{"commentary":{"id":"keil-delitzsch","name":"Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary","website":"https://worthy.bible/commentaries/keil-delitzsch-commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"bb5cc0f9cfe0a93b3c903bb6972c6bc8c4e9f2bd3be6c2a6d276737cf9c5edce","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":39,"totalNumberOfChapters":909,"totalNumberOfVerses":6516,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"JOB","commentaryId":"keil-delitzsch","name":"Job","commonName":"Job","introduction":"The Book of Job\n\nIntroduction\n\n1. The Problem of the Book of Job\n\nWhy do afflictions upon afflictions befall the righteous man? This is the question, the answering of which is made the theme of the book of Job. Looking to the conclusion of the book, the answer stands: that afflictions are for the righteous man the way to a twofold blessedness. But in itself, this answer cannot satisfy; so much the less, as the twofold blessedness to which Job finally attains is just as earthly and of this world as that which he has lost by affliction. This answer is inadequate, since on the one hand such losses as those of beloved children cannot, as the loss of sheep and camels, really be made good by double the number of other children; on the other hand, it may be objected that many a righteous man deprived of his former prosperity dies in outward poverty. There are numerous deathbeds which protest against this answer. There are many pious sufferers to whom this present material issue of the book of Job could not yield any solace; whom, when in conflict at least, it might the rather bring into danger of despair. With reference to this conclusion, the book of Job is an insufficient theodicy, as in general the truth taught in the Old Testament, that the end, אהרית, of the righteous, as of the unrighteous, would reveal the hidden divine recompense, could afford no true consolation so long as this אהרית flowed on with death into the night of Hades, שׁאול, and had no prospect of eternal life.\n\nBut the issue of the history, regarded externally, is by no means the proper answer to the great question of the book. The principal thing is not that Job is doubly blessed, but that God acknowledges him as His servant, which He is able to do, after Job in all his afflictions has remained true to God. Therein lies the important truth, that there is a suffering of the righteous which is not a decree of wrath, into which the love of God has been changed, but a dispensation of that love itself. In fact, this truth is the heart of the book of Job. It has therefore been said - particularly by Hirzel, and recently by Renan - that it aims at destroying the old Mosaic doctrine of retribution. But this old Mosaic doctrine of retribution is a modern phantom. That all suffering is a divine retribution, the Mosaic Thora does not teach. Renan calls this doctrine la vielle conception patriarcale. But the patriarchal history, and especially the history of Joseph, gives decided proof against it. The distinction between the suffering of the righteous and the retributive justice of God, brought out in the book of Job, is nothing new. The history before the time of Israel, and the history of Israel even, exhibit it in facts; and the words of the law, as Deu 8:16, expressly show that there are sufferings which are the result of God's love; though the book of Job certainly presents this truth, which otherwise had but a scattered and presageful utterance, in a unique manner, and causes it to come forth before us from a calamitous and terrible conflict, as pure gold from a fierce furnace. It comes forth as the result of the controversy with the false doctrine of retribution advanced by the friends; a doctrine which is indeed not Mosaic, for the Mosaic Thora in the whole course of the history of revelation is nowhere impugned and corrected, but ever only augmented, and, consistently with its inherent character, rendered more complete.\n\nTo this question the book furnishes, as it appears to us, two answers: (1.) The afflictions of the righteous are a means of discipline and purification; they certainly arise from the sins of the righteous man, but still are not the workings of God's wrath, but of His love, which is directed to his purifying and advancement. Such is the view Elihu in the book of Job represents. The writer of the introductory portion of Proverbs has expressed this briefly but beautifully Pro 3:11; cf. Heb 12). Oehler, in order that one may perceive its distinction from the view of the three friends, rightly refers to the various theories of punishment. Discipline designed for improvement is properly no punishment, since punishment, according to its true idea, is only satisfaction rendered for the violation of moral order. In how far the speeches of Elihu succeed in conveying this view clear and distinct from the original standpoint of the friends, especially of Eliphaz, matters not to us here; at all events, it is in the mind of the poet as the characteristic of these speeches. (2.) The afflictions of the righteous man are means of proving and testing, which, like chastisements, come from the love of God. Their object is not, however, the purging away of sin which may still cling to the righteous man, but, on the contrary, the manifestation and testing of his righteousness. This is the point of view from which, apart from Elihu's speeches, the book of Job presents Job's afflictions. Only by this relation of things is the chagrin with which Job takes up the words of Eliphaz, and so begins the controversy, explained and justified or excused. And, indeed, if it should be even impossible for the Christian, especially with regard to his own sufferings, to draw the line between disciplinary and testing sufferings so clearly as it is drawn in the book of Job, there is also for the deeper and more acute New Testament perception of sin, a suffering of the righteous which exists without any causal connection with his sin, viz., confession by suffering, or martyrdom, which the righteous man undergoes, not for his own sake, but for the sake of God.