-food: “it lives a thousand years, at the expiration of which time fire springs up in its nest, and burns it up to about the size of an egg;” or even: that of itself it diminishes to that size, from which it then grows up again and continues to live (וחוזר ומתגדל איברים וחיה). (3) The Masora observes, that כחול occurs in two different significations (בתרי לישׁני), since in the present passage it does not, as elsewhere, signify sand. (4) Kimchi, in his Lex., says: “in a correct Jerusalem MS I found the observation: בשׁורק לנהרדעי ובחלם למערבאי, i.e., וכחוּל according to the Nehardean (Babylonian) reading, וכחול according to the western (Palestine) reading;” according to which, therefore, the Babylonian Masoretic school distinguished וכחול in the present passage from וכחול, Gen 22:17, even in the pronunciation. A conclusion respecting the great antiquity of this lexical tradition may be drawn (5) from the lxx, which translates ὥσπερ στέλεχος φοίνικος, whence the Italic sicut arbor palmae, Jerome sicut palma.

If we did not know from the testimonies quoted that חול is the name of the phoenix, one might suppose that the lxx has explained וכחול according to the Arab. nachl , the palm, as Schultens does; but by a comparison of those testimonies, it is more probable that the translation was ὥσπερ φοῖνιξ originally, and that ὥσπερ στέλεχος φοίνικος is an interpolation, for φοῖνιξ signifies both the immortal miraculous bird and the inexhaustibly youthful palm. ^{▼▼According to Ovid, Metam. xv. 396, the phoenix makes its nest in the palm, and according to Pliny, h. n. xiii. 42, it has its name from the palm: Phoenix putatur ex hujus palmae argumento nomen accepisse, iterum mori ac renasci ex se ipsa; vid., A. Hahmann, Die Dattelpalme, ihre Namen und ihre Verehrung in der alten Welt, in the periodical Bonplandia, 1859, Nr. 15, 16. Masius, in his studies of nature, has very beautifully described on what ground “the intelligent Greek gave a like name to the fabulous immortal bird that rises again out of its own ashes, and the palm which ever renews its youth.” Also comp. (Heimsdörfer’s) Christliche Kunstsymbolik, S. 26, and Augusti, Beiträge zur christl. Kunst-Geschichte und Liturgik, Bd. i. S. 106-108, but especially Piper, Mythologie der christl. Kunst (1847), i. 446f.}

We have the reverse case in Tertullian, de resurrectione carnis, c. xiii., which explains the passage in Ps; Psa 92:13, δίκαιος ὡς φοῖνιξ ἀντηήσει, according to the translation justus velut phoenix florebit, of the ales orientis or avis Arabiae, which symbolizes man’s immortality. ^{▼▼Not without reference to Clemens Romanus, in his I. Ep. ad Corinth. c. xxv., according to which the phoenix is an Arabian bird, which lives five hundred years, then dies in a nest which it builds of incense, myrrh, and spices, and leaves behind it the larva of a young bird, which, when grown up, brings the nest with the bones of its father and places it upon the altar of the sun at the Egyptian Heliopolis. The source of this is Herodotus ii. 73) who, however, has an egg of myrrh instead of a nest of myrrh); and Tacitus, Ann. vi. 28, gives a similar narrative. Lactantius gives a different version in his poem on the phoenix, according to which this, the only one of its race, “built its nest in a country that remained untouched by the deluge.” The Jewish tragedy writer, Ezekiêlos, agrees more nearly with the statement of Arabia being the home of the phoenix. In his drama Ἐξαγωγή, a spy sent forward before the pilgrim band of Israel, he states that among other things the phoenix was also seen; vid., my Gesch. der jüd. Poesie, S. 219.}

Both figures, that of the phoenix and that of the palm, are equally appropriate and pleasing in the mouth of Job; but apart from the fact that the palm everywhere, where it otherwise occurs, is called תּמר, this would be the only passage where it occurs in the book of Job, which, in spite of its richness in figures taken from plants, nowhere mentions the palm, - a fact which is perhaps not accidental. ^{▼▼Without attempting thereby to explain the phenomenon observed above, we nevertheless regard it as worthy of remark, that in general the palm is not a common tree either in Syria or in Palestine. “At present there are not in all Syria five hundred palm-trees; and even in the olden times there was no quantity of palms, except in the valley of the Jordan, and on the sea-coast.” - Wetzst.}

On the contrary, we must immediately welcome a reference to the Arabico-Egyptian myth of the phoenix, that can be proved, in a book which also otherwise thoroughly blends things Egyptian with Arabian, and the more so since (6) even the Egyptian language itself supports חול or חוּל as a name of the phoenix; for ΑΛΛΩΗ ΑΛΛΟΗ is explained in the Coptico-Arabic glossaries by es - semendel (the Arab. name of the phoenix, or at least a phoenix-like bird, that, like the salamander, semendar, cannot be burned), and in Kircher by avis Indica, species Phoenicis. ^{▼▼Vid., G. Seyffarth, Die Phoenix-Periode, Deutsche Morgenländ. Zeitschr. iii. (1849) 63ff., according to which alloê (Hierogl. koli) is the name of the false phoenix without head-feathers; bêne or bêni (Hierogl. bnno) is the name of the true phoenix with head-feathers, and the name of the palm also. Alloê, which accords with חול, is quite secured as a name of the phoenix.} חול is Hebraized from this Egyptian name of the phoenix; the word signifies rotation (comp. Arab. haul, the year; haula, round about), and is a suitable designation of the bird that renews its youth periodically after many centuries of life: quae reparat seque ipsa reseminat ales (Ovid), not merely beginning a new life, but also bringing in a new great year: conversionem anni magni (Pliny); in the hieroglyphic representations it has the circle of the sun as a crown. In the full enjoyment of the divine favour and blessing, and in the consciousness of having made a right use of his prosperity, Job hoped φοίνικος ἔτη βιοῦν (Lucian, Hermot. 53), to use a Greek expression, and to expire or die עם־קנּי, as the first half of the verse, now brought into the right light, says. Looking to the form of the myth, according to which Ovid sings:Quassa cum fulvâ substravit cinnama myrrhâ, Se super imponit finitque in odoribus aevum, it might be translated: together with my nest (Umbr., Hirz., Hlgst.); but with the wish that he may not see any of his dear ones die before himself, there is at the same time connected the wish, that none of them should survive him, which is in itself unnatural, and diametrically opposed to the character of an Arab, who in the presence of death cherishes the twofold wish, that he may continue to live in his children (a proverb says: men chalaf el - weled el - fâlih ma mât , he who leaves a noble child behind him is not dead), and that he may die in the midst of his family. Expressly this latter wish, עם־קני signifies: with = in my nest, i.e., in the bosom of my family, not without reference to the phoenix, which, according to the form of the myth in Herodotus, Pliny, Clemens, and others, brings the remains of its father in a nest or egg of myrrh to Heliopolis, into the sacred precincts of the temple of the sun, and thus pays him the last and highest tribute of respect. A different but similar version if given in Horapollo ii. 57, according to which the young bird came forth from the blood of its sire, σὺν τῷ πατρὶ πορεύεται εἰς τῆν Ἡλίου πόλιν τῆν ἐν Αιγύπτῳ, ὃς καὶ παραγενόμενος ἐκεῖ ἅμα τῇ ἡλίου ἀνατολῇ τελευτᾷ. The father, therefore, in death receives the highest tribute of filial respect; and it is this to which the hope of being able to die with (in) his nest, expressed by Job, refers.

The following substantival clause, Job 29:19, is to be understood as future, like the similar clause, Job 29:16, as perfect: my root - so I hoped - will remain open (unclosed) towards the water, i.e., it will never be deficient of water in its vicinity, that it may plentifully supply the stem and branches with nourishment, and dew will lodge on my branches, i.e., will descend nightly, and remain upon them to nourish them. אלי (corresponding to the Arab. ila , originally ilai) occurs only in the book of Job, and here for the fourth and last time (comp. Job 3:22; Job 5:26; Job 15:22). קציר does not signify harvest here, as the ancient expositors render it, but, like Job 14:9; Job 18:16, a branch, or the intertwined branches. The figure of the root and branch, the flow of vitality downwards and upwards, is the counterpart of Job 18:16. In Job 29:20 a substantival clause also comes first, as in Job 29:19, Job 29:16 (for the established reading is חדשׁ, not חדשׁ), and a verbal clause follows: his honour - so he hoped - should continue fresh by him, i.e., should abide with him in undiminished value and splendour. It is his honour before God and men that is intended, not his soul (Hahn); כבוד, δόξα, certainly is an appellation of the נפשׁ (Psychol. S. 98), but חדשׁ is not appropriate to it as predicate. By the side of honour stands manliness, or the capability of self-defence, whose symbol is the bow: and my bow should become young again in my hand, i.e., gain ever new strength and elasticity. It is unnecessary to supply כּח (Hirz., Schlottm., and others). The verb חלף, Arab. chlf, signifies, as the Arab. shows, properly to turn the back, then to go forth, exchange; the Hiph. to make progress, to cause something new to come into the place of the old, to grow young again. These hopes introduced with ואמר were themselves an element of his former happiness. Its description can therefore be continued in connection with the ואמר without any fresh indication. Job 29:21-25 21 They hearkened to me and waited,

And remained silent at my decision. 22 After my utterance they spake not again,

And my speech distilled upon them. 23 And they waited for me as for the rain,

And they opened their mouth wide for the latter rain. 24 I smiled to them in their hopelessness,

And the light of my countenance they cast not down. 25 I chose the way for them, and sat as chief,

And dwelt as a king in the army,

As one that comforteth the mourners.

Attentive, patient, and ready to be instructed, they hearkened to him (this is the force of שׁמע ל), and waited, without interrupting, for what he should say. ויחלּוּ, the pausal pronunciation with a reduplication of the last radical, as Jdg 5:7, חדלּוּ (according to correct texts), Ges. §20, 2, c; the reading of Kimchi, ויחלוּ, is the reading of Ben-Naphtali, the former the reading of Ben-Ascher (vid., Norzi). If he gave counsel, they waited in strictest silence: this is the meaning of ידּמוּ (fut. Kal of דּמם); למו, poetic for ל, refers the silence to its outward cause (vid., on Hab 3:16). After his words non iterabant, i.e., as Jerome explanatorily translates: addere nihil audebant, and his speech came down upon them relieving, rejoicing, and enlivening them. The figure indicated in תּטּף is expanded in Job 29:23 after Deu 32:2 : they waited on his word, which penetrated deeply, even to the heart, as for rain, מטר, by which, as Job 29:23, the so-called (autumnal) early rain which moistens the seed is prominently thought of. They open their mouth for the late rain, מלקושׁ (vid., on Job 24:6), i.e., they thirsted after his words, which were like the March or April rain, which helps to bring to maturity the corn that is soon to be reaped; this rain frequently fails, and is therefore the more longed for. פּער פּה is to be understood according to Psa 119:131, comp. Psa 81:11; and one must consider, in connection with it, what raptures the beginning of the periodical rains produces everywhere, where, as e.g., in Jerusalem, the people have been obliged for some time to content themselves with cisterns that are almost dried to a marsh, and how the old and young dance for joy at their arrival!

In Job 29:24 a thought as suited to the syntax as to the fact is gained if we translate: “I smiled to them - they believed it not,” i.e., they considered such condescension as scarcely possible (Saad., Raschi, Rosenm., De Wette, Schlottm., and others); עשׂחק is then fut. hypotheticum, as Job 10:16; Job 20:24; Job 22:27., Ew. §357, b. But it does not succeed in putting Job 29:24 in a consistent relation to this thought; for, with Aben-Ezra, to explain: they did not esteem my favour the less on that account, my respect suffered thereby no loss among them, is not possible in connection with the biblical idea of “the light of the countenance;” and with Schlottm. to explain: they let not the light of my countenance, i.e., token of my favour, fall away, i.e., be in vain, is contrary to the usage of the language, according to which הפּיל פּנים signifies: to cause the countenance to sink (gloomily, Gen 4:5), whether one’s own, Jer 3:12, or that of another. Instead of פּני we have a more pictorial and poetical expression here, אור פּני: light of my countenance, i.e., my cheerfulness (as Pro 16:15). Moreover, the אשׂחק אליהם, therefore, furnishes the thought that he laughed, and did not allow anything to dispossess him of his easy and contented disposition. Thus, therefore, those to whom Job laughed are to be thought of as in a condition and mood which his cheerfulness might easily sadden, but still did not sadden; and this their condition is described by לא יאמינוּ (a various reading in Codd. and editions is ולא), a phrase which occurred before (Job 24:22) in the signification of being without faith or hope, despairing (comp. האמין, to gain faith, Psa 116:10), - a clause which is not to be taken as attributive (Umbr., Vaih.: who had not confidence), but as a neutral or circumstantial subordinate clause (Ew. §341, a). Therefore translate: I smiled to them, if they believed not, i.e., despaired; and however despondent their position appeared, the cheerfulness of my countenance they could not cause to pass away. However gloomy they were, they could not make me gloomy and off my guard. Thus also Job 29:25 is now suitably attached to the preceding: I chose their way, i.e., I made the way plain, which they should take in order to get out of their hopeless and miserable state, and sat as chief, as a king who is surrounded by an armed host as a defence and as a guard of honour, attentive to the motion of his eye; not, however, as a sovereign ruler, but as one who condescended to the mourners, and comforted them (נחם Piel, properly to cause to breathe freely). This peaceful figure of a king brings to mind the warlike one, Job 15:24. כּאשׁר is not a conj. here, but equivalent to כאישׁ אשׁר, ut (quis) qui; consequently not: as one comforts, but: as he who comforts; lxx correctly: ὃν τρόπον παθεινοὺς παρακαλῶν. The accentuation (כאשׁר Tarcha, אבלים Munach, ינחם Silluk) is erroneous; כאשׁר should be marked with Rebia mugrasch, and אבלים with Mercha-Zinnorith.

