Job 19:21 | KD | STEP | Job 19:21-25 21 Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends, For the hand of Eloah hath touched me. 22 Wherefore do ye persecute me as God, And are never satisfied with my flesh? 23 Oh that my words were but written, That they were recorded in a book, 24 With an iron pen, filled in with lead, Graven in the rock for ever! 25 And I know: my Redeemer liveth, And as the last One will He arise from the dust. In Job takes up a strain we have not heard previously. His natural strength becomes more and more feeble, and his voice weaker and weaker. It is a feeling of sadness that prevails in the preceding description of suffering, and now even stamps the address to the friends with a tone of importunate entreaty which shall, if possible, affect their heart. They are indeed his friends, as the emphatic רעי אתּם affirms; impelled towards him by sympathy they are come, and at least stand by him while all other men flee from him. They are therefore to grant him favour (חנן, prop. to incline to) in the place of right; it is enough that the hand of Eloah has touched him (in connection with this, one is reminded that leprosy is called נגע, and is pre-eminently accounted as plaga divina; wherefore the suffering Messiah also bears the significant name חוּרא דבי רבּי, “the leprous one from the school of Rabbi,” in the Talmud, after , ), they are not to make the divine decree heavier to him by their uncharitableness. Wherefore do ye persecute me - he asks them in - like as God (כּמו־אל, according to Saad. and Ralbag = כמו־אלּה, which would be very tame); by which he means not merely that they add their persecution to God’s, but that they take upon themselves God’s work, that they usurp to themselves a judicial divine authority, they act towards him as if they were superhuman (vid., ), and therefore inhumanly, since they, who are but his equals, look down upon him from an assumed and false elevation. The other half of the question: wherefore are ye not full of my flesh ( de ma chair, with מן, as ), but still continue to devour it? is founded upon a common Semitic figurative expression, with which may be compared our Germ. expression, “to gnaw with the tooth of slander” comp. Engl. “backbiting”. In Chaldee, אכל קרצוהי די, to eat the pieces of (any one), is equivalent to, to slander him; in Syriac, ochelqarsso is the name of Satan, like διάβολος. The Arabic here, as almost everywhere in the book of Job, presents a still closer parallel; for Arab. 'kl lḥm signifies to eat any one’s flesh, then (different from אכל בשׂר, ) equivalent to, to slander, since an evil report is conceived of as a wild beast, which delights in tearing a neighbour to pieces, as the friends do not refrain from doing, since, from the love of their assumption that his suffering must be the retributive punishment of heinous sins, they lay sins to his charge of which he is not conscious, and which he never committed. Against these uncharitable and groundless accusations he wishes ( ) that the testimony of his innocence, to which they will not listen, might be recorded in a book for posterity, or because a book may easily perish, graven in a rock (therefore not on leaden plates) with an iron style, and the addition of lead, with which to fill up the engraved letters, and render them still more imperishable. In connection with the remarkable fidelity with which the poet throws himself back into the pre-Israelitish patriarchal time of his hero, it is of no small importance that he ascribes to him an acquaintance not only with monumental writing, but also with book and documentary writing (comp. ). The fut., which also elsewhere ( ; ; , once the praet., , noverim ) follows מי־יתּן, quis dabat = utinam , has Waw consec. here (as the praet. ); the arrangement of the words is extremely elegant, בּסּפר stands per hyperbaton emphatically prominent. כּתב and חקק (whence fut. Hoph. יחקוּ with Dag. implicitum in the ח, comp. , and the Dag. of the ק omitted, for יוּחקּוּ, according to Ges. §67, rem. 8) interchange also elsewhere, Isa 30:8. ספר, according to its etymon, is a book formed of the skin of an animal, as Arab. sufre , the leathern table-mat spread on the ground instead of a table. It is as unnecessary to read לעד (comp. , lxx, εἰς μαρτύριον) instead of לעד here, as in Isa 30:8. He wishes that his own declaration, in opposition to his accusers, may be inscribed as on a monument, that it may be immortalized, in order that posterity may behold it, and, it is to be hoped, judge him more justly than his contemporaries. He wishes this, and is certain that his wish is not vain. His testimony to his innocence will not descend to posterity without being justified to it by God, the living God. Thus is ואני ידעתּי connected with what precedes. yd`ty is followed, as in , Ps. 9:21, by the oratio directa. The monosyllable tone-word חי (on account of which go'aliy has the accent drawn back to the penult. ) is 3 praet.: I know: my redeemer liveth; in connection with this we recall the name of God, חי העולם, , after which the Jewish oath per Anchialum in Martial is to be explained. גּאל might (with Umbr. and others), in comparison with , as Num 35:12, be equivalent to גּאל הדּם: he who will redeem, demand back, avenge the shedding of his blood and maintain his honour as of blood that has been innocently shed; in general, however, g'l signifies to procure compensation for the down-trodden and unjustly oppressed, ; ; Psa 119:154. This Rescuer of his honour lives and will rise up as the last One, as one who holds out over everything, and therefore as one who will speak the final decisive word. To