\n\nIf we, then, keep in mind these two further answers which the book of Job gives us to the question, \"Why through suffering to blessedness?\" it is not to be denied that practically they are perfectly sufficient. If I know that God sends afflictions to me because, since sin and evil are come into the world, they are the indispensable means of purifying and testing me, and by both purifying and testing of perfecting me, - these are explanations with which I can and must console myself. But this is still not the final answer of the book of Job to its great question. And its unparalleled magnitude, its high significance in the historical development of revelation, its typical character already recognised in the Old Testament, consists just in its going beyond this answer, and giving us an answer which, going back to the extreme roots of evil, and being deduced from the most intimate connections of the individual life of man with the history and plan of the world in the most comprehensive sense, not only practically, but speculatively, satisfies.\n\n2. The Chokma-Character of the Book\n\nBut before we go so far into this final and highest answer as the province of the Introduction permits and requires, in order to assign to the reader the position necessary to be taken for understanding the book, we ask, How comes it that the book of Job presents such a universal and absolute solution of the problem, otherwise unheard of in the Old Testament Scriptures? The reason of it is in the peculiar mental tendency (Geistesrichtung) of the Israelitish race from which it proceeded. There was in Israel a bias of a universalistic, humanic, philosophical kind, which, starting from the fear or worship (religion) of Jehovah, was turned to the final causes of things, - the cosmical connections of the earthly, the common human foundations of the Israelitish, the invisible roots of the visible, the universal actual truth of the individual and national historical. The common character of the few works of his Chokma which have been preserved to us is the humanic standpoint, stripped of everything peculiarly Israelitish. In the whole book of Proverbs, which treats of the relations of human life in its most general aspects, the name of the covenant people, ישׁראל, does not once occur. In Ecclesiastes, which treats of the nothingness of all earthly things, and with greater right than the book of Job may be called the canticle of Inquiry,\n\n(Note: The book of Job, says H. Heine, in his Vermischte Schriften, 1854, i., is the canticle of Inquiry (das Hodhelied der Skepsis), and horrid serpents hiss therein their eternal Wherefore? As man when he suffers must weep his fill, so must he cease to doubt. This poison of doubt must not be wanting in the Bible, that great storehouse of mankind.)\n\neven the covenant name of God, יהוה, does not occur. In the Son of Songs, the groundwork of the picture certainly, but not the picture itself, is Israelitish: it represents a common human primary relation, the love of man and woman; and that if not with allegorical, yet mystical meaning, similar to the Indian Gitagovinda, and also the third part of the Tamul Kural, translated by Graul.\n\nSo the book of Job treats a fundamental question of our common humanity; and the poet has studiously taken his hero not from Israelitish history, but from extra-Israelitish tradition. From beginning to end he is conscious of relating an extra-Israelitish history, - a history handed down among the Arab tribes to the east of Palestine, which has come to his ears; for none of the proper names contain even a trace of symbolically intended meaning; and romantic historical poems were moreover not common among the ancients. This extra-Israelitish history from the patriarchal period excited the purpose of his poem, because the thought therein presented lay also in his own mind. The Thora from Sinai and prophecy, the history and worship of Israel, are nowhere introduced; even indirect reference to them nowhere escape him. He throws himself with wonderful truthfulness, effect, and vividness, into the extra-Israelitish position. His own Israelitish standpoint he certainly does not disavow, as we see from his calling God יהוה everywhere in the prologue and epilogue; but the non-Israelitish character of his hero and of his locality he maintains with strict consistency. Only twice is יהוה found in the mouth of Job (Job 1:21, Job 12:9), which is not to be wondered at, since this name of God, as the names Morija and Jochebed show, is not absolutely post-Mosaic, and therefore may have been known among the Hebrew people beyond Israel. But with this exception, Job and his friends everywhere call God אלוהּ, which is more poetic, and for non-Israelitish speakers (vid., Pro 30:5) more appropriate than אלהים, which occurs only three times (Job 20:29; Job 32:2; Job 38:7); or they call Him שׁדּי, which is the proper name of God in the patriarchal time, as it appears everywhere in Genesis, where in the Elohistic portions the high and turning-points of the self-manifestation of God occur (Job 17:1, Job 35:11, cf. Exo 6:3), and when the patriarchs, at special seasons, pronounce the promise which they have received upon their children (Gen 28:3, Gen 48:3, Gen 49:25; cf. Gen 43:14). Even many of the designations of the divine attributes which have become fixed in the Thora, as אפּים ארך, חנּוּן, רחוּם, which one might well expect in the book of Job, are not found in it; nor טוב, often used of Jehovah in Psalms; nor generally the too (so to speak) dogmatic terminology of the Israelitish religion;\n\n(Note: קרושׁ, of God, only occurs once (Job 6:10); חסד but twice (Job 10:12, and with Elihu, Job 37:13); אהב with its derivatives not at all (Gen. only Gen 19:19). In the speeches of the three, צדיק (only with Elihu, Job 34:17), משׁפט, and שׁלּם, as expressions of the divine justitia recompensativa, are not to be found; נסּה and בחן become nowhere synonymous to designate Job's sufferings by the right name; מסּה appears (Job 9:23) only in the general signification of misfortune.)