From the prosperous and happy past, absolutely passed, Job now turns to the present, which contrasts so harshly with it.

‏ Job 30

Job 30:1-4 1 And now they who are younger than I have me in derision,

Those whose fathers I disdained To set with the dogs of my flock. 2 Yea, the strength of their hands, what should it profit me?

They have lost vigour and strength. 3 They are benumbed from want and hunger,

They who gnaw the steppe,

The darkness of the wilderness and waste; 4 They who pluck mallows in the thicket,

And the root of the broom is their bread.

With ועתּה, which also elsewhere expresses the turning-point from the premises to the conclusion, from accusation to the threat of punishment, and such like, Job here begins to bewail the sad turn which his former prosperity has taken. The first line of the verse, which is marked off by Mercha-Mahpach, is intentionally so disproportionately long, to form a deep and long breathed beginning to the lamentation which is now begun. Formerly, as he has related in the first part of the monologue, an object of reverential fear to the respectable youth of the city (Job 29:8), he is now an object of derision (שׂחק על, to laugh at, distinct from שׂחק אל, Job 29:24, to laugh to, smile upon) to the young good-for-nothing vagabonds of a miserable class of men. They are just the same עניּי ארץ, whose sorrowful lot he reckons among the mysteries of divine providence, so difficulty of solution (Job 24:4-8). The less he belongs to the merciless ones, who take advantage of the calamities of the poor for their own selfish ends, instead of relieving their distress as far as is in their power, the more unjustifiable is the rude treatment which he now experiences from them, when they who meanly hated him before because he was rich, now rejoice at the destruction of his prosperity. Younger than he in days (לימים as Job 32:4, with ל of closer definition, instead of which the simple acc. was inadmissible here, comp. on Job 11:9) laugh at him, sons of those fathers who were so useless and abandoned that he scorned (מאס ל, comp. מאס מן, 1Sa 15:26) to entrust to them even a service so menial as that of the shepherd dogs. Schult., Rosenm., and Schlottm. take שׁית עם for שׁית על, praeficere, but that ought to be just simply שׁית על; שׁית עם signifies to range beside, i.e., to place alike, to associate; moreover, the oversight of the shepherd dogs is no such menial post, while Job intends to say that he did not once consider them fit to render such a subordinate service as is that of the dogs which help the shepherds.

And even the strength of their (these youths') hands (גּם is referable to the suff. of ידיהם: even; not: now entirely, completely, as Hahn translates), of what use should it be to him: (למּה not cur, but ad quid, quorsum, as Gen 25:32; Gen 27:46.) They are enervated, good-for-nothing fellows: כּלח is lost to them (עלימו trebly emphatic: it is placed in a prominent position, has a pathetic suff., and is על for ל, 1Sa 9:3). The signif. senectus, which suits Job 5:26, is here inapplicable, since it is not the aged that are spoken of, but the young; for that “old age is lost to them” would be a forced expression for the thought - which, moreover, does not accord with the connection - that they die off early. One does not here expect the idea of senectus or senectus vegeta, but vigor, as the Syriac (‛ushino) and Arabic also translate it. May not כּלח perhaps be related to כּח, as שׁלאנן to שׁאנן, the latter being a mixed form from שׁאנן and שׁלו, the former from כּח and לח, fresh juicy vigour, or as we say: pith and marrow (Saft and Kraft)? At all events, if this is somewhat the idea of the word, it may be derived from כּלח = כּלה (lxx συντέλεια), or some other way (vid., on Job 5:26): it signifies full strength or maturity. ^{▼▼From the root Arab. kl (on its primary notion, vid., my review of Bernstein’s edition of Kirsch’s Syr. Chrestomathie, Ergänzungsblatt der A.L.Z. 1843, Nr. 16 and 17) other derivatives, as Arab. kl' , klb , klt , klṯ , klj , kld , klz , etc., develop in general the significations to bring, take, or hold together, enclose, and the like; but Arab. lkḥ in particular the signification to draw together, distort violently, viz., the muscles of the face in grinning and showing the teeth, or even sardonic laughing, and drawing the lips apart. The general signification of drawing together, Arab. šdd, resolves itself, however, from that special reference to the muscles of the face, and is manifest in the IV form Arab. kâlaḥa, to show one’s self strict and firm (against any one); also more sensuously: to remain firm in one’s place; of the moon, which remains as though motionless in one of its twenty-eight halting-places. Hence Arab. dahrun kâliḥun , a hard season, zmân šdı̂d and kulâḥun , kalâḥi (the latter as a kind of n. propr. invariably ending in i, and always without the article), a hard year, i.e., a year of failure of the crops, and of scarcity and want. If it is possible to apply this to כּלח without the hazardous comparison of Arab. qḥl , qlḥm , etc. so supra, p. 300], the primary signification might perhaps be that of hardness, unbroken strength; Job 5:26, “Thou wilt go to the grave with unbroken strength,” i.e., full of days indeed, but without having thyself experienced the infirmities and burdens of the aetas decrepita, as also a shock brought in “in its season” is at the highest point of ripeness; Job 30:2 : “What (should) the strength of their hands profit me? as for them, their vigour is departed.” - Fl.}

With Job 30:3 begins a new clause. It is גּלמוּד, not גּלמוּדים, because the book of Job does not inflect this Hebraeo-Arabic word, which is peculiar to it (besides only Isa 49:21, גּלמוּדה). It is also in Arab. more a substantive (stone, a mass) than an adj. (hard as stone, massive, e.g., Hist. Tamerlani in Schultens: Arab. 'l - ṣchr 'l - jlmûd , the hardest rock); and, similar to the Greek χέρσος (vid., Passow), it denotes the condition or attribute of rigidity, i.e., sterility, Job 3:7; or stiff as death, Job 15:34; or, as here, extreme weakness and incapability of working. The subj.: such are they, is wanting; it is ranged line upon line in the manner of a mere sketch, participles with the demonstrative article follow the elliptical substantival clause. The part. הערקים is explained by lxx, Targ., Saad. (Arab. fârrı̂n), and most of the old expositors, after ערק, Arab. ‛araqa , fut. ya‛riq , fugere, abire, which, however, gives a tame and - since the desert is to be thought of as the proper habitation of these people, be they the Seir remnant of the displaced Horites, or the Hauran ”races of the clefts” - even an inappropriate sense. On the contrary, ‛rq in Arab. (also Pael ‛arreq in Syriac) signifies to gnaw; and this Arabic signification of a word exclusively peculiar to the book of Job (here and Job 30:17) is perfectly suitable. We do not, however, with Jerome, translate: qui rodebant in solitudine (which is doubly false), but qui rodunt solitudinem, they gnaw the sunburnt parched ground of the steppe, stretched out there more like beasts than men (what Gecatilia also means by his Arab. lâzmû , adhaerent), and derive from it their scanty food. אמשׁ שׁואה וּמשׁאה is added as an explanatory, or rather further descriptive, permutative to ציּה. The same alliterative union of substantives of the same root occurs in Job 38:27; Zep 1:15, and a similar one in Nah 2:11 (בוקה ומבוקה), Eze 6:14; Eze 33:29 (שׁמה ומשׁמה); on this expression of the superlative by heaping up similar words, comp. Ew. §313, c. The verb שׁאה has the primary notion of wild confused din (e.g., Isa 17:12.), which does not pass over to the idea of desolation and destruction by means of the intermediate notion of ruins that come together with a crash, but by the transfer of what is confusing to the ear to confusing impressions and conditions of all kinds; the desert is accordingly called also תּהוּ, Deu 32:10, from תּהה = שׁאה (vid., Genesis, S. 93).

The noun אמשׁ nuon signifies elsewhere adverbially, in the past night, to grow night-like, and in general yesterday, according to which it is translated: the yesterday of waste and desolation; or, retaining the adverbial form: waste and desolation are of yesterday = long since. It is undeniable that מאתמוּל and אתמוּל, Isa 30:33; Mic 2:8, are used in the sense pridem (not only to-day, but even yesterday); but our poet uses תּמול, Job 8:9, in the opposite sense, non pridem (not long since, but only of yesterday); and it is more natural to ask whether אמשׁ then has not here the substantival signification from which it has become an adverb, in the signification nightly or yesterday. Since it originally signifies yesterday evening or night, then yesterday, it must have the primary signification darkness, as the Arab. ams is also traceable to the primary notion of the sinking of the sun towards the horizon; so that, consequently, although the usage of Arabic does not allow this sense, ^{▼▼Arab. ams is manifestly connected with Arab. ms' , msy , first by means of the IV form Arab. 'msy ; it has, however, like this, nothing to do with “darkness.” Arab. mas'â' is, according to the original sources of information, properly the whole afternoon until sunset; and this time is so called, because in it the sun Arab. tamsû or tamsı̂, touches, i.e., sinks towards the horizon (from the root Arab. ms with the primary notion stringere, terere, tergere, trahere, prehendere, capere). Just so they say Arab. 'l - šmsu tadluk , properly the sun rubs; Arab. taṣı̂f, connects itself; Arab. tušaffir, goes to the brink (Arab. šufr , šafı̂r), all in the same signification. Used as a substantive, Arab. amsu followed by the genitive is la veille de..., the evening before ... , and then generally, the day before ... , the opposite of Arab. gadu with the same construction, le lendemain de - . It is absolutely impossible that it should refer to a far distant past. On the contrary, it is always used like our “yesterday,” in a general sense, for a comparatively near past, or a past time thought of as near, as Arab. gd is used of a comparatively near future, or a future time thought of as near. Zamachschari in the Kesschâf on Sur. xvii. 25: It is a duty of children to take care of their aged parents, “because they are so aged, and to-day (el - jauma) require those who even yesterday (bi - l - emsi) were the most dependent on them of all God’s creatures.” It never means absolutely evening or night. What Gesenius, Thes., cites as a proof for it from Vita Timuri, ii. 428 - a supposed Arab. amsı̂y , vespertinus - is falsely read and explained (as in general Manger’s translation of those verses abounds in mistakes); - both line 1 and line 9, Arab. 'msy, IV form of ms' , is rhetorically and poetically (as “sister of Arab. kân”) of like signification with the general Arab. kân or ṣâ r. An Arab would not be able to understand that אמשׁ שׁואה וּמשׁאה otherwise than: “on the eve of destruction and ruin,” i.e., at the breaking in of destruction and ruin which is just at hand or has actually followed rapidly upon something else. - Fl.} it can be translated (comp. צלמות, Jer 2:6), “the evening darkness (gloominess) of the waste and wilderness” (אמשׁ as regens, Ew. §286, a). The Targ. also translated similarly, but take אמשׁ as a special attribute: חשׁוכא היך רוּמשׁא, “darkness like the late evening.” Olshausen’s conjecture of ארץ makes it easier, but puts a word that affirms nothing in the place of an expressive one.

Job 30:4 tells what the scanty nourishment is which the chill, desolate, and gloomy desert, with its steppes and gorges, furnishes them. מלּוּח (also Talmudic, Syriac, and Arabic) is the orach, and indeed the tall shrubby orach, the so-called sea-purslain, the buds and young leaves of which are gathered and eaten by the poor. That it is not merely a coast plant, but grows also in the desert, is manifest from the narrative b. Kidduschin, 66 a: “King Jannai approached כוחלית in the desert, and conquered sixty towns there Ges. translates wrongly, captis LX talentis; and on his return with great joy, he called all the orphans of Israel to him, and said: Our fathers ate מלוחים in their time when they were engaged with the building of the temple (according to Raschi: the second temple; according to Aruch: the tabernacle in the wilderness); we will also eat מלוחים in remembrance of our fathers! And מלוחים were served up on golden tables, and they ate.” The lxx translates, ἅλιμα (not: ἄλιμα); as in Athenaeus, poor Pythagoreans are once called ἅλιμα τρώγοντες καὶ κακὰ τοιαῦτα συλλέγοντες. ^{▼▼Huldrich Zwingli, in the Greek Aldine of 1518 (edited by Andrea of Asola), which he has annotated throughout in the margin, one of the choicest treasures of the Zurich town library, explains ἅλιμα by θαλάσσια, which was natural by the side of the preceding περικυκλοῦντες. We shall mention these marginal notes of Zwingli now and again.}

The place where they seek for and find this kind of edible plant is indicated by עלי־שׂיח. שׂיח is a shrub in general, but certainly pre-eminently the Arab. šı̂h, that perennial, branchy, woody plant of uncultivated ground, about two-thirds of a yard high, and the same in diameter, which is one of the greatest blessings of Syria and of the steppe, since, with the exception of cow and camel’s dung, it is often the only fuel of the peasants and nomads, - the principal, and often in a day’s journey the only, vegetation of the steppe, in the shade of which, then everything else is parched, a scanty vegetation is still preserved. ^{▼▼Thus Wetzstein in his Reise in den beiden Trachonon und um das Haurangebirge.}

