Obrazy na stronie
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B.-Job's reply: Assertion of his innocence and a mournful description of the incomprehensibleness of his suffering as a dark horrible destiny.

CHAPTERS IX-X.

1. God is certainly the Almighty and Ever-Righteous One, who is to be feared; but His power is too terrible for mortal man:

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2 I know it is so of a truth:

but how should man be just with God?

3 If he will contend with Him,

he cannot answer Him one of a thousand.

4 He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength;

who hath hardened himself against Him, and hath prospered?

5 Which removeth the mountains, and they know not:

which overturneth them in His anger;

6 which shaketh the earth out of her place,

and the pillars thereof tremble;

7 which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not; and sealeth up the stars;

8 Which alone spreadeth out the heaven,

and treadeth upon the waves of the sea;

9 which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the South;

10 which doeth great things, past finding out; yea, and wonders without number.

11 Lo, He goeth by me, and I see Him not;

He passeth on also, but I perceive Him not.

12 Behold, He taketh away, who can hinder Him? who will say unto Him, What doest Thou?

2. The oppressive effect of this Omnipotence and Arbitrariness of God impels him, as an innocent sufferer, to presumptuous speeches against God:

VERSES 13-35.

13 If God will not withdraw His anger, the proud helpers do stoop under Him.

14 How much less shall I answer Him,

and choose out my words to reason with Him?

15 Whom, though I were righteous, yet would I not answer,

but I would make supplication to my judge.

16 If I had called, and He had answered me,

yet would I not believe that He had hearkened to my voice.

17 For He breaketh me with a tempest,

and multiplieth my wounds without cause.

18 He will not suffer me to take my breath, but filleth me with bitterness.

19 If I speak of strength-lo, He is strong!

and if of judgment, who shall set me a time to plead ?

20 If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me; If I say, am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse.

21 Though I were perfect, yet would I not know my soul; I would despise my life.

22 This is one thing, therefore I said it,

He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked.

23 If the scourge slay suddenly,

He will laugh at the trial of the innocent.
24 The earth is given into the hand of the wicked:
He covereth the faces of the judges thereof;
if not, where, and who is He?

25 Now my days are swifter than a post;
they flee away, they see no good.
26 They are past away as the swift ships;
as the eagle that hasteth to the prey.
27 If I say, I will forget my complaint,

I will leave off my heaviness, and comfort myself;

28 I am afraid of all my sorrows,

I know that Thou wilt not hold me innocent.

29 If I be wicked,

Why then labor I in vain?

30 If I wash myself with snow water,

and make my hands never so clean,

31 yet shalt Thou plunge me in the ditch,

and mine own clothes shall abhor me.

32 For He is not a man, as I am, that I should answer Him,

and we should come together in judgment.

33 Neither is there any daysman betwixt us,

that might lay his hand upon us both.

34 Let Him take His rod away from me, and let not His fear terrify me;

35 then would I speak, and not fear Him; but it is not so with me.

3. A plaintive description of the merciless severity with which God rages against him, although as an Omniscient Being, He knows that he is innocent:

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8 Thine hands have made me and fashioned me

together round about-yet Thou dost destroy me!

9 Remember, I beseech Thee, that Thou hast made me as the clay; and wilt Thou bring me into dust again?

10 Hast Thou not poured me out as milk,

and curdled me as cheese?

11 Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews.

12 Thou hast granted me life and favor,

and Thy visitation hath preserved my spirit.

13 And these things hast Thou hid in Thine heart; I know that this is with Thee.

14 If I sin, then Thou markest me,

and Thou wilt not acquit me from mine iniquity. 15 If I be wicked, woe unto me!

head:

and if I be righteous, yet will I not lift up my I am full of confusion; therefore see Thou mine affliction. 16 For it increaseth. Thou hauntest me as a fierce lion: and again Thou shewest Thyself marvellous upon me.

17 Thou renewest Thy witnesses against me,

and increasest Thine indignation upon me;

changes and war are against me.

18 Wherefore then hast Thou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me!

19 I should have been as though I had not been;

I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.

20 Are not my days few? Cease then,

and let me alone, that I may take comfort a little,

21 before I go whence I shall not return,

even to the land of darkness, and the shadow of death;

22 a land of darkness, as darkness itself;

and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness!

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL.