\n\nbesides which also this characteristic, that only the oldest mode of heathen worship, star-worship (Job 31:26-28), is mentioned, without even the name of God (צבאות יהוה or צבאות אלהים) occurring, which designates God as Lord of the heavens, which the heathen deified. The writer has also intentionally avoided this name, which is the star of the time of the Israelitish kings; for he is never unmindful that his subject is an ante-and extra-Israelitish one.\n\nHengstenberg, in his Lecture on the Book of Job, 1856, goes so far as to maintain, that a character like Job cannot possibly have existed in the heathen world, and that revelation would have been unnecessary if heathendom could produce such characters for itself. The poet, however, without doubt, presupposes the opposite; and if he did not presuppose it, he should have refrained from using all his skill to produce the appearance of the opposite. That he has nevertheless done it, cannot mislead us: for, on the one hand, Job belongs to the patriarchal period, therefore the period before the giving of the law, - a period in which the early revelation was still at work, and the revelation of God, which had not remained unknown in the side branches of the patriarchal family. On the other hand, it is quite consistent with the standpoint of the Chokma, that it presupposes a preparatory self-manifestation of God even in the extra-Israelitish world; just as John's Gospel, which aims at proving in Christianity the absolute religion which shall satisfy every longing of all mankind, acknowledges τέκνα τοῦ Θεοῦ διεσκορπισμένα also beyond the people of God, Joh 11:52, without on this account finding the incarnation of the Logos, and the possibility of regeneration by it, to be superfluous.\n\nThis parallel between the book of Job and the Gospel by John is fully authorized; for the important disclosure which the prologue of John gives to us of the Logos, is already in being in the book of Job and the introduction to the book of Proverbs, especially ch. 8, without requiring the intervening element of the Alexandrine religious philosophy, which, however, after it is once there, may not be put aside or disavowed. The Alexandrine doctrine of the Logos is really the genuine more developed form, though with many imperfections, of that which is taught of the Chokma in the book of Job and in Proverbs. Both notions have a universalistic comprehensiveness, referring not only to Israel, but to mankind. The חכמה certainly took up its abode in Israel, as it itself proves in the book Σοφια Σειραχ, ch. 24; but there is also a share of it attainable by and allotted to all mankind. This is the view of the writer even beyond Israel fellowship is possible with the one living God, who has revealed himself in Israel; that He also there continually reveals himself, ordinarily in the conscience, and extraordinarily in dreams and visions; that there is also found there a longing and struggling after that redemption of which Israel has the clear words of promise. His wonderous book soars high above the Old Testament limit; it is the Melchizedek among the Old Testament books. The final and highest solution of the problem with which it grapples, has a quarry extending out even beyond the patriarchal history. The Wisdom of the book of Job originates, as we shall see, from paradise. For this turning also to the primeval histories of Genesis, which are earlier than the rise of the nations, and the investigation of the hieroglyphs in the prelude to the Thora, which are otherwise almost passed over in the Old Testament, belong to the peculiarities of the Chokma.\n\n3. Position in the Canon\n\nAs a work of the Chokma, the book of Job stands, with the three other works belonging to this class of the Israelitish literature, among the Hagiographa, which are called in Hebrew simply כתובים. Thus, by the side of תורה and נביאים, the third division of the canon is styled, in which are included all those writings belonging neither to the province of prophetic history nor prophetic declaration. Among the Hagiographa are writings even of a prophetic character, as Psalms and Daniel; but their writers were not properly נביאים. At present Lamentations stands among them; but this is not its original place, as also Ruth appears to have stood originally between Judges and Samuel. Both Lamentations and Ruth are placed among the Hagiographa, that there the five so-called מגלות or scrolls may stand together: Schir ha-Schirim the feast-book of the eight passover-day, Ruth that of the second Schabuoth-day, Kinoth that of the ninth of Ab, Koheleth that of the eight Succoth-day, Esther that of Purim. The book of Job, which is written neither in prophetico-historical style, nor in the style of prophetic preaching, but is a didactic poem, could stand nowhere else but in the third division of the canon. The position which it occupies is moreover a very shifting one. In the Alexandrine canon, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith, Esther, follow the four books of the Kings. The historical books therefore stand, from the earliest to the latest, side by side; then begins with Job, Psalms, Proverbs, a new row, opened with these three in stricter sense poetical books. Then Melito of Sardis, in the second century, places Chronicles with the books of the Kings, but arranges immediately after them the non-historical Hagiographa in the following order: Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Job; here the Salomonic writings are joined to the Davidic Psalter, and the anonymous book of Job stands last. In our editions of the Bible, the Hagiographa division begins with Psalms, Proverbs, Job (the succession peculiar to MSS of the German class); in the Talmud (Bathra, 14b), with Ruth, Psalms, Job, Proverbs; in the Masora, and in MSS of the Spanish class, with Chronicles, Psalms, Job, Proverbs. All these modes of arrangement are well considered. The Masora connects with the אחרונים נביאים the homogeneous book, the Chronicles; the Talmud places the book of Ruth before the Psalter as an historical prologue, or as a connection between the prophetico-historical books and the Hagiographa.