The poor in search of the purslain surround this Arab. šı̂ḥ (shı̂h), and as Job 30:4 continues: the broom-root is their bread. Ges. understands לחמם according to Isa 47:14, where it is certainly the pausal form for לחמם (“there is not a coal to warm one’s self”), and that because the broom-root is not eatable. But why should broom-root and not broom brushwood be mentioned as fuel? The root of the steppe that serves as fuel, together with the shı̂h, is called gizl (from גזל, to tear out), not retem, which is the broom (and is extraordinarily frequent in the Belka). The Arabs, however, not only call Genista monosperma so, but also Chamaerops humilis, a degenerate kind of which produces a kind of arrow-root which the Indians in Florida use. ^{▼▼The description of these eaters of the steppe plants corresponds exactly to the reality, especially if that race, bodily so inferior, is contrasted with the agricultural peasant, and some allowance is made for the figure of speech Arab. mubâlagat (i.e., a description in colours, strongly brought out), without which poetic diction would be flat and devoid of vividness in the eye of an Oriental. The peasant is large and strong, with a magnificent beard and an expressive countenance, while e.g., the Trachonites of the present day (i.e., the race of the W'ar, יער), both men and women, are a small, unpleasant-looking, weakly race. It is certain that bodily perfection is a plant that only thrives in a comfortable house, and needs good nourishment, viz., bread, which the Trachonite of the present day very rarely obtains, although he levies heavy contributions on the harvest of the villagers. Therefore the roots of plants often serve as food. Two such plants, the gahh (גח) and the rubbe halı̂le (רבּה חלילה), are described by my Reisebericht. A Beduin once told me that it should be properly called rubh lêle (רבח לילה), “the gain of a supper,” inasmuch as it often takes the place of this, the chief meal of the day. To the genus rubbe belongs also the holêwâ (חליוא); in like manner they eat the bulbous plant, qotên (קטין); of another, the mesha‛(משׁע), they eat leaves, stem, and root. I often saw the poor villagers (never Beduins) eat the broad thick fleshy leaves of a kind of thistle (the thistle is called Arab. šûk , shôk), the name of which is ‛aqqub (עקּוּב); these leaves are a handbreadth and a half in length, and half a handbreadth in width. They gather them before the thorns on the innumerable points of the serrated leaves become strong and woody; they boil them in salt and water, and serve them up with a little butter. Whole tribes of the people of the Ruwala live upon the small brown seed (resembling mustard-seed) of the semh (שׂמח). The seeds are boiled up a pulp. - Wetzst.} לחמם in the signification cibus eorum is consequently not incomprehensible. lxx (which throws Job 30:4 into sad confusion): οἳ καὶ ῥΊζας ξύλων ἐμασσῶντο. ^{▼▼Zwingli observes here: Sigma only once. Codd. Anex. and Sinait. have the reading εμασωντο, which he prefers.}

All the ancient versions translate similarly. One is here reminded of what Agatharchides says in Strabo concerning the Egyptio-Ethiopian eaters of the rush root and herb. ^{▼▼Vid., Meyer, Botanische Erläuterungen zu Strabons Geographie, S. 108ff.} Job 30:5-8 5 They are driven forth from society,

They cry after them as after a thief. 6 In the most dismal valleys they must dwell,

In holes of the earth and in rocks. 7 Among the bushes they croak,

Under nettles are they poured forth, 8 Sons of fools, yea sons of base men:

They are driven forth out of the land! -

If, coming forth from their lurking-places, they allow themselves to be seen in the villages of the plain or in the towns, they are driven forth from among men, e medio pelluntur (to use a Ciceronian phrase). גּו (Syr. gau , Arab. gaww , guww) is that which is internal, here the circle of social life, the organized human community. This expression also is Hebraeo-Arabic; for if one contrasts a house of district with what is outside, he says in Arabic, jûwâ wa - barrâ , guwwâ wa - berrâ , within and without, or Arab. 'l - jûwâ - nı̂ wa - 'l - brrâ - nı̂ , el - guwwâni wa'l - berrâni , the inside and the outside. In Job 30:5, כּגּנּב, like the thief, is equivalent to, as after the thief, or since this generic Art. is not usual with us Germ. and Engl.: after a thief; French, on crie après eux comme après le voleur. In Job 30:6, לשׁכּן is, according to Ges. §132, rem. 1 (comp. on Hab 1:17), equivalent to היוּ לשׁכּן, “they are to dwell” = they must dwell; it might also signify, according to the still more frequent usage of the language, habitaturi sunt; it here, however, signifies habitandum est eis, as לבלום, Psa 32:9, obturanda sunt. Instead of בּערוּץ with Shurek, the reading בּערוץ with Cholem (after the form סגור, Hos 13:8) is also found, but without support. ארוּץ is either a substantive after the form גּבוּל (Ges., as Kimchi), or the construct of ערוּץ = נערץ, feared = fearful, so that the connection of the words, which we prefer, is a superlative one: in horridissima vallium, in the most terrible valleys, as Job 41:22, acutissimae testarum (Ew., according to §313, c). The further description of the habitation of this race of men: in holes (חרי = בּחרי) of the earth (עפר, earth with respect to its constituent parts) and rocks (lxx τρῶγλαι πετρῶν), may seem to indicate the aborigines of the mountains of the district of Seir, who are called החרים, τρωγλοδύνται (vid., Genesis, S. 507); but why not, which is equally natural, חורן, Eze 47:16, Eze 47:18, the “district of caverns,” the broad country about Bosra, with the two Trachônes (τράχωνες), of which the smaller western, the Legâ, is the ancient Trachonitis, and with Ituraea (the mountains of the Druses)? ^{▼▼Wetzstein also inclines to refer the description to the Ituraeans, who, according to Apuleius, were frugum pauperes, and according to others, freebooters, and are perhaps distinguished from the Arabes Trachonitae (if they were not these themselves), as the troglodytes are from the Arabs who dwell in tents (on the troglodytes in Eastern Hauran, vid., Reisebericht, S. 44, 126). “The troglodyte was very often able to go without nourishment and the necessaries of life. Their habitations are not unfrequently found where no cultivation of the land was possible, e.g., in Safa. They were therefore the rearers of cattle or marauders. The cattle-rearing troglodyte, because he cannot wander about from one pasture to another like the nomads who dwell in tents, often loses his herds by a failure of pasture, heavy falls of snow (which often produce great devastation, e.g., in Hauran), epidemics, etc. Losses may also arise from marauding attacks from the nomads. Still less is this marauding, which is at enmity with all the world, likely to make a race prosperous, which, like the troglodyte, being bound to a fixed habitation, cannot escape the revenge of those whom it has injured.” - Wetzst.}

As Job 6:5 shows, there underlies Job 30:7 a comparison of this people with the wild ass. The פּרא, ferâ, goes about in herds under the guidance of a so-called leader (vid., on Job 39:5), with which the poet in Job 24:5 compares the bands that go forth for forage; here the point of comparison, according to Job 6:5, is their bitter want, which urges from them the cry of pain; for ינהקוּ, although not too strong, would nevertheless be an inadequate expression for their sermo barbarus (Pineda), in favour of which Schlottmann calls to mind Herodotus’ (iv. 183) comparison of the language of the Troglodyte Ethiopians with the screech of the night-owl (τετρίγασι κατάπερ αι ̓ νυκτερίδες). Among bushes (especially the bushes of the shih, which affords them some nourishment and shade, and a green resting-place) one hears them, and hears from their words, although he cannot understand them more closely, discontent and lamentation over their desperate condition: there, under nettles (חרוּל, root חר, Arab. ḥrr , as urtica from urere), i.e., useless weeds of the desert, they are poured forth, i.e., spread about in disorder. Thus most moderns take ספח = שׁפך, Arab. sfḥ, comp. סרוּח, profusus, Amo 6:4, Amo 6:7, although one might also abide by the usual Hebrew meaning of the verb ספח (hardened from ספה), adjungere, associare (vid., Habak. S. 88), and with Hahn explain: under nettles they are united together, i.e., they huddle together. But neither the fut. nor the Pual (instead of which one would expect the Niph. or Hithpa.) is favourable to the latter interpretation; wherefore we decide in favour of the former, and find sufficient support for a Hebr.-Arabic ספח in the signification effundere from a comparison of Job 14:19 and the present passage. Job 30:8, by dividing the hitherto latent subject, tells what sort of people they are: sons of fools, profane, insane persons (vid., on Psa 14:1); moreover, or of the like kind (גּם, not אף), sons of the nameless, ignobilium or infamium, since בלי־שׁם is here an adj. which stands in dependence, not filii infamiae = infames (Hirz. and others), by which the second בני is rendered unlike the first. The assertion Job 30:8 may be taken as an attributive clause: who are driven forth ... ; but the shortness of the line and the prominence of the verb are in favour of the independence of the clause like an exclamation in its abrupt and halting form. נכּאוּ is Niph. of נכא = נכה (נכי), root נך, to hew, pierce, strike. ^{▼▼The root Arab. nk is developed in Hebr. נכה, הכּה, in Arab. naka'a and nakâ, first to the idea of outward injury by striking, hewing, etc.; but it is then also transferred to other modes of inflicting injury, and in Arab. nawika, to being injured in mind. The root shows itself in its most sensuous development in the reduplicated form Arab. naknaka, to strike one with repeated blows, fig. for: to press any one hard with claims. According to another phase, the obscene Arab. nâka , fut. i, and the decent Arab. nakaḥa, signify properly to pierce. - Fl.}

On הארץ, of arable land in opposition to the steppe, vid., on Job 18:17. Job 30:9-12 9 And now I am become their song,

And a by-word to them. 10 They avoid me, they flee far from me,

And spare not my face with spitting. 11 For my cord of life He hath loosed, and afflicted me,

Therefore they let loose the bridle recklessly. 12 The rabble presses upon my right hand,

They thrust my feet away,

And cast up against me their destructive ways.

The men of whom Job complains in this strophe are none other than those in the preceding strophe, described from the side of their coarse and degenerate behaviour, as Job 24:4-8 described them from the side of the wrong which was practised against them. This rabble, constitutionally as well as morally degraded, when it comes upon Job’s domain in its marauding expeditions, makes sport of the sufferer, whose former earnest admonitions, given from sympathizing anxiety for them, seemed to them as insults for which they revenge themselves. He is become their song of derision (נגינתם to be understood according to the dependent passage, Lam 3:14, and Psa 69:13), and is למלּה to them, their θρύλλημα (lxx), the subject of their foolish talk (מלּה - Arab. mille, not = melle, according to which Schultens interprets it, sum iis fastidio). Avoiding him, and standing at a distance from him, they make their remarks upon him; and if they come up to him, it is only for the sake of showing him still deeper scorn: a facie ejus non cohibent sputam. The expositors who explain that, contrary to all decent bearing, they spit in his presence (Eichh., Justi, Hirz., Vaih., Hlgst.), or with Fie! spit out before him (Umbr., Hahn, Schlottm.), overlook the fact of its being מפּני, not לפני. The expression as it stands can only affirm that they do not spare his face with spitting (Jer. correctly: conspuere non veruntur), so that consequently he is become, as he has complained in Job 17:6, a תּפת, an object of spitting (comp. also the declaration of the servant of Jehovah, Isa 50:6, which stands in close connection with this declaration of Job, according to previous explanations).

It now becomes a question, Who is the subj. in Job 30:11? The Chethib יתרו demands an attempt to retain the previous subj. Accordingly, most moderns explain: solvit unusquisque eorum funem suum, i.e., frenum suum, quo continebatur antea a me (Rosenm., Umbr., Stick., Vaih., Hlgst., and others), but it is to be doubted whether יתר can mean frenum; it signifies a cord, the string of a bow, and of a harp. The reconciliation of the signification redundantia, Job 22:20, and funis, is, in the idea of the root, to be stretched tight and long. ^{▼▼
The Arab. verb watara shows its sensuous primary signification in Arab. watarun, יתר, cord, bow-string, harp-string (Engl. string): to stretch tight, to extend, so that the thing continues in one line. Hence then Arab. watrun , witrun , separate, unequal, singulus, impar, opp. Arab. šaf‛un , bini, par, just as fard, single, separate, unequal (opp. zaug , a pair, equal number), is derived from farada, properly, so to strain or stretch out, that the thing has no bends or folds; Greek εξαπλοῦν (as in the Shepherd of Hermas: ἐπάνω λεντίου ἐξηπλωμένον λίνον καρπάσινον), an original transitive signification still retained in low Arabic (vid., Bocthor under Étendre and Déployer). Then from Arab. watara spring the secondary roots Arab. tatara and tarâ, which proceed from the VIII form (ittatara). The former (tatara) appears only in the Arab. adverb tatran and tatrâ , sigillatim, alii post alios, singly one after another, so that several persons or things form a row interrupted by intervals of space of time; the latter (tara) and its IV form (atra) are equivalent to wâtara, to be active at intervals, with pauses between, as the Arabs explain: ”We say Arab. atrâ of a man when he so performs several acts which do not directly follow one another, that there is always a [Arab.] fatrat , intermissio, between two acts.” Hence also תּרין, תּרתּין, duals of an assumed sing. תּר, singulus (um), תּרתּ singula, therefore prop. duo singuli (a), duae singulae, altogether parallel to the like meaning thinâni (ithnâni', thinaini (ithnaini), שׁנים; fem. thintâni (ithnatâni), thintaini (ithnataini), שׁתּים instead of שׁנתּים, from an assumed sing. thin - un (ithn - un), thint - un (ithnat - un), from Arab. tanâ, שׁנה, like bin (ibn), bint (ibnat), בּן, בּת (= בּנת, hence בּתּי from Arab. banâ, בּנה.
The significations of watara which Freytag arranges under 1, 2, 3, 4, proceed from the transitive application of יתר, as the Italian soperchiare, soverchiare, from supra, to offend, insult; oltraggiare, outrager, from ultra; ὑβρίζειν from ὑπέρ. Similarly, Arab. tṭâwl ‛lı̂h and ‛stṭâl ‛lı̂h (form VI and X from ṭâl), to act haughtily towards any one, to make him feel one’s superiority, properly to stretch one’s self out over or against any one.
But in another direction the signif. to be stretched out goes into: overhanging, surpassing, projecting, to be superfluous, and to be left over, περιττὸν εἶναι, to exceed a number or bulk, superare (comp. Italian soperchiare as intrans.), περιεῖναι, ὑπερεῖναι; to prove, as result, gain, etc., περιεῖναι, etc. Similar is the development of the meaning of Arab. faḍala and of ṭâ'l, gain, use, from Arab. ṭâl, to be stretched out. In like manner, the German reich, reichlich rich, abundant, comes from the root reichen, recken to stretch, extend. - Fl.}