1. As we have seen, Eliphaz and Bildad had alike made the attempt, on the basis of their common places, such as the fact of the universal sinfulness of men, and that of the invariable justice of God's dealings, to extort from Job the confession of His own ill-desert as the cause of his suffering. Neither of them had heeded his request to render a more reasonable and just decision concerning his case (ch. vi. 28-30). In this new reply accordingly he addresses himself to both at once, and maintains most emphatically, and even with impassioned vehemence that their propositions, true as they were in general, were not applicable to his case. These propositions which they advanced concerning God's unapproachable purity, and inexorable justice he admits, but only in order "satirically to twist them into a recognition of that which is for mortal man a crushing, overpowering omnipotence in God, disposing of him with an arbitrariness which admits of no reply" (ch. ix. 2-12). He then, in daring and presumptuous language, arraigns this terrible Being, this arbitrary Divine disposer, who, as he thinks, notwithstanding

his innocence, is resolved to hold and treat him as guilty (ch ix. 13-35). And finally, under the influence of these gloomy reflections he falls back into his former strain of doubt and lamentation (in ch. 3), closing with a sentiment repeated verbally from that lamentation, although in a condensed form, and casting a gloomy look toward that Hereafter, which promises him nothing better, nothing but an endless prolongation of his present misery (ch. x. 1-22). [Dillmann calls attention to the fact that while in the former discourse Job had directed one entire section against his friends, here he says nothing formally against them, but soliloquizes, as it were in their hearing, leaving them to infer whither their assaults are driving him]. The first of these three tolerably long divisions embraces four short stro phes (the first three consisting of three verses each, the last of two); the second division consists of two equal sub-divisions (vers. 13-24 and vers. 25-35) each of three strophes, and each strophe of four verses: the third division comprises, after an exordium of three lines (ch x. 1) two double-strophes (vers. 2-12 and 13-22) the first formed of one strophe of 6, and one of 5 verses, the second of two strophes, each of five verses.

2. First Division: Job concedes the propositions of his opponents regarding God's immutable justice and absolute purity, but shows that for that very reason His power is all the more to be dreaded by mortals; ch. ix. 2-12.

First Strophe: Vers. 2-4. [Impossibility of maintaining one's cause before God].

Ver. 2. Of a truth [ironical as also in xii. 2] I know that it is so, viz., that what Bildad has set forth is quite true: that God ever does only that which is right, and that whatever proceeds from him must for that very reason be right. It is only to this leading proposition of Bildad's discourse (ch. viii. 3) that Job's remark here can refer, and not also to the discourse of Eliphaz, to which reference is first made in the following member: [It seems hardly worth while to make this distinction between two members of the same verse. Formally it is more natural indeed to suppose the opening remark to be addressed to Bildad, materially it doubtless refers to both. "In his former reply to Eliphaz," says Hengstenberg, he had sought to work rather on the feelings of his friends. Having failed in this, as the discourse of Bildad shows, he now makes all that the friends had spoken the subject of his criticism."]-And how should a mortal [N, man in his weakness and mortality] be right before God? i. e., how should it be otherwise than as Eliphaz has declared in his fundamental proposition (ch. iv. 17), to wit, that "no man is just before God;" which proposition moreover Job here changes into one somewhat differing in sense: "no man is right before God."

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Ver. 3. Should he desire to contend with Him, he could not answer Him one

of a thousand. The subject in both members of the verse is man, not God, as Schlottman, Delitzsch, Kamphausen, explain. By "contending is meant seeking to establish by controversy or discussion the right of man which is denied. The meaning of the second member of the verse is, that God, as infinitely man's superior, would overwhelm him with such a multitude of questions that he must stand before Him

in mute embarrassment and shame, as was actually the case at last with Job, when God began to speak (ch. xxxviii. 1 sq.).

Ver. 4. The wise of heart and mighty in strength-who has braved Him and remained unhurt?—The absolute cases on

and refer אֵלָיו are resumed in אמיץ כח and

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accordingly to God, and not to " (as Olshausen thinks). With p is to be supplied

"who has hardened his neck against Him," (Deut. x. 16; 2 Kings. xvii. 14), i. e., bid Him defiance?