\n\n(Note: That Job stands after the Psalms is explained by his being contemporary with the Queen of Sheba, or, accepting Moses as the writer of the book (in which case it should stand at the head of the Chethubim), by its not being placed foremost, on account of its terrible contents (according to the maxim בפרענותא מתחילינן לא).)\n\nThe practice in our editions is to put the Psalms as the first book of the division, which agrees with Luk 24:44, and with Philo, who places ὕμνους next to the prophetical books. Job stands only in the lxx at the head of the three so-called poetic books, perhaps as a work by its patriarchal contents referring back to the earliest times. Everywhere else the Psalter stands first among the three books. These three are commonly denoted by the vox memoralis מתספרי א; but this succession, Job, Proverbs, Psalms, is nowhere found. The Masora styles them after its own, and the Talmudic order אםספרי ת.\n\n4. The System of Accentuation\n\nManner of Writing in Verses, and Structure of the Strophe\n\nThe so-ciphered three books have, as is known, this in common, that they are (with the exception of the prologue and epilogue in the book of Job) punctuated according to a special system, which has been fully discussed in my Commentary on the Psalms, and in Baer's edition of the Psalter. This accent system, like the prosaic, is constructed on the fundamental law of dichotomy; but it is determined by better organization, more expressive and melodious utterance. Only the so-called prose accents, however, not the metrical or poetic (with the exception of a few detached fragments), have been preserved in transmission. Nevertheless, we are always still able to discern from these accents how the reading in the synagogue divided the thoughts collected into the form of Masoretic verses, into two chief divisions, and within these again into lesser divisions, and connected or separated the single words; while the musical rhythm accommodated itself as much as possible to the logical, so that the accentuation is on this account an important source for ascertaining the traditional exegesis, and contains an abundance of most valuable hints for the interpreter. Tradition, moreover, requires for the three books a verse-like short line stich-manner of writing; and פסוק, versus, meant originally, not the Masoretic verse, but the separate sentence, στίχος, denoted in the accent system by a great distinctive; as e.g., Job 3:3 :\n\nLet the day perish wherein I was born,\n\nAnd the night, which said, There is a man-child conceived,\n\nis a Masoretic verse divided into two parts by Athnach, and therefore, according to the old order, is to be written as two στίχοι.\n\n(Note: The meaning of this old order, and the aptness of its execution, has been lost in later copyists, because they break off not according to the sense, but only according to the space, as the στίχοι in numbering the lines, e.g., of the Greek orators, are mere lines according to the space (Raumzeile), at least according to Ritschl's view (Die alex. Bibliotheken, 1838, S. 92-136), which, however, has been disputed by Vmel. The old soferish order intends lines according to the sense, and so also the Greek distinction by πέντε στιχηραὶ (στιχήρεις) βίβλοι, i.e., Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Canticles, Ecclesiastes.)\n\nThis also is important. In order to recognise the strophe-structure of Hebrew poems, one must attend to the στίχοι, in which the poetic thoughts follow one another in well-measured flow. Parallelism, which we must likewise acknowledge as the fundamental law of the rhythm of Hebrew poetry, forms the evolutions of thought not always of two members, but often - as e.g., Job 3:4, Job 3:5, Job 3:6, Job 3:9 - also of three. The poetic formation is not, however, confined to this, but even further combines (as is most unmistakeably manifest in the alphabetical psalms,\n\n(Note: That from these we may proceed, the ancients here and there conjectures; as e.g., Serpilius says, \"It may perhaps occur to some, whether now and then a slight judgment of the Davidic species of verse and poesy may not be in some way formed from his, so to speak, alphabetical psalms.\")\n\nand as recently also Ewald inclines to acknowledge)\n\n(Note: On strophes in the book of Job, Jahrb. iii. 118: \"That the Masoretic division of the verses is not always correct, follows also from a more exact consideration of the strophes. Here comes a further question, whether one must determine the limit of such a strophe only according to the verses, which are often in themselves very irregular, or rather, strictly according to the members of the verse? The latter seems to me, at least in some parts, certainly to be the case, as I have already had opportunity to remark.\" Nevertheless, he reckons the strophes in Neue Bemerkungen zum B. Ijob, Job 9:35-37, according to lines = Masoretic verses.)\n\nsuch distichs and tristichs into a greater whole, forming a complete circle of thought; in other words, into strophes of four, eight, or some higher number of lines, in themselves paragraphs, which, however, show themselves as strophes, inasmuch as they recur and change symmetrically. Hupfeld has objected that these strophes, as an aggregate formed of a symmetrical number of stichs, are opposed to the nature of the rhythm = parallelism, which cannot stand on one leg, but needs two; but this objection is as invalid as if one should say, Because every soldier has two legs, therefore soldiers can only march singly, and not in a row and company. It may be seen, e.g., from Job 36:22-25, Job 36:26-29, Job 36:30-33, where the poet begins three times with הן, and three times the sentences so beginning are formed of eight lines. Shall we not say there are three eight-line strophes beginning with הן? Nevertheless, we are far from maintaining that the book of Job consists absolutely of speeches in the strophe and poetic form. It breaks up, however, into paragraphs, which not unfrequently become symmetrical strophes. That neither the symmetrical nor mixed strophe-schema is throughout with strict unexceptional regularity carried out, arises from the artistic freedom which the poet was obliged to maintain in order not to sacrifice the truth as well as the beauty of the dialogue. Our translation, arranged in paragraphs, and the schemata of the number of stichs in the paragraph placed above each speech, will show that the arrangement of the whole is, after all, far more strophic than its dramatic character allows, according to classic and modern poetic art.