Hirz. therefore imagines the loosing of the cord round the body, which served them as a girdle, in order to strike Job with it. But whether one decides in favour of the Chethib יתרו or of the Keri יתרי, the persons who insult Job cannot in any case be intended. The isolated sing. form of the assertion, while the rabble is everywhere spoken of in the plur., is against it; and also the כּי, which introduces it, and after which Job here allows the reason to come in, why he is abandoned without any means of defence to such brutal misconduct. The subj. of Job 30:11 is God. If יתרו is read, it may not be interpreted: He hath opened = taken off the covering of His string (= bow) (Ew., Hahn, and similarly even lxx, Jer.), for יתר does not dignify the bow, but the string (Arab. muwattar‛ , stretched, of a bow); and while פּתח, Ezek. 21:33 (usually שׁלף or הריק), can certainly be said of drawing a sword from its sheath, ערה is the appropriate and usual word (vid., Hab. S. 164) for making bare the bow and shield. Used of the bow-string, פּתּח signifies to loose what is strained, by sending the arrow swiftly forth from it, according to which, e.g., Elizabeth Smith translates: Because He hath let go His bow-string and afflicted me. One cannot, however, avoid feeling that ויּענּני is not a right description of the effect of shooting with arrows, whereas an idea is easily gained from the Keri יתרי, to which the description of the effect corresponds. It has been interpreted: He has loosed my rein or bridle, by means of which I hitherto bound them and held them in check; but יתר in the signification rein or bridle, is as already observed, not practicable. Better Capellus: metaphora ducta est ab exarmato milite, cujus arcûs solvitur nervus sicque inermis redditur; but it is more secure, and still more appropriate to the ויענני which follows, when it is interpreted according to Job 4:21 : He has untied (loosened) my cord of life, i.e., the cord which stretched out and held up my tent (the body) (Targ. similarly: my chain and the threads of my cord, i.e., surely: my outward and inward stay of life), and bowled me down, i.e., deprived me of strength (comp. Psa 102:24); or also: humbled me. Even in this his feebleness he is the butt of unbridled arrogance: and they let go the bridle before me (not לפני, in my presence, but מפּני, before me, before whom previously they had respect; מפני the same as Lev 19:32), they cast or shake it off (שׁלּח as Job 39:3, synon. of השׁליך; comp. 1Ki 9:7 with 2Ch 7:20).

Is it now possible that in this connection פּרחח can denote any else but the rabble of these good-for-nothing fellows? Ewald nevertheless understands by it Job’s sufferings, which as a rank evil swarm rise up out of the ground to seize upon him; Hahn follows Ew., and makes these sufferings the subj., as even in Job 30:11. But if we consider how Ew. translates: “they hung a bridle from my head;” and Hahn: “they have cast a bit before my face,” this might make us tired of all taste for this allegorical mode of interpretation. The stump over which they must stumble is Job 30:13, where all climax must be abandoned in order to make the words לא עזר למו intelligible in this allegorical connection. No indeed; פּרחח (instead of which פרחח might be expected, as supra, Job 3:5, כמרירי for כמרירי) is the offspring or rabble of those fathers devoid of morals and honour, those צעירים of Job 30:1, whose laughing-stock Job is now, as the children of priests are called in Talmudic פּרחי כהנּה, and in Arabic farch denotes not only the young of animals, but also a rascal or vagabond. This young rabble rises על־ימין, on Job’s right hand, which is the place of an accuser (Psa 109:6), and generally one who follows him up closely and oppresses him, and they press him continually further and further, contending one foot's-breadth after another with him: רגלי שׁלּחוּ, my feet thrust them forth, protrudunt (שׁלּח the same as Job 14:20). By this pressing from one place to another, a way is prepared for the description of their hostile conduct, which begins in Job 30:12 under the figure of a siege. The fut. consec. ויּסלּוּ, Job 30:12, is not meant retrospectively like ויענני, but places present with present in the connection of cause and effect (comp. Ew. 343, a). We must be misled by the fact that ויסלו, Job 19:12 (which see), was said of the host of sufferings which come against Job; here it is those young people who cast up the ramparts of misfortune or burdensome suffering (איד) against Job, which they wish to make him feel. The tradition, supported by the lxx, that Job had his seat outside his domain ἐπὶ τῆς κοπρίας, i.e., upon the mezbele, is excellently suited to this and the following figures. Before each village in Hauran there is a place where the households heap up the sweepings of their stalls, and it gradually reaches a great circumference, and a height which rises above the highest buildings of the village. ^{▼▼One ought to have a correct idea of a Hauranitish mezbele. The dung which is heaped up there is not mixed with straw, because in warm, dry countries no litter is required for the cattle, and comes mostly from single-hoofed animals, since small cattle and oxen often pass the nights on the pastures. It is brought in a dry state in baskets to the place before the village, and is generally burnt once every month. Moreover, they choose days on which the wind if favourable, i.e., does not cast the smoke over the village. The ashes remain. The fertile volcanic ground does not need manure, for it would make the seed in rainy years too luxuriant at the expense of the grain, and when rain fails, burnt it up. If a village has been inhabited for a century, the mezbele reaches a height which far surpasses it. The winter rains make the ash-heaps into a compact mass, and gradually change the mezbele into a firm mound of earth in the interior of which those remarkable granaries, biâr el - ghalle, are laid out, in which the wheat can be completely preserved against heat and mice, garnered up for years. The mezbele serves the inhabitants of the district as a watch-tower, and on close oppressive evenings as a place of assembly, because there is a current of air on the height. There the children play about the whole day long; there the forsaken one lies, how, having been seized by some horrible malady, is not allowed to enter the dwellings of men, by day asking alms of the passers-by, and at night hiding himself among the ashes which the sun has warmed. There the dogs of the village lie, perhaps gnawing at a decaying carcase that is frequently thrown there. Many a village of Hauran has lost its original name, and is called umm el - mezâbil from the greatness and number of these mounds, which always indicate a primitive and extensive cultivation for the villages. And many a more modern village is built upon an ancient mezbele, because there is then a stronger current of air, which renders the position more healthy. The Arabic signification of the root זבל seems to be similarly related to the Hebrew as that of the old Beduin seken (שכן), “ashes,” to the Hebrew and Arabic משכן, “a dwelling.” - Wetzst.}

Notwithstanding, everything is intelligible without this thoroughly Hauranitish conception of the scene of the history. Bereft of the protection of his children and servants, become an object of disgust to his wife, and an abhorrence to his brethren, forsaken by every attention of true affection, Job 19:13-19, Job lies out of doors; and in this condition, shelterless and defenceless, he is abandoned to the hideous malignant joy of those gipsy hordes which wander hither and thither. Job 30:13-15 13 They tear down my path,

They minister to my overthrow,

They who themselves are helpless. 14 As through a wide breach they approach,

Under the crash they roll onwards. 15 Terrors are turned against me,

They pursue my nobility like the wind,

And like a cloud my prosperity passed away. -

They make all freedom of motion and any escape impossible to him, by pulling down, diruunt, the way which he might go. Thus is נתסוּ (cogn. form of נתץ, נתע, נתשׁ) to be translated, not: they tear open (proscindunt), which is contrary to the primary signification and the usage of the language. They, who have no helper, who themselves are so miserable and despised, and yet so feelingless and overbearing, contribute to his ruin. הועיל, to be useful, to do any good,to furnish anything effective (e.g., Isa 47:12), is here united with ל of the purpose; comp. עזר ל, to help towards anything, Zec 1:15. היה (for which the Keri substitutes the primary form הוּה), as was already said on Job 6:2, is prop. hiatus, and then barathrum, pernicies, like הוּה in the signification cupiditas, prop. inhiatio. The verb הוה, Arab. hwy, also signifies delabi, whence it may be extended (vid., on Job 37:6) in like manner to the signification abyss (rapid downfall); but a suitable medium for the two significations, strong passion (Arab. hawa) and abyss (Arab. hâwije , huwwe , mahwa), is offered only by the signification of the root flare (whence hawâ, air). לא עזר למו is a genuine Arabic description of these Idumaean or Hauranite pariahs. Schultens compares a passage of the Hamâsa: “We behold you ignoble, poor, laisa lakum min sâir - in - nâsi nasirun , i.e., without a helper among the rest of men.” The interpretations of those who take למו for לו, and this again for לי (Eichh., Justi), condemn themselves. It might more readily be explained, with Stick.: without any one helping them, i.e., with their own strong hand; but the thought thus obtained is not only aimless and tame, but also halting and even untrue (vid., Job 19:13). Job 30:16-19 16 And now my soul is poured out within me,

Days of suffering hold me fast. 17 The night rendeth my bones from me,

And my gnawers sleep not. 18 By great force my garment is distorted,

As the collar of my shirt it encompasseth me. 19 He hath cast me into the mire,

And I am in appearance as dust and ashes.

With this third ועתּה (Job 30:1, Job 30:9) the elegiac lament over the harsh contrast between the present and the past begins for the third time. The dash after our translation of the second and fourth strophes will indicate that a division of the elegy ends there, after which it begins as it were anew. The soul is poured out within a man (עלי as Job 10:1, Psychol. S. 152), when, “yielding itself without resistance to sadness, it is dejected to the very bottom, and all its organization flows together, and it is dissolved in the one condition of sorrow” - a figure which is not, however, come about by water being regarded as the symbol of the soul (thus Hitzig on Psa 42:5), but rather by the intimate resemblance of the representation of a flood of tears (Lam 2:19): the life of the soul flows in the blood, and the anguish of the soul in tears and lamentations; and since the outward man is as it were dissolved in the gently flowing tears (Isa 15:3), his soul flows away as it were in itself, for the outward incident is but the manifestation and result of an inward action. ימי־עני we have translated days of suffering, for עני, with its verb and the rest of its derivatives, is the proper word for suffering, and especially the passion of the Servant of Jehovah. Days of suffering - Job complains - hold him fast; עחז unites in itself, like החזיק, the significations prehendere and prehensum tenere. In Job 30:17 we must not, with Arnh. and others, translate: by night it (affliction) pierces ... , for עני does not stand sufficiently in the foreground to be the subject of what follows; it might sooner be rendered: by night it is pierced through (Targ., Rosenm., Hahn); but why is not לילה to be the subject, and נקּר consequently Piel (not Niph.)? The night has been personified already, Job 3:2; and in general, as Herder once said, Job is the brother of Ossian for personifications: Night (the restless night, Job 7:3, in which every malady, or at least the painful feeling of it, increases) pierces his bones from him, i.e., roots out his limbs (synon. בּדּים, Job 18:13) so inwardly and completely. The lepra Arabica (Arab. 'l - brṣ , el - baras) terminates, like syphilis, with an eating away of the limbs, and the disease has its name Arab. juḏâm from jḏm , truncare, mutilare: it feeds on the bones, and destroys the body in such a manner that single limbs are completely detached.