Second Strophe: Vss. 5-7. A lofty poetic description of the irresistibleness of God's omnipotence, beginning with its destructive manifestations in nature. ["Job having once conceived the power of God becomes fascinated by the very tremendousness of it-the invincible might of his and man's adversary charms his eye and compels him to gaze and shudder, and run over it feature after feature, unable to withdraw his look from it. This alone, and not any superfi

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cial desire (Ewald) to emulate Eliphaz (to whom there is no particular reference in the speech as most comm. think), accounts for this piece of sublime picturing. Ewald has however finely remarked that the features Job fastens on are the dark and terror-inspiring, as was natural from the attitude in which he conceived God to stand to him." Davidson].

Ver. 5. Who removeth mountains, and they are not aware that (as in Ex. xi. 7; Ezek. xx. 26) He hath overturned them in His wrath. [In favor of thus regarding

as a conjunction rather than a relative, may be urged (1) The Perf. 17, which would otherwise be Imperf.; comp. Dan ver. 7. (2). The

introduction of a relative construction in a coordinate clause, and being absent would be a violation of the present participial construction of the strophe. The use of the Imperf. in 6 6 and 7 b is different: those clauses being introduced by 1 and subordinate.-E.]. The activity of the Divine wrath bursts upon them so quickly and suddenly that they are quite unconscious of the mighty change which has been effected in them.

Ver. 6. Who maketh the earth to tremble out of her place: viz., by earthquakes, comp. Isa. xiii. 13; Ps. xlvi. 3 [2], 4 [3]; and touching the climactic advance from the mountains to the earth, see Ps. xc. 2.-And her pillars are shaken [lit., rock themselves. The fundamental meaning of p, which is akin to pho and who, is as Dillmann says, to waver, to rock, not to break, as Ges. and Fürst explain, connecting it with ]. The pillars of the cording to the poetic representation prevalent in earth (comp. Ps. lxxv. 4 [3]; civ. 5), are, acthe O. T. the subterranean roots of her mountains [or according to Schlottmann the foundations on which the earth rests suspended over nothing: ch. xxvi. 7; xxxviii. 61, not their summits, lifted above the earth, which are rather (according to ch. xxvi. 11; comp. xxxviii. 6) to be thought of as the pillars of the heavenly vault, like Atlas in the Greek mythology.

Ver. 7. Who bids the sun (0, a rare poetic term for the sun, as in Isa. xix. 18; comp.

pn, Judg. xiv. 18) ["perhaps (says Delitz.), from the same root as , one of the poetical names of gold," seeing that in Isaiah 1. c. 'Ir haHeres is a play upon Day, Hdiobπodiç], and it riseth not, i. e., so that it does not shine forth (comp. Isa. lviii. 10), and so appears eclipsed. And setteth a seal round about the stars, seals them, i, e., veils them behind thick clouds, so that through their obscuration the night is darkened in the same measure as the day by an eclipse of the sun. In regard to obscurations of the heavenly bodies in general as indications of the Divine Power manifesting itself in destruction and punishment, comp. Ex. x. 21; Joel iii. 4 (ii. 31); Ezek. xxxii. 7 seq. ; Rev. vi. 12; xvi. 10.

Third Strophe: Vers. 8-10. The description of the Divine Omnipotence continued, more especially in respect to its creative operations in nature. [To be noted is the absence of the ar

ticle with the participles in each of these three | this Arabic term, which is suggested by the reverses, which alike with its presence in each of the three preceding verses, is clearly a sign of the strophic arrangement.-E.]

semblance of the square part of the constellation to a bier, the three trailing stars, the benath na'ash, "daughters of the bier," being imagined to be the mourners, is doubtful. [The current form y decisively contradicts the derivation from y] in that case, lit. “the fool,” is certainly Orion, who, according to the almost universal representation of the ancient world, was conceived of as a presumptuous and foolhardy giant, chained to the sky; comp. the men

ters " of Orion in ch. xxxviii. 31, as well as the accordant testimony of the ancient versions (LXX.: 'Qpiov, at least in the parallel passages ch. xxxviii. 31 and Isa. xiii. 10; similarly the Pesh., Targ., etc.). Against the reference to the star Canopus (Saad. Abulwalid, etc.), may be urged, apart from the high antiquity of the tradition which points to Orion, the context of the present passage as well as of ch. xxxviii. 31, and Am. v. 8, which indicates groups of stars, and not a single star.-The third constellation