אחרון have been given the significations Afterman in the sense of vindex (Hirz., Ewald), or Rearman in the sense of a second [ lit . in a duel,] (Hahn), but contrary to the usage of the language: the word signifies postremus, novissimus, and is to be understood according to ; , comp. Job 41:4. But what is the meaning of על־עפר? Is it: upon the dust of the earth, having descended from heaven? The words may, according to [Hebr., Engl. Job 41:33], be understood thus (without the accompanying notion, formerly supposed by Umbreit, of pulvis or arena = palaestra , which is Classic, not Hebraic); but looking to the process of destruction going on in his body, which has been previously the subject of his words, and is so further on, it is far more probable that על־עפר is to be interpreted according to ; ; ; Psa 30:10. Moreover, an Arab would think of nothing else but the dust of the grave if he read Arab. ‛alâ turâbin in this connection. Besides, it is unnecessary to connect קום על, as perhaps , and the Arab. qâm ‛alâ (to stand by, help): על־עפר is first of all nothing more than a defining of locality. To affirm that if it refer to Job it ought to be עפרי, is unfounded. Upon the dust in which he is now soon to be laid, into which he is now soon to be changed, will He, the Rescuer of his honour, arise (קוּם, as in ; ; , of the rising up of a witness, and as e.g., , comp. , , of the rising up and interposing of a rescuer and help) and set His divine seal to Job’s own testimony thus made permanent in the monumental inscription. Oetinger’s interpretation is substantially the same: “I know that He will at last come, place himself over the dust in which I have mouldered away, pronounce my cause just, and place upon me the crown of victory.” A somewhat different connection of the thought is obtained, if ואני is taken not progressively, but adversatively: “Yet I know,” etc. The thought is then, that his testimony of his innocence need not at all be inscribed in the rock; on the contrary, God, the ever living One, will verify it. It is difficult to decide between them; still the progressive rendering seems to be preferable, because the human vindication after death, which is the object of the wish expressed in , is still not essentially different from the divine vindication hoped for in , which must not be regarded as an antithesis, but rather as a perfecting of the other designed for posterity. is, however, certainly a higher hope, to which the wish in Job 19:23. forms the stepping-stone. God himself will avenge Job’s blood, i.e., against his accusers, who say that it is the blood of one who is guilty; over the dust of the departed He will arise, and by His majestic testimony put to silence those who regard this dust of decay as the dust of a sinner, who has received the reward of his deeds. But is it perhaps this his hope of God’s vindication, expressed in , which (as Schlottmann and Hahn, though in other respects giving very different interpretations, think) is, according to Job’s wish, to be permanently inscribed on the monument, in order to testify to posterity with what a stedfast and undismayed conviction he had died? The high-toned introitus , , would be worthy of the important inscription it introduces. But (1) it is improbable that the inscription would begin with ואני, consequently with Waw , - a difficulty which is not removed by the translation, “Yea, I know,” but only covered up; the appeal to ; , is inadmissible, since there the divine utterance, which begins with Waw, per aposiopesin continues a suppressed clause; כי אני would be more admissible, but that which is to be written down does not even begin with כי in either or Jer 30:3. (2.) According to the whole of Job’s previous conduct and habitual state of mind, it is to be supposed that the contents of the inscription would be the expression of the stedfast consciousness of his innocence, not the hope of his vindication, which only here and there flashes through the darkness of the conflict and temptation, but is always again swallowed up by this darkness, so that the thought of a perpetual preservation, as on a monument, of this hope can by no means have its origin in Job; it forms everywhere only, so to speak, the golden weft of the tragic warp, which in itself even resists the tension of the two opposites: Job’s consciousness of innocence, and the dogmatic postulate of the friends; and their intensity gradually increases with the intensity of this very tension. So also here, where the strongest expression is given both to the confession of his innocence as a confession which does not shun, but even desires, to be recorded in a permanent form for posterity, and also at the same time in connection with this to the confidence that to him, who is misunderstood by men, the vindication from the side of God, although it may be so long delayed that he even dies, can nevertheless not be wanting. Accordingly, by מלּי we understand not what immediately follows, but the words concerning his innocence which have already been often repeated by him, and which remain unalterably the same; and we are authorized in closing one strophe with , and in beginning a new one with , which indeed is commended by the prevalence of the decastich in this speech, although we do not allow to this observance of the strophe division any influence in determining the exposition. It is, however, of use in our exposition. The strophe which now follows develops the chief reason of believing hope which is expressed in ; comp. the hexastich , also there in is the expansion of , which expresses the chief thought as in the form of a thema.