In Job 30:17, lxx (νεῦρα), Parchon, Kimchi, and others translate ערקי according to the Targum. ערקין (= גּידים), and the Arab. ‛rûq , veins, after which Blumenf.: my veins are in constant motion. But ערקי in the sense of Job 30:3 : my gnawers (Jer. qui me comedunt, Targ. דּמעסּן יתי, qui me conculcant, conterunt), is far more in accordance with the predicate and the parallelism, whether it be gnawing pains that are thought of - pains are unnatural to man, they come upon him against his will, he separates them from himself as wild beasts - or, which we prefer, those worms (רמּה, Job 7:5) which were formed in Job’s ulcers (comp. Aruch, ערקא, a leech, plur. ערקתא, worms, e.g., in the liver), and which in the extra-biblical tradition of Job’s decease are such a standing feature, that the pilgrims to Job’s monastery even now-a-days take away with them thence these supposedly petrified worms of Job. ^{▼▼
In Mugir ed-dîn’s large history of Jerusalem and Hebron (kitâb el - ins el - gelı̂l), in an article on Job, we read: God had so visited him in his body, that he got the disease that devours the limbs (tegedhdhem), and worms were produced (dawwad) in the wounds, while he lay on a dunghill (mezbele), and except his wife, who tended him, no one ventured to come too near him. In a beautiful Kurdic ballad “on the basket dealer” (zembilfrosh), which I have obtained from the Kurds in Salihîje, are these words:Veki Gergis beshara beri Jusuf veki abdan keri Bikesr' Ejub kurman deri toh anin ser sultaneti to men chalaski 'j zahmeti .
“When they divided Gergîs with a saw
And sold Joseph like a slave,
When worms fed themselves in Job’s body,
Then Thou didst guide them by a sure way:
Thou wilt also deliver me from need.”
More concerning these worms of Job in the description of the monastery of Job. - Wetzst.)} Job 30:18 would be closely and naturally connected with what precedes if לבוּשׁי could be understood of the skin and explained: By omnipotence (viz., divine, as Job 23:6, Ew. §270 a) the covering of my body is distorted, as even Raschi: משׁתנה גלד אחר גלד, it is changed, by one skin or crust being formed after another. But even Schultens rightly thinks it remarkable that לבושׁ, Job 30:18, is not meant to signify the proper upper garment but the covering of the skin, but כּתּנת, Job 30:18, the under garment in a proper sense. The astonishment is increased by the fact that התהפּשׂ signifies to disguise one’s self, and thereby render one’s self unrecognisable, which leads to the proper idea of לבושׁ, to a clothing which looks like a disguise. It cannot be cited in favour of this unusual meaning that לבושׁ is used in Job 41:5 of the scaly skin of the crocodile: an animal has no other לבושׁ but its skin. Therefore, with Ew., Hirz., and Hlgst., we take לבושׁ strictly: “by (divine) omnipotence my garment is distorted (becomes unlike itself), like the collar of my shirt it fits close to me.” It is unnecessary to take כּפי as a compound praep.: according to (comp. Zec 2:4; Mal 2:9 : ”according as”), in the sense of כּמו, as Job 33:6, since פּי כּתּנת is, according to the nature of the thing mentioned, a designation of the upper opening, by means of which the shirt, otherwise only provided with armholes (distinct from the Beduin shirt thôb, which has wide and long sleeves), is put on. Also, Psa 133:2, פּי מדּותיו signifies not the lower edge, but the opening at the head פּי הראשׁע, Exo 28:32) or the collar of the high priest’s vestment (vid., the passage cited). Thus even lxx ὥσπερ τὸ περιστόμιον τοῦ χιτῶνός μου, and Jer.: velut capitio tunicae meae. True, Schlottm. observes against this rendering of Job 30:18, that it is unnatural according to substance, since on a wasted body it is not the outer garment that assumes the appearance of a narrow under one, but on the contrary the under garment assumes the appearance of a wide outer one. But this objection is not to the point. If the body is wasted away to a skeleton, there is an end to the rich appearance and beautiful flow which the outer garment gains by the full and rounded forms of the limbs: it falls down straight and in perpendicular folds upon the wasted body, and contributes in no small degree to make him whom one formerly saw in all the fulness of health still less recognisable than he otherwise is. יאזרני, cingit me, is not merely the falling together of the outer garment which was formerly filled out by the members of the body, but its appearance when the sick man wraps himself in it: then it girds him, fits close to him like his shirt-collar, lying round about the shrivelled figure like the other about a thin neck. On the terrible wasting away which is combined with hypertrophical formations in elephantiasis, vid., Job 7:15, and especially Job 19:20. The subject of Job 30:19 is God, whom Job 30:18 also describes as efficient cause: He has cast me into, or daubed ^{▼▼
The reading wavers between הרני and הרני, for the latter form of writing is sometimes found even out of pause by conjunctive accents, e.g., 1Sa 28:15; Psa 118:5.} me with, mud, and I am become as (כּ instead of the dat., Ew. §221, a) dust and ashes. This is also intended pathologically: the skin of the sufferer with elephantiasis becomes first an intense red, then assumes a black colour; scales like fishes’ scales are formed upon it, and the brittle, dark-coloured surface of the body is like a lump of earth. Job 30:20-23 20 I cry to Thee for help, and Thou answerest not;

I stand there, and Thou lookest fixedly at me. 21 Thou changest Thyself to a cruel being towards me,

With the strength of Thy hand Thou makest war upon me. 22 Thou raisest me upon the stormy wind,

Thou causest me to drive along And vanish in the roaring of the storm. 23 For I know: Thou wilt bring me back to death,

Into the house of assembly for all living.

If he cries for help, his cry remains unanswered; if he stands there looking up reverentially to God (perhaps עמד, with משּׁוּע to be supplied, has the sense of desisting or restraining, as Gen 29:35; Gen 30:9), the troubling, fixed look of God, who looks fixedly and hostilely upon him, anything but ready to help (comp. Job 7:20; Job 16:9), meets his upturned eye. התבּנן, to look consideringly upon anything, is elsewhere joined with אל, על, עד, or even with the acc; here, where a motionless fixed look is intended, with בּ (= fi). It is impossible to draw the לא, Job 30:20, over to ותּתבּנן (Jer., Saad., Umbr., Welte, and others), both on account of the Waw consec. (Ew. §351 a), and on account of the separation by the new antecedent עמדתּי. On the reading of two Codd. ותתכנן (“Thou settest Thyself against me”), which Houbigant and Ew. prefer, Rosenm. has correctly pronounced judgment: est potius pro mendo habenda. Instead of consolingly answering his prayer, and instead of showing Himself willing to help, God, who was formerly so kind towards him, changes towards him, His creature, into a cruel being, saevum (אכזר in the book of Job only here and Job 41:2, where it signifies “foolhardy;” comp. לאויב in the dependent passage, Isa 63:10), and makes war upon him (שׂטם as Job 16:9) by causing him to feel the strength of His omnipotent hand (עצם יד as Deu 8:17, synon. חזק).

It is not necessary in Job 30:22 to forsake the accentuation, and to translate: Thou raisest me up, Thou causest me go in the wind (Ew., Hirz., and others); the accentuation of רוח is indeed not a disjunctive Dechî, but a conjunctive Tarcha, but preceded by Munach, which, according to the rule, Psalter ii. 500, §5, here, where two conjunctives come together, has a smaller conjunctive value. Therefore: elevas me in ventum, equitare facis me, viz., super ventum (Dachselt), for one does not only say הרכּיב על, 1Ch 13:7, or ל, Psa 66:12, but also אל, 2Sa 6:3; and accordingly תּשּׂאני אל־רוּח is also not to be translated: Thou snatchest me into the wind or storm (Hahn, Schlottm.), but: Thou raisest me up to the wind or storm, as upon an animal for riding (Umbr., Olsh.). According to Oriental tradition, Solomon rode upon the east wind, and in Arabic they say of one who hurried rapidly by, racab al - genâhai er - rih , he rides upon the wings of the wind; in the present passage, the point of comparison is the being absolutely passively hurried forth from the enjoyment of a healthy and happy life to a dizzy height, whence a sudden overthrow threatens him who is unwillingly removed (comp. Psa 102:11, Thou hast lifted me up and hurled me forth).

The lot which threatens him from this painful suspense Job expresses (Job 30:22) in the puzzling words: וּתמגגני תשׁיּה. Thus the Keri, after which lxx transl. (if it has not read מישׁוּעה), καὶ ἀπέῤῥηιψάς με ἀπὸ σωτηρίας. The modern expositors who follow the Keri, by taking ותמגגני for ותמגג לי (according to Ges. §121, 4), translate: Thou causest counsel and understanding (Welte), happiness (Blumenf.), and the like, to vanish from me; continuance, existence, duration would be better (vid., Job 6:13, and especially on Job 26:3). The thought it appropriate, but the expression is halting. Jerome, who translates valide, points to the correct thing, and Buxtorf (Lex. col. 2342f.) by interpreting the not less puzzling Targum translation in fundamento = funditus or in essentia = essentialiter, has, without intending it, hit upon the idea of the Hebr. Keri; תשׁיּה is intended as a closer defining, or adverbial, accusative: Thou causest me to vanish as to existence, ita ut tota essentia pereat h.e. totaliter et omnino. Perhaps this was really the meaning of the poet: most completely, most thoroughly, altogether, like the Arab. ḥaqqan . But it is unfavourable to this Keri, that תושׁיה (from the verb ושׁי), as might be expected, is always written plene elsewhere; the correction of the תשׁוה is violent, and moreover this form, correctly read, gives a sense far more consistent with the figure, Job 30:22. Ges., Umbr., and Carey falsely read תּשׁוּה, terres me; this verb is unknown in Hebr., and even in Chaldee is only used in Ithpeal, אשׁתּוי (= Hebr. חרד); for a similar reason Böttcher’s תּשׁוה (which is intended to mean: in despair) is also not to be used. Even Stuhlmann perceived that תשׁוה is equivalent to תּשׁוּאה; it is, with Ew. and Olsh., to be read תּשׁוּה (not with Pareau and Hirz. תּשׁוה without the Dag.), and this form signifies, as תשׁואה, Job 36:29, from שׁוא = שׁאה, from which it is derived by change of consonants, the crash of thunder, or even the rumbling or roar as of a storm or a falling in (procellae sive ruinae). The meaning is hardly, that he who rides away upon the stormy wind melts and trickles down like drops of rain among the pealing of the thunder, when the thunder-storm, whose harbinger is the stormy wind, gathers; but that in the storm itself, which increases in fury to the howling of a tempest, he dissolves away. תּשׁוּה for בּתּשׁוּה, comp. Psa 107:26 : their soul melted away (dissolved) בּרעה. The compulsory journey in the air, therefore, passes into nothing or nearly nothing, as Job is well aware, Job 30:23 : “for I know: (without כּי, as Job 19:25; Ps. 9:21) Thou wilt bring me back to death” (acc. of the goal, or locative without any sign). If תּשׁיבני is taken in its most natural signification reduces, death is represented as essentially one with the dust of death (comp. Job 1:21 with Gen 3:19), or even with non-existence, out of which man is come into being; nevertheless השׁיב can also, by obliterating the notion of return, like redigere, have only the signification of the turn of destiny and change of condition that is effected. The assertion that שׁוּב always includes an “again,” and retains it inexorably (vid., Köhler on Zec 13:7, S. 239), is untenable. In post-biblical Hebrew, at least, it is certain that שׁוּב signifies not only ”to become again,” but also “to become,” as Arab. ‛âd is used as synon. of jâ'in , devenir. ^{▼▼Vid., my Anekdota der mittelalterlichen Scholastik unter Juden und Moslemen, S. 347.}

With מות, the designation of the condition, is coupled the designation of the place: Hades (under the notion of which that of the grave is included) is the great involuntary rendezvous of all who live in this world. Job 30:24-27 24 Doth one not, however, stretch out the hand in falling,

Doth he not raise a cry for help on that account in his ruin? 25 Or have I not wept for him that was in trouble,

Hath not my soul grieved for the needy? - 26 For I hoped for good, then evil came;

I waited for light, and darkness came. 27 My bowels boiled without ceasing,

Days of misery met me.

Most of the ancient versions indulge themselves in strange fancies respecting Job 30:24 to make a translatable text, or find their fancies in the text before them. The translation of the Targum follows the fancies of the Midrash, and places itself beyond the range of criticism. The lxx reads בי instead of בעי, and finds in Job 30:24 a longing for suicide, or death by the hand of another. The Syriac likewise reads בי, although it avoids this absurdity. Jerome makes an address of the assertion, and, moreover, also moulds the text under the influence of the Midrash. Aq., Symm., and Theod. strive after a better rendering than the lxx, but (to judge from the fragment in the Hexapla) without success. Saadia and Gecatilia wring a sense out of Job 30:24, but at the expense of the syntax, and by dragging Job 30:24 after it, contrary to the tenor of the words. The old expositors also advance nothing available. They mostly interpret it as though it were not להן, but להם (a reading which has been forced into the Midrash texts and some Codd. instead of the reading of the text that is handed down to us). Even Rosenm. thinks להן might, like the Ara. להון, be equivalent to להם; and Carey explains the enallage generis from the perhaps existing secondary idea of womanly fear, as 2Sa 4:6, הנּה instead of המּה is used of the two assassins to describe them as cowards. But the Hebr. להן is fem.; and often as the enallage masc. pro fem. occurs, the enallage fem. pro masc. is unknown; הנּה, 2Sa 4:6, is an adv. of place (vid., moreover, Thenius in loc.). It is just as absolutely inadmissible when the old expositors combine שׁוּע with ושׁע (ושׁע), or as e.g., Raschi with שׁעשׁע, and translate, "welfare” or “exhilaration” (refreshing). The signif. “wealth” would be more readily admissible, so that שׁוּע, as Aben-Ezra observes, would be the subst. to שׁוע, Job 34:19; but in Job 36:19 (which see), שׁוּע (as שׁוע Isa 22:5) signifies a cry of distress (= שׁוע), and an attempt must be made here with this meaning before every other.

On the other hand comes the question whether בעי is not perhaps to be referred to the verb בּעה, whether it be as subst. after the form מרי (Ralbag after the Targ.) or as part. pass. (Saad. Arab. gı̂r ‛nnh lı̂s 'l - mbtgan , “only that it is not desired”). The verb does not, indeed, occur elsewhere in the book of Job, but is very consistent with its style, which so abounds in Aramaisms, and is at the same time so coloured with Arabic that we should almost say, its Hauranitish style. ^{▼▼The Arab. verb bg' is still extensively used in Syria, and that in two forms: Arab. bg' ybgy and bg' ybg'. In Damascus the fut. i is alone used; whereas in Hauran and the steppe I have only found fut. a. Thus e.g., the Hauranite poet Kâsim el-Chinn says: “The gracious God encompass thee with His favour and whatever thy soul desires (wa - l - nefsu ma tebghâ), it must obtain its desire” (tanûlu munâhû, in connection with which it is to be observed that Arab. bâl , fut. u is used here in the signification adipisci, comp. Fleischer on Job 15:29 [supra i. 270, note]). - Wetzst.}

Thus taking בעי as one word, Ralbag transl.: prayer stretched not forth the hand, which is intended to mean: is not able to do anything, cannot cause the will of God to miscarry. This meaning is only obtained by great violence; but when Renan (together with Böckel and Carey, after Rosenm.) translates: Vaines prières!..il étend sa main; à quoi bon protester contre ses coups? the one may be measured with the other. If בעי is to be derived from בעי, it must be translated either: shall He, however, without prayer (sine imploratione), or: shall He, however, unimplored (non imploratus), stretch out His hand? The thought remains the same by both renderings of בעי, and suits as a vindication of the cry for help in the context. But בּעה, in the specific signification implorare, deprecari, is indeed the usage of the Targum, although strange to the Hebr., which is here so rich in synonyms; then, in the former case, לא for בלא is harsh, and in the other, בעי as part. pass. is too strong an Aramaism. We must therefore consider whether בעי as עי with the praep. בּ gives a suitable sense. Since שׁלח יד בּ, e.g., Job 28:9 and elsewhere, most commonly means “to lay the hand on anything, stretch out the hand to anything,” it is most natural to take בעי in dependence upon ישׁלח ידו, and we really gain an impressive thought, if we translate: Only may He not stretch out His hand (to continue His work of destruction) to a heap of rubbish (which I am already become); but by this translation of Job 30:24, Job 30:24 remains a glaring puzzle, insoluble in itself and in respect of the further course of the thought, for Schlottmann’s interpretation, “Only one does not touch ruins, or the ruin of one is the salvation of another,” which is itself puzzling, is no solution. The reproach against the friends which is said to lie in Job 30:24 is contrary to the character of this monologue, which is turned away from his human opponents; then שׁוּע does not signify salvation, and there is no ”one” and “another” to be found in the text. We must therefore, against our inclination, give up this dependent relation of בעי, so that בעי signifies either, upon a heap of rubbish, or, since this ought to be על־עי: by the falling in; עי (from עוה = ‛iwj) can mean both: a falling in or overthrow (bouleversement) as an event, and ruins or rubbish as its result.