\n\n(Note: What Gottfr. Hermann, in his diss. de arte poesis Graecorum bucolicae, says respecting the strophe-division in Theocritus, is nevertheless to be attentively considered: Verendum est ne ipsi nobis somnia fingamus perdamusque operam, si artificiosas stropharum comparationes comminiscamur, de quibus ipsi poetae ne cogitaverint quidem. Viderique potest id eo probabilius esse, quod saepenumero dubitari potest, sic an aliter constituendae sint strophae. Nam poesis, qualis haec bucolicorum est, quae maximam partem ex brevibus dictis est composita, ipsa natura sua talis est ut in partes fere vel pares vel similes dividi possit. Nihilo tamen minus illam strophicam rationem non negligendam arbitror, ut quae apud poetas bucolicos in consuetudinem vertisse videatur, etc.)\n\nIt is similar in Canticles, with the melodramatic character of which it better agrees. In both cases it is explained from the Hebrew poesy being in its fundamental peculiarity lyric, and from the drama not having freed itself from the lyric element, and attained to complete independence. The book of Job is, moreover, not a drama grown to complete development. Prologue and epilogue are treated as history, and the separate speeches are introduce din the narrative style. In the latter respect (with the exception of Job 2:10), Canticles is more directly dramatic than the book of Job.\n\n(Note: Hence there are Greek MSS, in which the names of the speakers (e.g., ἡ νύμφη, αἱ νεανίδες, ὁ νυμφίος) are prefixed to the separate parts of Canticles (vid., Repertorium fr bibl. u. morgenl. Lit. viii. 1781, S. 180). The Archimandrite Porphyrios, who in his Travels, 1856, described the Codex Sinaiticus before Tischendorf, though unsatisfactorily, describes there also such διαλογικῶς written MSS of Canticles.)\n\nThe drama is here in reference to the strophic form in the garb of Canticles, and in respect of the narrative form in the garb of history or epopee. Also the book of Job cannot be regarded as drama, if we consider, with G. Baur,\n\n(Note: Das B. Hiob und Dante's Gttliche Camdie, Studien u. Krit. 1856, iii.)\n\ndramatic and scenic to be inseparable ideas; for the Jews first became acquainted with the theatre from the Greeks and Romans.\n\n(Note: See my Geschichte der jdischen Dramatik in my edition of the Migdal Oz1 (hebr. handling of the Pastor fido of Guarini) by Mose Chajim Luzzatto, Leipz. 1837.)\n\nNevertheless, it is questionable whether the drama everywhere presupposes the existence of the stage, as e.g., A. W. v. Schlegel, in his Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, maintains. Gthe, at least, more than once asserts, that \"drama and a composition for the stage may be separate,\" and admits a \"dramatic plot and execution\" in Canticles.\n\n(Note: Werke (neue Ausg. in 30 Bden.), xiii. 596; xxvi. 513f.)\n\n5. The Dramatic Art of the Plot and Execution\n\nOn the whole, we have as little hesitation as Hupfeld in calling the book of Job a drama; and it is characteristic of the Israelitish Chokma, that by Canticles and the book of Job, its two generic manifestations, it has enriched the national poesy with this new form of poetic composition. The book of Job is, though not altogether, yet substantially, a drama, and one consisting of seven divisions: (1) ch. 1-3, the opening; (2) ch. 4-14, the first course of the controversy, or the beginning entanglement; (3) ch. 15-21, the second course of the controversy, or the increasing entanglement; (4) ch. 22-26, the third course of the controversy, or the increasing entanglement at its highest; (5) ch. 27-31, the transition from the entanglement (δέσις) to the unravelling (λύσις): Job's monologues; (6) ch. 38-42:6, the consciousness of the unravelling; (7) Job 42:7., the unravelling in outward reality. In this we have left Elihu'a speeches (ch. 32-37) out of consideration, because it is very questionable whether they are a part of the original form of the book, and not, on the contrary, the introduction of another poet. If we include them, the drama has eight divisions. The speeches of Elihu form an interlude in the transition from the δέσις to the λύσις. The book of Job is an audience-chamber, and one can readily suppose that a contemporary or later poet may have mixed himself up with the speakers. Whether, however, this is really the case, may remain here undecided. The prologue is narrative, but still partly in dialogue style, and so far not altogether undramatical. In form it corresponds most to the Euripidean, which also are a kind of epic introduction to the pieces, and it accomplishes what Sophocles in his prologues so thoroughly understands. At the very beginning he excites interest in the occurrences to be brought forward, and makes us acquainted with that which remains concealed from the actors. After the knot of the puzzle is tied in the prologue, it becomes more and more deeply entangled in the three courses of the controversy. In the monologues of Job it begins to be disentangled, and in the sixth part the unravelling follows, well prepared for, and therefore not ἀπὸ μηχανῆς, and is perfected in the epilogue or exodus: the servant of God, being so far as necessary cleared by penitence, is justified in opposition to his friends; and the victor, tried in accordance with the divine utterance, is crowned. It is therefore a continually progressing history. The remark of Herder,\n\n(Note: Geist der Ebrischen Poesi, 1805, i. S. 137.)