Job 18:15-21 | KD | STEP | His calamity looketh hunger-bitten, And misfortune is ready for his fall. 13 It devoureth the members of his skin; The first-born of death devoureth his members. 14 That in which he trusted is torn away out of his tent, And he must march on to the king of terrors. 15 Beings strange to him dwell in his tent; Brimstone is strewn over his habitation. The description of the actual and total destruction of the evil-doer now begins with יהי (as , after the manner of the voluntative forms already used in ). Step by step it traces his course to the total destruction, which leaves no trace of him, but still bears evident marks of being the fulfilment of the curse pronounced upon him. In opposition to this explanation, Targ., Raschi, and others, explain אנו according to : the son of his manhood’s strength becomes hungry, which sounds comical rather than tragic; another Targ. transl.: he becomes hungry in his mourning, which is indeed inadmissible, because the signif. planctus , luctus , belongs to the derivatives of אנה, אנן, but not to און. But even the translation recently adopted by Ew., Stick., and Schlottm., “his strength becomes hungry,” is unsatisfactory; for it is in itself no misfortune to be hungry, and רעב does not in itself signify “exhausted with hunger.” It is also an odd metaphor, that strength becomes hungry; we would then rather read with Reiske, רעב באנו, famelicus in media potentia sua . But as און signifies strength ( ), so און (root אן, to breathe and pant) signifies both wickedness and evil (the latter either as evil = calamity, or as anhelitus , sorrow, Arab. ain ); and the thought that his (i.e., appointed to the evil-doer) calamity is hungry to swallow him up (Syr., Hirz., Hahn, and others), suits the parallelism perfectly: "and misfortune stands ready for his fall." איד signifies prop. a weight, burden, then a load of suffering, and gen. calamity (root אד, Arab. âda , e.g., Sur. 2, 256, la jaâduhu , it is not difficult for him, and adda , comp. on ); and לצלעו not: at his side (Ges., Ew., Schlottm., Hahn), but, according to ; : for his fall (lxx freely, but correctly: ἐξαίσιοϚ); for instead of "at the side" (Arab. ila ganbi ), they no more say in Hebrew than in Germ. "at the ribs." figuratively describes how calamity takes possession of him. The members, which are called יצרים in , as parts of the form of the body, are here called בּדּים, as the parts into which the body branches out, or rather, since the word originally signifies a part, as that which is actually split off (vid., on , where it denotes "cross-bars"), or according to appearance that which rises up, and from this primary signification applied to the body and plants, the members (not merely as Farisol interprets: the veins) of which the body consists and into which it is distributed. עור (distinct from גּלד, , similar in meaning to Arab. baschar , but also to the Arab. gild , of which the former signifies rather the epidermis, the latter the skin in the widest sense) is the soluble surface of the naked animal body. בּכור מות devours this, and indeed, as the repetition implies, gradually, but surely and entirely. "The first-born of the poor," , are those not merely who belong (בּני) to the race of the poor, but the poor in the highest sense and first rank. So here diseases are conceived of as children of death, as in the Arabic malignant fevers are called benât el - menı̂jeh , daughters of fate or death; that disease which Bildad has in his mind, as the one more terrible and dangerous than all others, he calls the "first-born of death," as that in which the whole destroying power of death is contained, as in the first-born the whole strength of his parent. The Targ. understands the figure similarly, since it transl. מלאך מותא (angel of death); another Targ. has instead שׁרוּי מותא, the firstling of death, which is intended in the sense of the primogenita (= praematura ) mors of Jerome. Least of all is it to be understood with Ewald as an intensive expression for בן־מות, , of the evil-doer as liable to death. While now disease in the most fearful form consumes the body of the evil-doer, מבטחו (with Dag.f. impl ., as ; , Olsh. §198, b ) (a collective word, which signifies everything in which he trusted) is torn away out of his tent; thus also Rosenm., Ew., and Umbr. explain, while Hirz., Hlgst., Schlottm., and Hahn regard מבטחו as in apposition to אהלו, in favour of which is only a seemingly suitable parallel. It means everything that made the ungodly man happy as head of a household, and gave him the brightest hopes of the future. This is torn away ( evellitur ) from his household, so that he, who is dying