Accordingly Hirz. translates: Only upon the ruins (more correctly at least: upon ruins) one will not stretch out his hand, and Ew.: Only - does not one stretch out one’s hand by one’s overthrow? But this “only” is awkward. Hahn is of opinion that אך לא may be taken in the signification not once, and translates: may one not for once raise one’s hand by one’s downfall; but even this is lame, because then all connection with what precedes is wanting; besides, אך לא does not signify ne quidem. The originally affirmative אך has certainly for the most part a restrictive signification, which, as we observed on Job 18:21, is blended with the affirmative in Hebr., but it is also, as more frequently אכן, used adversatively, e.g., Job 16:7, and in the combination אך לא this adversative signification coincides with the restrictive, for this double particle signifies everywhere else: only not, however not, Gen 20:12; 1Ki 11:39; 2Ki 12:14; 2Ki 13:6; 2Ki 23:9, 2Ki 23:26. It would be more natural to translate, as we have stated above: only may be not, etc., but Job 30:24 puts in its veto against this. If, as Hirz., Ew., and Hahn also suppose, לא, Job 30:24, is equivalent to הלא, so that the sentence is to be spoken with an interrogative accent, we must translate אך as Jer. has done, by verumtamen. He knows that he is being hurried forth to meet death; he knows it, and has also already made himself so familiar with this thought, that the sooner he sees an end put to this his sorrowful life the better - nevertheless does one not stretch out one’s hand when one is falling? This involuntary reaction against destruction is the inevitable result of man’s instinct of self-preservation. It needs no proof that שׁלח יד can signify “to stretch out one’s hand for help;” ישׁלח is used with a general subj.: one stretches out, as Job 17:5; Job 21:22. With this determination of the idea of Job 30:24, Job 30:24 is now also naturally connected with what precedes. It is not, however, to be translated, as Ew. and Hirz.: if one is in distress, is not a cry for help heard on account of it? If אם were intended hypothetically, a continuation of the power of the interrogative לא from Job 30:24 would be altogether impossible. Hahn and Loch-Reischl rightly take אם in the sense of an. It introduces another turn of the question: Does one, however, not stretch out one’s hand to hasten the fall, or in his downfall (raise) a cry for help, or a wail, on that account? Döderlein’s conjecture, לחן for להן (praying “for favour”), deserves respectful mention, but it is not needed: להן signifies neutrally: in (under) such circumstances (comp. בּהם, Job 22:21; Isa 64:5), or is directly equivalent to להן, which (Rth 1:13) signifies propterea, and even in biblical Chaldee, beside the Chaldee signif. sed , nisi , retains this Hebrew signif. (Dan 2:6, Dan 2:9; Dan 4:24). פּיד, which signifies dying and destruction (Talmud. in the peculiar signif.: that which is hewn or pecked open), synon. of איד, has been already discussed on Job 12:5. Job 30:28-31 28 I wandered about in mourning without the sun;

I rose in the assembly, I gave free course to my complaint. 29 I am become a brother of the jackals

And a companion of ostriches. 30 My skin having become black, peels off from me,

And my bones are parched with dryness. 31 My harp was turned to mourning,

And my pipe to tones of sorrow.

Several expositors (Umbr., Vaih., Hlgst.) understand קדר of the dirty-black skin of the leper, but contrary to the usage of the language, according to which, in similar utterances (Psa 35:14; Psa 38:7; Psa 42:10; Psa 43:2, comp. supra, Job 5:11), it rather denotes the dirty-black dress of mourners (comp. Arab. qḏḏr , conspurcare vestem); to understand it of the dirty-black skin as quasi sordida veste (Welte) is inadmissible, since this distortion of the skin which Job bewails in Job 30:30 would hardly be spoken of thus tautologically. קדר therefore means in the black of the שׂק, or mourning-linen, Job 16:15, by which, however, also the interpretation of בּלא חמּה, “without sunburn” (Ew., Hirz.), which has gained ground since Raschi’s day (לא שׁשׁזפתני השׁמשׁ), is disposed of; for “one can perhaps say of the blackness of the skin that it does not proceed from the sun, but not of the blackness of mourning attire” (Hahn). קדר also refutes the reading בלא חמה in lxx Complut. (ἄνευ θυμοῦ), ^{▼▼Whereas Codd. Alex., Vat., and Sinait., ἄνευ φιμοῦ, which is correctly explained by κημοῦ in Zwingli’s Aldine, but gives no sense.}

Syr., Jer. (sine furore), which ought to be understood of the deposition of the gall-pigment on the skin, and therefore of jaundice, which turns it (especially in tropical regions) not merely yellow, but a dark-brown. Hahn and a few others render בלא חמה correctly in the sense of בחשׁך, "without the sun having shone on him.” Bereft of all his possessions, and finally also of his children, he wanders about in mourning (הלּך as Job 24:10; Psa 38:7), and even the sun had clothed itself in black to him (which is what קדר השׁמשׁ means, Joe 2:10 and freq.); the celestial light, which otherwise brightened his path, Job 29:3, was become invisible. We must not forget that Job here reviews the whole chain of afflictions which have come upon him, so that by Job 30:28 we have not to think exclusively, and also not prominently, of the leprosy, since הלכתי indeed represents him as still able to move about freely.

In Job 30:28 the accentuation wavers between Dechî, Munach, Silluk, according to which בּקּהל אשׁוּע belong together, which is favoured by the Dagesh in the Beth, and Tarcha, Munach, Silluk, according to which (because Munach, according to Psalter ii. 503, §2, is a transformation of Rebia mugrasch) קמתּי בּקּהל belong together. The latter mode of accentuation, according to which בקהל must be written without the Dag. instead of בּקהל (vid., Norzi), is the only correct one (because Dechî cannot come in the last member of the sentence before Silluk), and is also more pleasing as to matter: I rose (and stood) in the assembly, crying for help, or more generally: wailing. The assembly is not to be thought of as an assembly of the people, or even tribunal (Ew.: ”before the tribunal seeking a judge, with lamentations”), but as the public; for the thought that Job sought help against his unmerited sufferings before a human tribunal is absurd; and, moreover, the thought that he cried for help before an assembly of the people called together to take counsel and pronounce decisions is equally absurd. Welte, however, who interprets: I was as one who, before an assembled tribunal, etc., introduces a quasi of which there is no trace in the text. בּקּהל must therefore, without pressing it further, be taken in the sense of publice, before all the world (Hirz.: comp. בקהל, ἐν φανερῷ, Pro 26:26); אשׁוּע, however, is a circumstantial clause declaring the purpose (Ew. §337, b; comp. De Sacy, Gramm. Arabe ii. §357), as is frequently the case after קום, Job 16:8; Psa 88:11; Psa 102:14 : surrexi in publico ut lamentarer, or lamentaturus, or lamentando. In this lament, extorted by the most intense pain, which he cannot hold back, however many may surround him, he is become a brother of those תּנּים, jackals (canes aurei), whose dolorous howling produces dejection and shuddering in all who hear it, and a companion of בּנות יענה, whose shrill cry is varied by wailing tones of deep melancholy. ^{▼▼It is worth while to cite a passage from Shaw’s Travels in Barbary, ii. 348 (transl.), here: “When the ostriches are running and fighting, they sometimes make a wild, hideous, hissing noise with their throats distended and beaks open; at another time, if they meet with a slight opposition, they have a clucking or cackling voice like our domestic fowls: they seem to rejoice and laugh at the terror of their adversary. During the loneliness of the night however, as if their voice had a totally different tone, they often set up a dolorous, hideous moan, which at one time resembles the roar of the lion, and at another is more like the hoarser voice of other quadrupeds, especially the bull and cow. I have often heard them groan as if they were in the greatest agonies.” In General Doumas’ book on the Horse of the Sahara, I have read that the male ostrich (delı̂m), when it is killed, especially if its young ones are near, sends forth a dolorous note, wile the female (remda), on the other hand, does not utter a sound; and so, when the ostrich digs out its nest, one hears a languishing and dolorous tone all day long, and when it has laid its egg, its usual cry is again heard, only about three o'clock in the afternoon.}

The point of comparison is not the insensibility of the hearers (Sforno), but the fellowship of wailing and howling together with the accompanying idea of the desert in which it is heard, which is connected with the idea itself (comp. Mic 1:8).

‏ Job 31:1-24

Job 31:1-4 1 I have made a covenant with mine eyes,

And how should I fix my gaze upon a maiden! 2 What then would be the dispensation of Eloah from above,

And the inheritance of the Almighty from the heights - 3 Doth not calamity overtake the wicked,

And misfortune the workers of evil? 4 Doth He not see my ways

And count all my steps?

After Job has described and bewailed the harsh contrast between the former days and the present, he gives us a picture of his moral life and endeavour, in connection with the character of which the explanation of his present affliction as a divinely decreed punishment becomes impossible, and the sudden overthrow of his prosperity into this abyss of suffering becomes to him, for the same reason, the most painful mystery. Job is not an Israelite, he is without the pale of the positive, Sinaitic revelation; his religion is the old patriarchal religion, which even in the present day is called dı̂n Ibrâhı̂m (the religion of Abraham), or dı̂n el - bedu (the religion of the steppe) as the religion of those Arabs who are not Moslem, or at least influenced by the penetrating Islamism, and is called by Mejânı̂shı̂ el - hanı̂fı̂je (vid., supra, p. 362, note) as the patriarchally orthodox religion. ^{▼▼Also in the Merg district east of Damascus, which is peopled by an ancient unmixed race, because the fever which prevails there kills strangers, remnants of the dı̂n Ibrâhı̂m have been preserved despite the penetrating Islamism. There the mulaqqin (Souffleur), who says the creed into the grave as a farewell to the buried one, adds the following words: “The muslim is my brother, the muslima my sister, Abraham is my father (abı̂), his religion (dı̂nuh) is mine, and his confession (medhebuh) mine.” It is indisputable that the words muslim (one who is submissive to God) and islâm (submission to God) have originally belonged to the dı̂n Ibrâhı̂m. It is also remarkable that the Moslem salutation selâm occurs only as a sign in war among the wandering tribes, and that the guest parts from his host with the words: dâimâ besât el - Chalı̂l̂ lâ maqtû‛ walâ memnû‛ , i.e., mayest thou always have Abraham’s table, and plenty of provisions and guests. - Wetzst.}

As little as this religion, even in the present day, is acquainted with the specific Mohammedan commandments, so little knew Job of the specifically Israelitish. On the contrary, his confession, which he lays down in this third monologue, coincides remarkably with the ten commandments of piety (el - felâh) peculiar to the dı̂n Ibrâhı̂m, although it differs in this respect, that it does not give the prominence to submission to the dispensations of God, that teslı̂m which, as the whole of this didactic poem teaches by its issue, is the duty of the perfectly pious; also bravery in defence of holy property and rights is wanting, which among the wandering tribes is accounted as an essential part of the hebbet er - rı̂h (inspiration of the Divine Being), i.e., active piety, and to which it is similarly related, as to the binding notion of “honour” which was coined by the western chivalry of the middle ages.

Job begins with the duty of chastity. Consistently with the prologue, which the drama itself nowhere belies, he is living in monogamy, as at the present day the orthodox Arabs, averse to Islamism, are not addicted to Moslem polygamy. With the confession of having maintained this marriage (although, to infer from the prologue, it was not an over-happy, deeply sympathetic one) sacred, and restrained himself not only from every adulterous act, but also from adulterous desires, his confessions begin. Here, in the middle of the Old Testament, without the pale of the Old Testament νόμος, we meet just that moral strictness and depth with which the Preacher on the mount, Mat 5:27., opposes the spirit to the letter of the seventh commandment. It is לעיני, not עם־עיני, designedly; כרת ברית עם or את is the usual phrase where two equals are concerned; on the contrary, כרת ברית ל where two the superior - Jehovah, or a king, or conqueror - binds himself to another under prescribed conditions, or the covenant is made not so much by a mutual advance as by the one taking the initiative. In this latter case, the secondary notions of a promise given (e.g., Isa 55:3), or even, as here, of a law prescribed, are combined with כרת ברית: “as lord of my senses I prescribed this law for my eyes” (Ew.). The eyes, says a Talmudic proverb, are the procuresses of sin (סרסורי דחטאה נינהו); “to close his eyes, that they may not feast on evil,” is, in Isa 33:15, a clearly defined line in the picture of him on whom the everlasting burnings can have no hold. The exclamation, Job 31:1, is spoken with self-conscious indignation: Why should I... (comp. Joseph’s exclamation, Gen 39:9); Schultens correctly: est indignatio repellens vehementissime et negans tale quicquam committi par esse; the transition of the מה, Arab. mâ, to the expression of negation, which is complete in Arabic, is here in its incipient state, Ew. §325, b. התבּונן על is intended to express a fixed and inspection (comp. אל, 1Ki 3:21) gaze upon an object, combined with a lascivious imagination (comp. Sir. 9:5, παρθένον μὴ καταμάνθανε, and 9:8, ἀπόστρεψον ὀφθαλμὸν ἀπὸ γυναικὸς εὐμόρφου καὶ μὴ καταμάνθανε κάλλος ἀλλότριον), a βλέπειν which issues in ἐπιθυμῆσαι αὐτῆν, Mat 5:28. Adulterium reale, and in fact two-sided, is first spoken of in the third strophe, here it is adulterium mentale and one-sided; the object named is not any maiden whatever, but any בּתוּלה, because virginity is ever to be revered, a most sacred thing, the holy purity of which Job acknowledges himself to have guarded against profanation from any lascivious gaze by keeping a strict watch over his eyes. The Waw of וּמה is, as in Job 31:14, copulative: and if I had done it, what punishment might I have looked for?