\n\n\"Here all is stationary in long conversations,\" is superficial. It is from beginning to end a stream of the most active life, with external incident only in the opening and in the unravelling; what Shlegel says of Gthe's Iphigenie holds good of the middle of the book, that the ideas are worked into incidents, and brought, as it were, before the eye. Moreover, as in Gthe's Tasso, the deficiency of external action is compensated by the richness and precision with which the characters are drawn. Satan, Job's wife, the hero himself, the three friends, - everywhere diversified and minute description. The poet manifests, also, dramatic skill in other directions. He has laid out the controversy with a masterly hand, making the heart of the reader gradually averse to the friends, and in the same degree winning it towards Job. He makes the friends all through give utterance to the most glorious truths, which, however, in the application to the case before them, turn out to be untrue. And although the whole of the representation serves one great idea, it is still not represented by any of the persons brought forward, and is by no one expressly uttered. Every person is, as it were, the consonant letter to the word of this idea; it is throughout the whole book taken up with the realization of itself; at the end it first comes forth as the resulting product of the whole. Job himself is not less a tragic hero than the Oedipus of both Sophicles' tragedies.\n\n(Note: Schultens says: Quidquid tragoedia vetus unquam Sophocleo vel Aeschyleo molita est cothurno, infra magnitudinem, gravitatem, ardorem, animositatem horum affectuum infinitum quantum subsidet. Similarly Ewald (Jahrb. ix. 27): Neither the Hindoos, nor the Greek sand Romans, have such a lofty and purely perfected poem to produce. One would perhaps compare it with one of Aeschylus or Sophocles' tragedies as the nearest, but we cannot easily find a single one among these approaching its unblemished height and perfection in the midst of the greatest simplicity.)\n\nWhat is there an inevitable fate, expressed by the oracle, is in the book of Job the decree of Jehovah, over whom is no controlling power, decreed in the assembly of angels. As a painful puzzle the lot of affliction comes down on Job. At the beginning he is the victor of an easy battle, until the friends' exhortations to repentance are added to suffering, which in itself is incomprehensible, and make it still harder to be understood. He is thereby involved in a hard conflict, in which at one time, full of arrogant self-confidence, he exalts himself heavenward; at another time, sinks to the ground in desponding sadness.\n\nThe God, however, against which he fights is but a phantom, which the temptation has presented to his saddened eye instead of the true God; and this phantom is in no way different from the inexorable fate of the Greek tragedy. As in that the hero seeks to","order":18,"numberOfChapters":41,"sha256":"b4687bb0caf8f131eb8035ae9e2ffb05e470da84e585f472ad5278538bdf728d","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/JOB/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"keil-delitzsch","book":"JOB","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":42,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/JOB/42.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"keil-delitzsch","book":"JOB","chapter":42},"totalNumberOfVerses":297},"chapter":{"number":10,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":1,"content":["1 My soul is full of disgust with my life,\nTherefore I will freely utter my complaint;\nI will speak in the bitterness of my soul.\n2 I will say to Eloah: Condemn me not;\nLet me know wherefore Thou contendest with me!\nHis self-consciousness makes him desire that the possibility of answering for himself might be granted him; and since he is weary of life, and has renounced all claim for its continuance, he will at least give his complaints free course, and pray the Author of his sufferings that He would not permit him to die the death of the wicked, contrary to the testimony of his own conscience. נקטה is equivalent to נקטּה ot tnel, Eze 6:9, after the usual manner of the contraction of double Ayin verbs (Gen 11:6-7; Isa 19:3; Jdg 5:5; Eze 41:7; vid., Ges. 67, rem. 11); it may nevertheless be derived directly from נקט, for this secondary verb formed from the Niph. נקט is supported by the Aramaic. In like manner, in Gen 17:11 perhaps a secondary verb נמל, and certainly in Gen 9:19 and Isa 23:3 a secondary verb נפץ (Sa1 13:11), formed from the Niph. נפץ (Gen 10:18), is to be supposed; for the contraction of the Niphal form נקומה into נקמה is impossible; and the supposition which has been advanced, of a root פצץ = פוץ in the signification diffundere, dissipare is unnecessary. His soul is disgusted (fastidio affecta est, or fastidit) with his life, therefore he will give free course to his plaint (comp. Job 7:11). עלי is not super or de me, but, as Job 30:16, in me; it belongs to the Ego, as an expression of spontaneity: I in myself, since the Ego is the subject, ὑποκείμενον, of his individuality (Psychol. S. 151f.). The inner man is meant, which has the Ego over or in itself; from this the complaint shall issue forth as a stream without restraint; not, however, a mere gloomy lamentation over his pain, but a supplicatory complaint directed to God respecting the peculiar pang of his suffering, viz., this stroke which seems to come upon him from his Judge (ריב, seq. acc., as Isa 27:8), without his being conscious of that for which he is accounted guilty. \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["3 Doth it please Thee when Thou oppressest,\nThat Thou rejectest the work of Thy hands,\nWhile Thou shinest upon the counsel of the wicked?\n4 Hast Thou eyes of flesh,\nOr seest Thou as a mortal seeth?\n5 Are Thy days as the days of a mortal,\nOr Thy years as man's days,\n6 That Thou seekest after my iniquity,\nAnd searchest after my sin?\n7 Although Thou knowest that I am not a wicked man,\nAnd there is none that can deliver out of Thy hand.