‏ Job 19:21

Job 19:21-25 21 Have pity upon me, have pity upon me,

O ye my friends, For the hand of Eloah hath touched me. 22 Wherefore do ye persecute me as God,

And are never satisfied with my flesh? 23 Oh that my words were but written,

That they were recorded in a book, 24 With an iron pen, filled in with lead,

Graven in the rock for ever! 25 And I know: my Redeemer liveth,

And as the last One will He arise from the dust.

In Job 19:21 Job takes up a strain we have not heard previously. His natural strength becomes more and more feeble, and his voice weaker and weaker. It is a feeling of sadness that prevails in the preceding description of suffering, and now even stamps the address to the friends with a tone of importunate entreaty which shall, if possible, affect their heart. They are indeed his friends, as the emphatic רעי אתּם affirms; impelled towards him by sympathy they are come, and at least stand by him while all other men flee from him. They are therefore to grant him favour (חנן, prop. to incline to) in the place of right; it is enough that the hand of Eloah has touched him (in connection with this, one is reminded that leprosy is called נגע, and is pre-eminently accounted as plaga divina; wherefore the suffering Messiah also bears the significant name חוּרא דבי רבּי, “the leprous one from the school of Rabbi,” in the Talmud, after Isa 53:4, Isa 53:8), they are not to make the divine decree heavier to him by their uncharitableness. Wherefore do ye persecute me - he asks them in Job 19:22 - like as God (כּמו־אל, according to Saad. and Ralbag = כמו־אלּה, which would be very tame); by which he means not merely that they add their persecution to God’s, but that they take upon themselves God’s work, that they usurp to themselves a judicial divine authority, they act towards him as if they were superhuman (vid., Isa 31:3), and therefore inhumanly, since they, who are but his equals, look down upon him from an assumed and false elevation. The other half of the question: wherefore are ye not full of my flesh (de ma chair, with מן, as Job 31:31), but still continue to devour it? is founded upon a common Semitic figurative expression, with which may be compared our Germ. expression, “to gnaw with the tooth of slander” comp. Engl. “backbiting”. In Chaldee, אכל קרצוהי די, to eat the pieces of (any one), is equivalent to, to slander him; in Syriac, ochelqarsso is the name of Satan, like διάβολος. The Arabic here, as almost everywhere in the book of Job, presents a still closer parallel; for Arab. 'kl lḥm signifies to eat any one’s flesh, then (different from אכל בשׂר, Psa 27:2) equivalent to, to slander, ^{▼▼Vid., Schultens’ ad Prov. Meidanii, p. 7 (where “to eat his own flesh,” equivalent to “himself,” without allowing others to do it, signifies to censure his kinsmen), and comp. the phrase Arab. aclu - l - a‛râdhi in the signification arrodere existimationem hominum in Makkari, i. 541, 13.} since an evil report is conceived of as a wild beast, which delights in tearing a neighbour to pieces, as the friends do not refrain from doing, since, from the love of their assumption that his suffering must be the retributive punishment of heinous sins, they lay sins to his charge of which he is not conscious, and which he never committed. Against these uncharitable and groundless accusations he wishes (Job 19:23) that the testimony of his innocence, to which they will not listen, might be recorded in a book for posterity, or because a book may easily perish, graven in a rock (therefore not on leaden plates) with an iron style, and the addition of lead, with which to fill up the engraved letters, and render them still more imperishable. In connection with the remarkable fidelity with which the poet throws himself back into the pre-Israelitish patriarchal time of his hero, it is of no small importance that he ascribes to him an acquaintance not only with monumental writing, but also with book and documentary writing (comp. Job 31:35).