The question, Job 31:2, is proposed in order that it may be answered in Job 31:3 again in the form of a question: in consideration of the just punishment which the injurer of female innocence meets, Job disavows every unchaste look. On חלק and נחלה used of allotted, adjudged punishment, comp. Job 20:29; Job 27:13; on נכר, which alternates with איד (burden of suffering, misfortune), comp. Oba 1:12, where in its stead נכר occurs, as Arab. nukr, properly id quod patienti paradoxum, insuetum, intolerabile videtur, omne ingratum (Reiske). Conscious of the just punishment of the unchaste, and, as he adds in Job 31:4, of the omniscience of the heavenly Judge, Job has made dominion over sin, even in its first beginnings and motions, his principle.

The הוּא, which gives prominence to the subject, means Him who punishes the unchaste. By Him who observes his walk on every side, and counts (יספּור, plene, according to Ew. §138, a, on account of the pause, but vid., the similar form of writing, Job 39:2; Job 18:15) all his steps, Job has been kept back from sin, and to Him Job can appeal as a witness. Job 31:5-8 5 If I had intercourse with falsehood,

And my foot hastened after deceit: 6 Let Him weigh me in the balances of justice,

And let Eloah know my innocence. 7 If my steps turned aside from the way,

And my heart followed mine eyes,

And any spot hath cleaved to my hands: 8 May I sow and another eat,

And let my shoots be rooted out.

We have translated שׁוא (on the form vid., on Job 15:31, and the idea on Job 11:11) falsehood, for it signifies desolateness and hollowness under a concealing mask, therefore the contradiction between what is without and within, lying and deceit, parall. מרמה, deceit, delusion, imposition. The phrase הלך עם־שׁוא is based on the personification of deceit, or on thinking of it in connection with the מתי־שׁוא (Job 11:11). The form ותּחשׁ cannot be derived from חוּשׁ, from which it ought to be ותּחשׁ, like ויּסר Jdg 4:18 and freq., ויּשׂר (serravit) 1Ch 20:3, ויּעט (increpavit) 1Sa 25:14. Many grammarians (Ges. §72, rem. 9; Olsh. 257, g) explain the Pathach instead of Kametz as arising from the virtual doubling of the guttural (Dagesh forte implicitum), for which, however, no ground exists here; Ewald (§232, b) explains it by “the hastening of the tone towards the beginning,” which explains nothing, since the retreat of the tone has not this effect anywhere else. We must content ourselves with the supposition that ותּחשׁ is formed from a חשׁה having a similar meaning to חוּשׁ (חישׁ), as also ויּעט, 1Sa 15:19, comp. 1Sa 14:32, is from a עטח of similar signification with עיט. The hypothetical antecedent, Job 31:5, is followed by the conclusion, Job 31:6 : If he have done this, may God not spare him. He has, however, not done it; and if God puts him to an impartial trial, He will learn his תּמּה, integritas, purity of character. The “balance of justice” is the balance of the final judgment, which the Arabs call Arab. mı̂zân 'l - a‛mâl , “the balance of actions (works).” ^{▼▼The manual of ethics by Ghazzâli is entitled mı̂zân el - a‛mâl in the original, מאזני צדק in Bar-Chisdai’s translation, vid., Gosche on Ghazzâli’s life and works, S. 261 of the volume of the Berliner Akademie d. Wissensch. for 1858.}

Job 31:7 also begins hypothetically: if my steps (אשּׁוּרי from אשּׁוּר, which is used alternately with אשׁוּר without distinction, contrary to Ew. §260, b) swerve (תּטּה, the predicate to the plur. which follows, designating a thing, according to Ges. §146, 3) from the way (i.e., the one right way), and my heart went after my eyes, i.e., if it followed the drawing of the lust of the eye, viz., to obtain by deceit or extortion the property of another, and if a spot (מאוּם, macula, as Dan 1:4, = מוּם, Job 11:15; according to Ew., equivalent to מחוּם, what is blackened and blackens, then a blemish, and according to Olsh., in מאוּמה...לא, like the French ne ... point) clave to my hands: I will sow, and let another eat, and let my shoots be rooted out. The poet uses צאצאים elsewhere of offspring of the body or posterity, Job 5:25; Job 21:8; Job 27:14; here, however, as in Isaiah, with whom he has this word in common, Job 34:2; Job 42:5, the produce of the ground is meant. Job 31:8 is, according to Joh 4:37, a λόγος, a proverb. In so far as he may have acted thus, Job calls down upon himself the curse of Deut. 38:20f.: what he sows, let strangers reap and eat; and even when that which is sown does not fall into the hands of strangers, let it be uprooted. Job 31:9-12 9 If my heart has been befooled about a woman,

And if I lay in wait at my neighbour’s door: 10 Let my wife grind unto another,

And let others bow down over her. 11 For this is an infamous act,

And this is a crime to be brought before judges; 12 Yea, it is a fire that consumeth to the abyss,

And should root out all my increase.

As he has guarded himself against defiling virgin innocence by lascivious glances, so is he also conscious of having made no attempt to trespass upon the marriage relationship of his neighbour (רע as in the Decalogue, Exo 20:17): his heart was not persuaded, or he did not allow his heart to be persuaded (נפתּה like πείθεσθαι), i.e., misled, on account of a woman (אשּׁה as אשׁת אישׁ, in post-bibl. usage, of another’s wife), and he lay not in wait (according to the manner of adulterous lovers described at Job 24:15, which see) at his neighbour’s door. We may here, with Wetzstein, compare the like-minded confession in a poem of Muhâdi ibn-Muhammel: Arab. mâ nabb klb 'l - jâr mnâ ẇlâ ‛awâ , i.e., “The neighbour’s dog never barked (נב, Beduin equivalent to נבח in the Syrian towns and villages) on our account (because we have gone by night with an evil design to his tent), and it never howled (being beaten by us, to make it cease its barking lest it should betray us).” In Job 31:10 follows the punishment which he wishes might overtake him in case he had acted thus: “may my wife grind to another,” i.e., may she become his “maid behind the mill,” Exo 11:5, comp. Isa 47:2, who must allow herself to be used for everything; ἀλετρίς and a common low woman (comp. Plutarch, non posse suav. viv. c. 21, καὶ παχυσκελὴς ἀλετρὶς πρὸς μύλην κινουμένη) are almost one and the same. On the other hand, the Targ. (coeat cum alio), lxx (euphemistically ἀρέσαι ἑτέρῳ, not, as the Syr. Hexapl. shows, ἀλέσαι), and Jer. (scortum sit alterius), and in like manner Saad., Gecat., understand תּטחן directly of carnal surrender; and, in fact, according to the traditional opinion, b. Sota 10 a: אין טחינה אלא לשׁון עבירה, i.e., “טחן everywhere in Scripture is intended of (carnal) trespass.” With reference to Jdg 16:21 and Lam 5:13 (where טחון, like Arab. ṭaḥûn, signifies the upper mill-stone, or in gen. the mill), this is certainly incorrect; the parallel, as well as Deu 28:30, favours this rendering of the word in the obscene sense of μύλλειν, molere, in this passage, which also is seen under the Arab. synon. of grinding, Arab. dahaka (trudere); according to which it would have to be interpreted: let her grind to another, i.e., serve him as it were as a nether mill-stone. The verb טחן, used elsewhere (in Talmud.) of the man, would here be transferred to the woman, like as it is used of the mill itself as that which grinds. This rendering is therefore not refuted by its being תּטחן and not תּטּחן. Moreover, the word thus understood is not unworthy of the poet, since he designedly makes Job seize the strongest expressions. Among moderns, תטחן is thus tropically explained by Ew., Umbr., Hahn, and a few others, but most expositors prefer the proper sense, in connection with which molat certainly, especially with respect to Job 31:9, is also equivalent to fiat pellex. It is hard to decide; nevertheless the preponderance of reasons seems to us to be on the side of the traditional tropical rendering, by the side of which Job 31:10 is not attached in progressive, but in synonymous parallelism: et super ea incurvent se alii, כּרע of the man, as in the phrase Arab. kr‛t 'l - mrât 'lâ 'l - rjl(curvat se mulier ad virum) of the acquiescence of the woman; אחרין is a poetical Aramaism, Ew. §177, a. The sin of adultery, in case he had committed it, ought to be punished by another taking possession of his own wife, for that (הוּא a neutral masc., Keri היא in accordance with the fem. of the following predicate, comp. Lev 18:17) is an infamous act, and that (היא referring back to זמּה, Keri הוּא in accordance with the masc. of the following predicate) is a crime for the judges. On this wavering between הוא and היא vid., Gesenius, Handwörterbuch, 1863, s. v. הוּא, S. 225. זמּה is the usual Thora-word for the shameless subtle encroachments of sensual desires (vid., Saalschütz, Mosaisches Recht, S. 791f.), and פּלילים עון (not עון), according to the usual view equivalent to crimen et crimen quidem judicum (however, on the form of connection intentionally avoided here, where the genitival relation might easily give an erroneous sense, vid., Ges. §116, rem.), signifies a crime which falls within the province of the penal code, for which in Job 31:28 it is less harshly עון פּלילי: a judicial, i.e., criminal offence. פּלילים is, moreover, not the plur. of פּלילי (Kimchi), but of פּליל, an arbitrator (root פל, findere, dirimere).

The confirmatory clause, Job 31:12, is co-ordinate with the preceding: for it (this criminal, adulterous enterprise) is a fire, a fire consuming him who allows the sparks of sinful desire to rise up within him (Pro 6:27.; Sir. 9:8), which devours even to the bottom of the abyss, not resting before it has dragged him whom it has seized down with it into the deepest depth of ruin, and as it were melted him away, and which ought to root out all my produce (all the fruit of my labour). ^{▼▼It is something characteristically Semitic to express the notion of destruction by the figure of burning up with fire [vid. supra, p. 449, note], and it is so much used in the present day as a natural inalienable form of thought, that in curses and imprecations everything, without distinction of the object, is to be burned; e.g., juhrik, may (God) burn up, or juhrak, ought to burn, bilâduh, his native country, bedenuh, his body, ‛ênuh, his eye, shawâribuh, his moustache (i.e., his honour), nefesuh, his breath, ‛omruh, his life, etc. - Wetzst.}

The function of ב is questionable. Ew. (§217, f) explains it as local: in my whole revenue, i.e., throughout my whole domain. But it can also be Beth objecti, whether it be that the obj. is conceived as the means of the action (vid., on Job 16:4-5, Job 16:10; Job 20:20), or that, “corresponding to the Greek genitive, it does not express an entire full coincidence, but an action about and upon the object” (Ew. §217, S. 557). We take it as Beth obj. in the latter sense, after the analogy of the so-called pleonastic Arab. b (e.g., qaraa bi - suwari , he has practised the act of reading upon the Suras of the Koran); and which ought to undertake the act of outrooting upon my whole produce. ^{▼▼On this pleonastic Beth obj. (el - Bâ el - mezı̂de) vid., Samachschari’s Mufassal, ed. Broch, pp. 125, 132 (according to which it serves “to give intensity and speciality”), and Beidhâwi’s observation on Sur. ii. 191. The most usual example for it is alqa bi - jedeihi ila et - tahlike , he has plunged his hands, i.e., himself, into ruin. The Bâ el - megâ z (the metaphorical Beth obj.) is similar; it is used where the verb has not its most natural signification but a metaphorical one, e.g., ashada bidhikrihi , he has strengthened his memory: comp. De Sacy, Chrestomathie Arabe, i. 397.} Job 31:13-15 13 If I despised the cause of my servant and my maid,

When they contended with me: 14 What should I do, if God should rise up,

And if He should make search, what should I answer Him? 15 Hath not He who formed me in the womb formed him also,

And hath not One fashioned us in the belly?