\nThere are three questions by which Job seeks to exhaust every possible way of accounting for his sufferings as coming from God. These attempts at explanation, however, are at once destroyed, because they proceed upon conceptions which are unworthy of God, and opposed to His nature. Firstly, Whether it gives Him pleasure (טּוב, agreeable, as Job 13:9) when He oppresses, when He despises, i.e., keeps down forcibly or casts from Him as hateful (מאס, as Psa 89:39; Isa 54:6) the work of His hand; while, on the contrary, He permits light to shine from above upon the design of the wicked, i.e., favours it? Man is called the יגיע of the divine hands, as though he were elaborated by them, because at his origin (Gen 2:7), the continuation of which is the development in the womb (Psa 139:15), he came into existence in a remarkable manner by the directly personal, careful, and, so to speak, skilful working of God. That it is the morally innocent which is here described, may be seen not only from the contrast (Job 10:3), but also from the fact that he only can be spoken of as oppressed and rejected. Moreover, \"the work of Thy hands\" involves a negative reply to the question. Such an unloving mood of self-satisfaction is contrary to the bounty and beneficence of that love to which man owes his existence. Secondly, Whether God has eyes of flesh, i.e., of sense, which regard only the outward appearance, without an insight into the inner nature, or whether He sees as mortals see, i.e., judges, κατὰ τῆν σάρκα (Joh 8:15)? Mercier correctly: num ex facie judicas, ut affectibus ducaris more hominum. This question also supplies its own negative; it is based upon the thought that God lookest on the heart (Sa1 16:7). Thirdly, Whether His life is like to the brevity of man's life, so that He is not able to wait until a man's sin manifests itself, but must institute such a painful course of investigation with him, in order to extort from him as quickly as possible a confession of it? Suffering appears here to be a means of inquisition, which is followed by the final judgment when the guilt is proved. What is added in Job 10:7 puts this supposition aside also as inconceivable. Such a mode of proceeding may be conceived of in a mortal ruler, who, on account of his short-sightedness, seeks to bring about by severe measures that which was at first only conjecture, and who, from the apprehension that he may not witness that vengeance in which he delights, hastens forward the criminal process as much as possible, in order that his victim may not escape him. God, however, to whom belongs absolute knowledge and absolute power, would act thus, although, etc. על, although, notwithstanding (proceeding from the signification, besides, insuper), as Job 17:16 (Isa 53:9), Job 34:6. God knows even from the first that he (Job) will not appear as a guilty person (רשׁע, as in Job 9:29); and however that may be, He is at all events sure of him, for nothing escapes the hand of God.\nThat operation of the divine love which is first echoed in \"the labour of Thy hands,\" is taken up in the following strophe, and, as Job contemplates it, his present lot seems to him quite incomprehensible. \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":8,"content":["8 Thy hands have formed and perfected me\nAltogether round about, and Thou hast now swallowed me up!\n9 Consider now, that Thou has perfected me as clay,\nAnd wilt Thou turn me again into dust?\n10 Hast Thou not poured me out as milk,\nAnd curdled me as curd?\n11 With skin and flesh hast Thou clothed me,\nAnd Thou hast intertwined me with bones and sinews;\n12 Life and favour Thou hast shown me,\nAnd thy care hath guarded my breath.\nThe development of the embryo was regarded by the Israelitish Chokma as one of the greatest mysteries (Ecc 11:5; 2 Macc. 7:22f.). There are two poetical passages which treat explicitly of this mysterious existence: this strophe of the book of Job, and the Psalm by David, Psa 139:13-16 (Psychol. S. 210). The assertion of Scheuchzer, Hoffmann, and Oetinger, that these passages of Scripture \"include, and indeed go beyond, all recent systemata generationis,\" attributes to Scripture a design of imparting instruction, - a purpose which is foreign to it. Scripture nowhere attempts an analysis of the workings of nature, but only traces them back to their final cause. According to the view of Scripture, a creative act similar to the creation of Adam is repeated at the origin of each individual; and the continuation of development according to natural laws is not less the working of God than the creative planting of the very beginning. Thy hands, says Job, have formed (עצּב, to cut, carve, fashion; cognate are חצב, קצב, without the accompanying notion of toil, which makes this word specially appropriate, as describing the fashioning of the complicated nature of man) and perfected me. We do not translate: made; for עשׂה stands in the same relation to ברא and יצר as perficere to creare and fingere (Gen 2:2; Isa 43:7). יחד refers to the members of the body collectively, and סביב to the whole form. The perfecting as clay implies three things: the earthiness of the substance, the origin of man without his knowledge and co-operation, and the moulding of the shapeless substance by divine power and wisdom. The primal origin of man, de limo terrae (Job 33:6; Psa 139:15), is repeated in the womb. The figures which follow (Job 10:10) describe this origin, which being obscure is all the more mysterious, and glorifies the power of God the more. The sperma is likened to milk; the חתּיך (used elsewhere of smelting), which Seb. Schmid rightly explains rem colliquatam fundere et immittere in formam aliquam, refers to the nisus formativus which dwells in it. The embryo which is formed from the sperma is likened to גּבינה, which means in all the Semitic dialects cheese (curd). \"As whey\" (Ewald, Hahn) is not suitable; whey does not curdle; in making cheese it is allowed to run off from the curdled milk. \"As cream\" (Schlottm.) is not less incorrect; cream is not lac coagulatum, which the word signifies. The embryo forming itself from the sperma is like milk which is curdled and beaten into shape.