off, alone survives. Thus, therefore, describes how he also himself dies at last. Several modern expositors, especially Stickel, after the example of Jerome ( et calcet super eum quasi rex interitus ), and of the Syr. ( praecipitem eum reddent terrores regis ), take בּלּהות as subj., which is syntactically possible (vid., ; ): and destruction causes him to march towards itself (Ges.: fugant eum ) like a military leader; but since הצעיד signifies to cause to approach, and since no אליו (to itself) stands with it, למלך is to be considered as denoting the goal, especially as ל never directly signifies instar . In the passage advanced in its favour it denotes that which anything becomes, that which one makes a thing by the mode of treatment ( ), or whither anything extends (e.g., in Schultens on : they had claws li-machâlîbi , i.e., "approaching to the claws" of wild beasts). One falls into these strange interpretations when one departs from the accentuation, which unites מלך בלהות quite correctly by Munach . Death itself is called "the king of terrors," in distinction from the terrible disease which is called its first-born. Death is also personified elsewhere, as , and esp. , where it appears as a רעה, ruler in Hades, as in the Indian mythology the name of the infernal king Jamas signifies the tyrant or the tamer. The biblical representation does not recognise a king of Hades, as Jamas and Pluto: the judicial power of death is allotted to angels, of whom one, the angel of the abyss, is called Abaddon (אבדון), ; and the chief possessor of this judicial power, ὁ τὸδράτος ἔχων τοῦ θανάτον, is, according to , the angel-prince, who, according to the prologue of our book, has also brought a fatal disease upon Job, without, however, in this instance being able to go further than to bring him to the brink of the abyss. It would therefore not be contrary to the spirit of the book if we were to understand Satan by the king of terrors, who, among other appellations in Jewish theology, is called שׂר על־התהו, because he has his existence in the Thohu , and seeks to hurl back every living being into the Thohu . But since the prologue casts a veil over that which remains unknown in this world in the midst of tragic woes, and since a reference to Satan is found nowhere else in the book - on the contrary, Job himself and the friends trace back directly to God that mysterious affliction which forms the dramatic knot - we understand (which is perfectly sufficient) by the king of terrors death itself, and with Hirz., Ew., and most expositors, transl.: "and it causes him to march onward to the king of terrors." The "it" is a secret power, as also elsewhere the fem . is used as neut . to denote the "dark power" (Ewald, §294, b ) of natural and supernatural events, although sometimes, e.g., ; , the masc . is also so applied. After the evil-doer is tormented for a while with temporary בלהות, and made tender, and reduced to ripeness for death by the first-born of death, he falls into the possession of the king of בלהות himself; slowly and solemnly, but surely and inevitably (as תצעיד implies, with which is combined the idea of the march of a criminal to the place of execution), he is led to this king by an unseen arm. In the description advances another step deeper into the calamity of the evil-doer’s habitation, which is now become completely desolate. Since says that brimstone (from heaven, ; ) is strewn over the evil-doer’s habitation, i.e., in order to mark it as a place that, having been visited with the fulfilment of the curse, shall not henceforth be rebuilt and inhabited (vid., Deu 29:22., and supra , on ), cannot be intended to affirm that a company of men strange to him take up their abode in his tent. But we shall not, however, on that account take בלהות as the subj. of תּשׁכּון. The only natural translation is: what does not belong to him dwells in his tent (Ew. §294, b ); מבּלי, elsewhere praepos . ( , ; Job 24:7.), is here an adverb of negation, as which it is often used as an intensive of אין, e.g., Exo 14:11. It is unnecessary to take the מ as partitive (Hirz.), although it can have a special signification, as (because not), by being separated from בלי. The neutral fem . תשׁכון refers to such inhabitants as are described in Isa 13:20., Job 27:10., Job 34:11., Zep 2:9, and in other descriptions of desolation. Creatures and things which are strange to the deceased rich man, as jackals and nettles, inhabit his domain, which is appointed to eternal unfruitfulness; neither children nor possessions survive him to keep up his name. What does dwell in his tent serves only to keep up the recollection of the curse which has overtaken him.