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Ver. 8. Who spreadeth out the heavens alone. according to parallel passages, such as Isa. xl. 22; xliv. 24; Ps. civ. 2, where the heavenly vault is represented as an immense tent-canvass, is to be explained: "who stretcheth out, spreadeth out," not with Jerome, Ewald [Noyes, Davidson], etc., "who bows down, lets down." With the latter interpretation the clausetion of the i, i. e., the "bands," or "feti would not agree; nor again the contents of ver. 9, where clearly God's activity as Creator, not as Destroyer, or as one shaking the firmament and the stars, is more fully set forth.And treads upon the heights of the sea, i. e., upon the high-dashing waves of the sea agitated by a storm, over which God marches as its ruler and controller (ch. xxxviii. 10 sq.) with Bure and majestic tread, as upon the heights of the earth, according to Amos iv. 13; Mic. i. 3; Comp. Hab. iii. 15, also the excellent translation of the passage before us in the Sept.: TεрITаTOνi. e., the heap, is rendered "the Hyades" only ènì vaĥáoons is in' édápovç. Hirzel and Schlott- in the Vulgate; the remaining ancient versions mann [Merx] understand the reference to be to however (also Saadia), and the Vulg. itself in the waters of the firmament, the heavenly cloud- the parallel passage, xxxviii. 81, render by vessels, or thunder-clouds (Gen. i. 6 sq.; Ps. civ.hetas, Pleiades, so that beyond doubt it is to be 3; Ps. xviii. 12 (10); xxix. 3; Nah. i. 3). But understood of the group of seven stars in the these cloud-waters of the heavens are never else- neck of Taurus (known in German as the "cluckwhere in the Holy Scripture called "sea" (D); ing hen"); comp. Am. v. 8.--And the chamalso not in ch. xxxvi. 30 (see on the passage), bers of the South; i. e., the secret rooms or and still less in Rev. iv. 6; xv. 22; xxii. 1, spaces (penetralia) of the constellations of the where the vaλacoa of glass in the heavenly world southern heavens, which to the inhabitant of the signifies something quite different from a sea of northern zones are visible only in part, or not at rain-clouds. [The objection that this view of all. In any case P (defectively written for sea interferes with the harmony of description, mixing earth and heaven, is obviated by the con-1) points to the southern heavens, and since sideration that the passage is a description of a predominantly signifies "apartments, storm where earth (sea) and heaven are mixed." chambers, halls," less frequently "store-rooms, Davidson]. reservoirs," the reference to the "reservoirs of the south wind" (LXX : ταμεία νότου; some modern interpreters also, as Ges., etc.) is less natural, especially as the description continues to treat of the objects of the southern skies. [Dillmann, after recognizing the rendering of other side the author certainly knew nothing of the LXX. as admissible, remarks: "On the the constellations of the southern hemisphere; at the same time as one who had travelled (or at least: as one familiar with the results attained in his day by the observation of physical with the fact that the further South men travel, phenomena,-E.) he might well be acquainted the more stars and constellations are visible in the heavens; these are to the man who lives in the North, secluded as it were in the inmost chambers of the heavenly pavilion, and are for that reason invisible; it is of these hidden spaces' (Hirzel) of the South, with their stars, that we are here to think "].

Ver. 9. Who createth the Bear and Orion and Pleiades.—y is taken by Umbreit and Ewald as synonymous with ; "who darkens the Bear, etc.", against which however may be urged the use of ny in ver. 10, likewise the description flowing out of the present passage in Am. v. 8, and finally the lack of evidence that My means tegere (which remark holds true also of ch. xv. 27; and xxiii. 9). Moreover the connection decidedly requires a verb of creating or making. [“This as well as all the other participles from ver. 5 on to be construed in the present, for the act of creation is conceived as continuous, renewing itself day by day." Dillmann. "Job next describes God as the Creator of the stars, by introducing a constellation of the northern (the Bear), one of the southern (Orion), and one of the eastern sky (the Pleiades).' Delitzsch]. Of the three names of northern constellations, which occur together in ch. xxxviii. 31, 32, vy, or as it is written in that later passage y, denotes unmistakably the Great Bear, or Charles's Wain, the Septentrio of the Romans, and the n'ash (y)), i. e., "bier of the Arabians. Whether the word is etymologically related to

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Ver. 10. Who doeth great things, past out number: agreeing almost verbatim with finding out, and marvelous things withwhat Eliphaz had said previously, ch. v. 9, in describing the wondrous greatness of the Divine Power-an agreement, indeed, which is intentional, Job being determined to concede as fully

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