It might happen, as Job 31:13 assumes, that his servant or his maid (אמה, Arab. amatun , denotes a maid who is not necessarily a slave, ‛abde, as Job 19:15, whereas שׁפחה does not occur in the book) contended with him, and in fact so that they on their part began the dispute (for, as the Talmud correctly points out, it is not בּריבי עמּם, but בּריבם עמּדי), but he did not then treat them as a despot; they were not accounted as res but personae by him, he allowed them to maintain their personal right in opposition to him. Christopher Scultetus observes here: Gentiles quidem non concedebant jus servo contra dominum, cui etiam vitae necisque potestas in ipsum erat; sed Iob amore justitiae libere se demisit, ut vel per alios judices aut arbitros litem talem curaret decidi vel sibi ipsi sit moderatus, ut juste pronuntiaret. If he were one who despised (אמאס not מאסתּי) his servants’ cause: what should he do if God arose and entered into judgment; and if He should appoint an examination (thus Hahn correctly, for the conclusion shows that פקד is here a synon. of בחן Psa 17:3, and חקר Psa 44:22, Arab. fqd, V, VIII, accurate inspicere), what should he answer? Job 31:16-18 16 If I held back the poor from what they desired,

And caused the eyes of the widow to languish, 17 And ate my morsel alone

Without letting the fatherless eat thereof: - 18 No indeed, from my youth he grew up to me as to a father,

And from my mother’s womb I guided her -

The whole strophe is the hypothetical antecedent of the imprecative conclusion, Job 31:22, which closes the following strophe. Since מנע דּבר ממּנוּ, cohibere aliquid ab aliquo (Job 22:7), is said as much in accordance with the usage of the language as מנעו מדּבר, cohibere aliquem ab aliquo (Num 24:11; Ecc 2:10), in the sense of denegare alicui aliquid, there is no reason for taking מחפץ דּלּים together as a genitival clause (a voto tenuium), as the accentuation requires it. On חפץ, vid., on Job 21:21; it signifies solicitude (what is ardently desired) and business, here the former: what is ever the interest and want of the poor (the reduced or those without means). From such like things he does not keep the poor back, i.e., does not refuse them; and the eyes of the widow he did not cause or allow to languish (כּלּה, to bring to an end, i.e., cause to languish, of the eyes, as Lev 26:16; 1Sa 2:33); he let not their longing for assistance be consumed of itself, let not the fountain of their tears become dry without effect. If he had done the opposite, if he had eaten his bread (פּת = פּת לחם) alone, and not allowed the orphan to eat of it with him - but no, he had not acted thus; on the contrary (כּי as Psa 130:4 and frequently), he (the parentless one) grew up to him (גּדלני = גּדל לּי, Ges. §121, 4, according to Ew. §315, b, “by the interweaving of the dialects of the people into the ancient form of the declining language;” perhaps it is more correct to say it is by virtue of a poetic, forced, and rare brevity of expression) as to a father (= לאב כּמו), and from his mother’s womb he guided her, the helpless and defenceless widow, like a faithful child leading its sick or aged mother. The hyperbolical expression מבּטן אמּי dates this sympathizing and active charity back to the very beginning of Job’s life. He means to say that it is in-born to him, and he has exercised it ever since he was first able to do so. The brevity of the form גּדלני, brief to incorrectness, might be removed by the pointing גּדּלני (Olsh.): from my youth up he (the fatherless one) honoured me as a father; and גּדּלני (instead of כּבּדני would be explained by the consideration, that a veneration is meant that attributed a dignity which exceed his age to the נער who was not yet old enough to be a father. But גּדּל signifies “to cause to grow” in such a connection elsewhere (parall. רומם, to raise), wherefore lxx translates ἐξέτρεφον (גּדּלתּי); and גּדלני has similar examples of the construction of intransitives with the acc. instead of the dat. (especially Zec 7:5) in its favour: they became me great, i.e., became great in respect of me. Other ways of getting over the difficulty are hardly worth mentioning: the Syriac version reads כּאב (pain) and אנחות; Raschi makes Job 31:18, the idea of benevolence, the subj., and Job 31:18 (as מדּה, attribute) the obj. The suff. of אנחנּה Schlottm. refers to the female orphan; but Job refers again to the orphan in the following strophe, and the reference to the widow, more natural here on account of the gender, has nothing against it. The choice of the verb (comp. Job 38:32) also corresponds to such a reference, since the Hiph. has an intensified Kal-signification here. ^{▼▼זכר and הזכיר, to remember; זרע and הזריע, to sow, to cover with seed; חרשׁ and החרישׁ, both in the signification silere and fabricari; לעג and הלעיג, to mock, Job 21:3; משׁל and המשׁיל, dominari, Job 25:2; נטה and הטה, to extend, to bow; קנה ;w and הקנה (to obtain by purchase); קצר and הקציר, to reap, Job 24:6, are all similar. In Arab. the Kal nahaituhu signifies I put him aside by going on one side (nahw or nâhije), the Hiph. anhaituhu , I put him aside by bringing him to the side (comp. ינחם, Job 12:23).}

From earliest youth, so far back as he can remember, he was wont to behave like a father to the orphan, and like a child to the widow. Job 31:19-23 19 If I saw one perishing without clothing,

And that the needy had no covering; 20 If his loins blessed me not,

And he did not warm himself from the hide of my lambs; 21 If I have lifted up my hand over the orphan,

Because I saw my help in the gate: 22 Let my shoulder fall out of its shoulder-blade,

And mine arm be broken from its bone; 23 For terror would come upon me, the destruction of God,

And before His majesty I should not be able to stand.

On אובד comp. on Job 4:11; Job 29:13; he who is come down from his right place and is perishing (root בד, to separate, still perfectly visible through the Arab. bâda , ba‛ida , to perish), or also he who is already perished, periens and perditus. The clause, Job 31:19, forms the second obj. to אם אראה, which otherwise signifies si video, but here, in accordance with the connection, signifies si videbam. The blessing of the thankful (Job 29:13) is transferred from the person to the limbs in Job 31:20, which need and are benefited by the warmth imparted. אם־לא here is not an expression of an affirmative asseveration, but a negative turn to the continuation of the hypothetical antecedents. The shaking, הניף, of the hand, Job 31:21, is intended, like Isa 11:15; Isa 19:16 (comp. the Pilel, Isa 10:32), Zec 2:13, as a preparation for a crushing stroke. Job refrained himself from such designs upon the defenceless orphan, even when he saw his help in the gate, i.e., before the tribunal (Job 29:7), i.e., even when he had a certain prospect or powerful assistance there. If he has acted otherwise, his כּתף, i.e., his upper arm together with the shoulder, must fall out from its שׁכם, i.e., the back which bears it together with the shoulder-blades, and his אזרע, upper and lower arm, which is considered here according to its outward flesh, must be broken out of its קנה, tube, i.e., the reed-like hollow bone which gives support to it, i.e., be broken asunder from its basis (Syr. a radice sua), this sinning arm, which did not compassionate the naked, and mercilessly threatened the defenceless and helpless. The ת raphatum which follows in both cases, and the express testimony of the Masora, show that משּׁכמה and מקּנה have no Mappik. The He quiescens, however, is in both instances softened from the He mappic. of the suff., Ew. §21,f. פּחד in Job 31:23 is taken by most expositors as predicate: for terror is (was) to me evil as God, the righteous judge, decrees it. But אלי is not favourable to this. It establishes the particular thing which he imprecates upon himself, and that consequently which, according to his own conviction and perception, ought justly to overtake him out of the general mass, viz., that terror ought to come upon him, a divine decreed weight of affliction. איד אל is a permutative of פחד = פחד אלהים, and אלי with Dechî equivalent to אלי (יבא) יהיה, comp. Jer 2:19 (where it is to be interpreted: and that thou lettest no fear before me come over thee). Thus also Job 31:23 is suitably connected with the preceding: and I should not overcome His majesty, i.e., I should succumb to it. The מן corresponds to the prae in praevalerem; שׂאת (lxx falsely, λῆμμα, judgment, decision = משׂא, Jer. pondus) is not intended otherwise than Job 13:11 (parall. פחד as here). Job 31:24-28 24 If I made gold my confidence,

And said to the fine gold: O my trust; 25 If I rejoiced that my wealth was great,

And that my hand had gained much; - 26 If I saw the sunlight when it shone,

And the moon walking in splendour, 27 And my heart was secretly enticed,

And I threw them a kiss by my hand: 28 This also would be a punishable crime,

For I should have played the hypocrite to God above.

Not only from covetous extortion of another’s goods was he conscious of being clear, but also from an excessive delight in earthly possessions. He has not made gold his כּסל, confidence (vid., on כּסלתך, Job 4:6); he has not said to כּתם, fine gold (pure, Job 28:19, of Ophir, Job 28:16), מבטחי (with Dag. forte implicitum as Job 8:14; Job 18:14): object (ground) of my trust! He has not rejoiced that his wealth is great (רב, adj.), and that his hand has attained כּבּיר, something great (neutral masc. Ew. §172, b). His joy was the fear of God, which ennobles man, not earthly things, which are not worthy to be accounted as man’s highest good. He indeed avoided πλεονεξία as εἰλωλολατρεία (Col 3:5), how much more the heathenish deification of the stars! אור is here, as Job 37:21 and φάος in Homer, the sun as the great light of the earth. ירח is the moon as a wanderer (from רח = ארח), i.e., night-wanderer (noctivaga), as the Arab. târik in a like sense is the name of the morning-star. The two words יקר הלד describe with exceeding beauty the solemn majestic wandering of the moon; יקר is acc. of closer definition, like תמים, Psa 15:2, and this “brilliantly rolling on” is the acc. of the predicate to אראה, corresponding to the כּי יחל, “that (or how) it shoots forth rays” (Hiph. of הלל, distinct from יחל Isa 13:20), or even: that it shot forth rays (fut. in signif. of an imperf. as Gen 48:17).

Job 31:27 proceeds with futt. consec. in order to express the effect which this imposing spectacle of the luminaries of the day and of the night might have produced on him, but has not. The Kal ויּפתּ is to be understood as in Deu 11:16 (comp. ib. iv. 19, נדּח): it was enticed, gave way to the seducing influence. Kissing is called נשׁק as being a joining of lip to lip. Accordingly the kiss by hand can be described by נשׁקה יד לפה; the kiss which the mouth gives the hand is to a certain extent also a kiss which the hand gives the mouth, since the hand joins itself to the mouth. Thus to kiss the hand in the direction of the object of veneration, or also to turn to it the kissed hand and at the same time the kiss which fastens on it (as compensation for the direct kiss, 1Ki 19:18; Hos 13:2), is the proper gesture of the προσκύνησις and adoratio mentioned; comp. Pliny, h. n. xxviii. 2, 5; Inter adorandum dexteram ad osculum referimus et totum corpus circumagimus. Tacitus, Hist. iii. 24, says that in Syria they value the rising sun; and that this was done by kissing the hand (τῆν χεῖρα κύσαντες) in Western Asia as in Greece, is to be inferred from Lucians Περὶ ὀρχήσεως, c. xvii. ^{▼▼Vid., Freund’s Lat. Wörterbuch s. v. adorare, and K. Fr. Hermann’s Gottesdienstliche Alterth. der Griechen, c. xxi. 16, but especially Excursus 123 in Dougtaeus’ Analecta.}

In the passage before us Ew. finds an indication of the spread of the Zoroaster doctrine in the beginning of the seventh century b.c., at which period he is of opinion the book of Job was composed, but without any ground. The ancient Persian worship has no knowledge of the act of adoration by throwing a kiss; and the Avesta recognises in the sun and moon exalted genii, but created by Ahuramazda, and consequently not such as are to be worshipped as gods. On the other hand, star-worship is everywhere the oldest and also comparatively the purest form of heathenism. That the ancient Arabs, especially the Himjarites, adored the sun, שׁמשׁ, and the moon, שׂין (סין, whence סיני, the mountain dedicated to the moon), as divine, we know from the ancient testimonies, ^{▼▼Vid., the collection in Lud. Krehl’s Religion der vorislamischen Araber, 1863.} and many inscriptions ^{▼▼Vid., Osiander in the Deutsche Morgenl. Zeitschr. xvii. (1863) 795.} which confirm and supplement them; and the general result of Chwolsohn's ^{▼▼In his great work, Ueber die Ssabier und den Ssabismus, 2 Bdd. Petersburg, 1856.} researches is unimpeachable, that the so-called Sabians (Arab. ṣâbı̂wn with or without Hamza of the Jê), of whom a section bore the name of worshippers of the sun, shemsı̂je, were the remnant of the ancient heathenism of Western Asia, which lasted into the middle ages. This heathenism, which consisted, according to its basis, in the worship of the stars, was also spread over Syria, and its name, usually combined with צבא השּׁמים (Deu 4:19), perhaps is not wholly devoid of connection with the name of a district of Syria, ארם צובה; certainly our poet found it already there, where he heard the tradition about Job, and in his hero presents to us a true adherent of the patriarchal religion, who had kept himself free from the influence of the worship of the stars, which was even in his time forcing its way among the tribes.

It is questionable whether Job 31:28 is to be regarded as a conclusion, with Umbr. and others, or as a parenthesis, with Ew., Hahn, Schlottm., and others. We take it as a conclusion, against which there is no objection according to the syntax, although strictly it is only a confirmation (vid., Job 31:11, Job 31:23) of an implied imprecatory conclusion: therefore it is (would be) also a judicial misdeed, i.e., one to be severely punished, for I should have played the hypocrite to God above (לאל ממּעל, recalling the universal Arabic expression allah ta‛âla , God, the Exalted One) by making gold and silver, the sun and moon my idols. By פּלילי both the sins belonging to the judgment-seat of God, as in ἔνοχος τῷ συνεδρίῳ, Mat 5:22, are not referred to a human tribunal, but only described κατ ̓ ἄνθρωπον as punishable transgressions of the highest grade. כּחשׁ ל signifies to play the hypocrite to any one, whereas to disown any one is expressed by כחשׁ בּ. His worship of God would have been hypocrisy, if he had disowned in secret the God whom he acknowledged openly and outwardly.

Now follow strophes to which the conclusion is wanting. The single imprecatory conclusion which yet follows (Job 31:40), is not so worded that it might avail for all the preceding hypothetical antecedents. There are therefore in these strophes no conclusions that correspond to the other clauses. The inward emotion of the confessor, which constantly increases in fervour the more he feels himself superior to his accusers in the exemplariness of his life hitherto, struggles against this rounding off of the periods. A “yea then - !” is easily supplied in thought to these strophes which per aposiopesin are devoid of conclusions.