The fut., which also elsewhere (Job 6:8; Job 13:5; Job 14:13, once the praet., Job 23:3, noverim) follows מי־יתּן, quis dabat = utinam, has Waw consec. here (as Deu 5:26 the praet.); the arrangement of the words is extremely elegant, בּסּפר stands per hyperbaton emphatically prominent. כּתב and חקק (whence fut. Hoph. יחקוּ with Dag. implicitum in the ח, comp. Job 4:20, and the Dag. of the ק omitted, for יוּחקּוּ, according to Ges. §67, rem. 8) interchange also elsewhere, Isa 30:8. ספר, according to its etymon, is a book formed of the skin of an animal, as Arab. sufre, the leathern table-mat spread on the ground instead of a table. It is as unnecessary to read לעד (comp. Job 16:8, lxx, εἰς μαρτύριον) instead of לעד here, as in Isa 30:8. He wishes that his own declaration, in opposition to his accusers, may be inscribed as on a monument, that it may be immortalized, ^{▼▼לעד is differently interpreted by Jerome: evermore hewn in the rock; for so it seems his vel certe (instead of which celte is also read, which is an old northern name for a chisel) sculpantur in siliece must be explained.} in order that posterity may behold it, and, it is to be hoped, judge him more justly than his contemporaries. He wishes this, and is certain that his wish is not vain. His testimony to his innocence will not descend to posterity without being justified to it by God, the living God.

Thus is ואני ידעתּי connected with what precedes. yd`ty is followed, as in Job 30:23, Ps. 9:21, by the oratio directa. The monosyllable tone-word חי (on account of which go'aliy has the accent drawn back to the penult.) is 3 praet.: I know: my redeemer liveth; in connection with this we recall the name of God, חי העולם, Dan 12:7, after which the Jewish oath per Anchialum in Martial is to be explained. גּאל might (with Umbr. and others), in comparison with Job 16:18, as Num 35:12, be equivalent to גּאל הדּם: he who will redeem, demand back, avenge the shedding of his blood and maintain his honour as of blood that has been innocently shed; in general, however, g'l signifies to procure compensation for the down-trodden and unjustly oppressed, Pro 23:11; Lam 3:58; Psa 119:154. This Rescuer of his honour lives and will rise up as the last One, as one who holds out over everything, and therefore as one who will speak the final decisive word. To אחרון have been given the significations Afterman in the sense of vindex (Hirz., Ewald), or Rearman in the sense of a second [lit. in a duel,] (Hahn), but contrary to the usage of the language: the word signifies postremus, novissimus, and is to be understood according to Isa 44:6; Isa 48:12, comp. Job 41:4. But what is the meaning of על־עפר? Is it: upon the dust of the earth, having descended from heaven? The words may, according to Job 41:25 [Hebr., Engl. Job 41:33], be understood thus (without the accompanying notion, formerly supposed by Umbreit, of pulvis or arena = palaestra, which is Classic, not Hebraic); but looking to the process of destruction going on in his body, which has been previously the subject of his words, and is so further on, it is far more probable that על־עפר is to be interpreted according to Job 17:16; Job 20:11; Job 21:26; Psa 30:10. Moreover, an Arab would think of nothing else but the dust of the grave if he read Arab. ‛alâ turâbinin this connection. ^{▼▼In Arabic ‛fr belongs only to the ancient language (whence ‛afarahu, he has cast him into the dust, placed him upon the sand, inf. ‛afr); Arab. gbâr (whence the Ghobar, a peculiar secret-writing, has its name) signifies the dry, flying dust; Arab. trâb, however, is dust in gen., and particularly the dust of the grave, as e.g., in the forcible proverb: nothing but the turâb fills the eyes of man. So common is this signification, that a tomb is therefore called turbe.}

Besides, it is unnecessary to connect קום על, as perhaps 2Ch 21:4, and the Arab. qâm ‛alâ (to stand by, help): על־עפר is first of all nothing more than a defining of locality. To affirm that if it refer to Job it ought to be עפרי, is unfounded. Upon the dust in which he is now soon to be laid, into which he is now soon to be changed, will He, the Rescuer of his honour, arise (קוּם, as in Deu 19:15; Psa 27:12; Psa 35:11, of the rising up of a witness, and as e.g., Psa 12:6, comp. Psa 94:16, Isa 33:10, of the rising up and interposing of a rescuer and help) and set His divine seal to Job’s own testimony thus made permanent in the monumental inscription. Oetinger’s interpretation is substantially the same: “I know that He will at last come, place himself over the dust in which I have mouldered away, pronounce my cause just, and place upon me the crown of victory.”

A somewhat different connection of the thought is obtained, if ואני is taken not progressively, but adversatively: “Yet I know,” etc. The thought is then, that his testimony of his innocence need not at all be inscribed in the rock; on the contrary, God, the ever living One, will verify it. It is difficult to decide between them; still the progressive rendering seems to be preferable, because the human vindication after death, which is the object of the wish expressed in Job 19:23, is still not essentially different from the divine vindication hoped for in Job 19:25, which must not be regarded as an antithesis, but rather as a perfecting of the other designed for posterity. Job 19:25 is, however, certainly a higher hope, to which the wish in Job 19:23. forms the stepping-stone. God himself will avenge Job’s blood, i.e., against his accusers, who say that it is the blood of one who is guilty; over the dust of the departed He will arise, and by His majestic testimony put to silence those who regard this dust of decay as the dust of a sinner, who has received the reward of his deeds.

But is it perhaps this his hope of God’s vindication, expressed in Job 19:25, which (as Schlottmann and Hahn, ^{▼▼Hahn, after having in his pamphlet, de spe immortalitatis sub V.T. gradatim exculta, 1845, understood Job’s confession distinctly of a future beholding in this world, goes further in his Commentary, and entirely deprives this confession of the character of hope, and takes all as an expression of what is present. We withhold our further assent.} though in other respects giving very different interpretations, think) is, according to Job’s wish, to be permanently inscribed on the monument, in order to testify to posterity with what a stedfast and undismayed conviction he had died? The high-toned introitus, Job 19:23, would be worthy of the important inscription it introduces. But (1) it is improbable that the inscription would begin with ואני, consequently with Waw, - a difficulty which is not removed by the translation, “Yea, I know,” but only covered up; the appeal to Psa 2:6; Isa 3:14, is inadmissible, since there the divine utterance, which begins with Waw, per aposiopesin continues a suppressed clause; כי אני would be more admissible, but that which is to be written down does not even begin with כי in either Hab 2:3 or Jer 30:3. (2.) According to the whole of Job’s previous conduct and habitual state of mind, it is to be supposed that the contents of the inscription would be the expression of the stedfast consciousness of his innocence, not the hope of his vindication, which only here and there flashes through the darkness of the conflict and temptation, but is always again swallowed up by this darkness, so that the thought of a perpetual preservation, as on a monument, of this hope can by no means have its origin in Job; it forms everywhere only, so to speak, the golden weft of the tragic warp, which in itself even resists the tension of the two opposites: Job’s consciousness of innocence, and the dogmatic postulate of the friends; and their intensity gradually increases with the intensity of this very tension. So also here, where the strongest expression is given both to the confession of his innocence as a confession which does not shun, but even desires, to be recorded in a permanent form for posterity, and also at the same time in connection with this to the confidence that to him, who is misunderstood by men, the vindication from the side of God, although it may be so long delayed that he even dies, can nevertheless not be wanting. Accordingly, by מלּי we understand not what immediately follows, but the words concerning his innocence which have already been often repeated by him, and which remain unalterably the same; and we are authorized in closing one strophe with Job 19:25, and in beginning a new one with Job 19:26, which indeed is commended by the prevalence of the decastich in this speech, although we do not allow to this observance of the strophe division any influence in determining the exposition. It is, however, of use in our exposition. The strophe which now follows develops the chief reason of believing hope which is expressed in Job 19:25; comp. the hexastich Job 12:11-13, also there in Job 12:14 is the expansion of Job 12:13, which expresses the chief thought as in the form of a thema.