\nThe consecutio temporum, moreover, must be observed here. It is, for example, incorrect to translate, with Ewald: Dost Thou not let me flow away like milk, etc. Job looks back to the beginning of his life; the four clauses, Job 10:10, Job 10:11, under the control of the first two verbs (Job 10:8), which influence the whole strophe, are also retrospective in meaning. The futt. are consequently like synchronous imperff.; as, then, Job 10:12 returns to perff., Job 10:11 describes the development of the embryo to the full-grown infant, on which Grotius remarks: Hic ordo est in genitura: primum pellicula fit, deinde in ea caro, duriora paulatim accedunt, and by Job 10:12, the manifestations of divine goodness, not only in the womb, but from the beginning of life and onwards, are intended. The expression \"Life and favour (this combination does not occur elsewhere) hast Thou done to me\" is zeugmatic: He has given him life, and sustained that life amidst constant proofs of favour; His care has guarded the spirit (רוּח), by which his frame becomes a living and self-conscious being. This grateful retrospect is interspersed with painful reflections, in which Job gives utterance to his feeling of the contrast between the manifestation of the divine goodness which he had hitherto experienced and his present condition. As in Job 10:8., ותּבלּעני, which Hirzel wrongly translates: and wilt now destroy me; it is rather: and hast now swallowed me up, i.e., drawn me down into destruction, as it were brought me to nought; or even, if in the fut. consec., as is frequently the case, the consecutive and not the aorist signification preponderates: and now swallowest me up; and in Job 10:9 (where, though not clear from the syntax, it is clear from the substance that תשׁיבני is not to be understood as an imperfect, like the futt. in Job 10:10.): wilt Thou cause me to become dust again? The same tone is continued in the following strophe. Thus graciously has he been brought into being, and his life sustained, in order that he may come to such a terrible end. \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["13 And such Thou hast hidden in Thy heart,\nI perceive that this was in Thy mind:\n14 If I should sin, Thou wouldst take note of it,\nAnd not acquit me of my iniquity.\n15 If I should act wickedly, woe unto me!\nAnd were I righteous, I should not lift up my head,\nBeing full of shame and conscious of my misery.\n16 And were I to raise it, Thou wouldst hunt me as a lion,\nAnd ever display on me Thy wondrous power,\n17 Thou wouldst ever bring fresh witnesses against me,\nAnd increase Thy wrath against me,\nI should be compelled to withstand continuously advancing troops and a host.\nThis manifestation of divine goodness which Job has experienced from the earliest existence seems to him, as he compares his present lot of suffering with it, to have served as a veil to a hidden purpose of a totally opposite character. That purpose - to make this life, which has been so graciously called into existence and guarded thus far, the object of the severest and most condemning visitation - is now manifest. Both אלּה and זאת refer to what is to follow: עמּך זאת used of the thought conceived, the purpose cherished, as Job 23:14; Job 27:11. All that follows receives a future colouring from this principal clause, \"This is what Thou hadst designed to do,\" which rules the strophe. Thus Job 10:14 is to be rendered: If I had sinned, Thou wouldst have kept me in remembrance, properly custodies me, which is here equivalent to custoditurus eras me. שׁמר, with the acc. of the person, according to Psa 130:3 (where it is followed by the acc. of the sin), is to be understood: to keep any one in remembrance, i.e., to mark him as sinful (Hirzel). This appears more appropriate than rigide observaturus eras me (Schlottm.). ושׁמרתני, according to Ges. 121, 4, might be taken for לי ושׁמרת (viz., חטּאתי); but this is unnecessary, and we have merely translated it thus for the sake of clearness. His infirmities must not be passed by unpunished; and if he should act wickedly (רשׁע, of malignant sin, in distinction from חטא), woe unto him (comp. οἰαί μοι, Co1 9:16). According to the construction referred to above, וצדקתי is praet. hypotheticum (Ges. 155, 4, a); and the conclusion follows without waw apodosis: If I had acted rightly, I should not have raised my head, being full of shame and conscious of my misery. The adjectives are not in apposition to ראשׁי (Bttcher), but describe the condition into which he would be brought, instead of being able (according to the ethical principle, Gen 4:7) to raise his head cheerfully. ראה constr. of ראה, as שׂבע or שׂבע. It is needless, with Pisc., Hirz., Bttch., and Ewald, to alter it to ראה, since ראה is verbal adjective like יפה, נכה, קשׁה. Moreover, וּראה cannot be imperative (Rosenm., De Wette); for although imperatives, joined by waw to sentences of a different construction, do occur (Psa 77:2; Sa2 21:3), such an exclamation would destroy the connection and tone of the strophe in the present case.\nJob 10:16\nיגאה is hypothetical, like וצדקתי, but put in the future form, because referring to a voluntary act (Ewald, 357, b): and if it (the head) would (nevertheless) exalt itself (גאה, to raise proudly or in joyous self-consciousness), then (without waw apod., which is found in other passages, e.g., Job 22:28) Thou wouldst hunt me like a shachal (vid., Job 4:10), - Job likens God to the lion (as Hos 5:14; Hos 13:7), and himself to the prey which the lion pursues-Thou wouldst ever anew show Thyself wonderful at my expense (תּשׁב, voluntative form, followed by a future with which it is connected adverbially, Ges. 142, 3, b; תּתפּלּא, with in the last syllable, although not in pause, as Num 19:12; Ewald, 141, c.), i.e., wonderful in power, and inventive by ever new forms off suffering, by which I should be compelled to repent this haughtiness. The witnesses (עדים) that God continually brings forth afresh against him are his sufferings (vid., Job 16:8), which, while he is conscious of his innocence, declare him to be a sinner; for Job, like the friends, cannot think of suffering and sin otherwise than as connected one with the other: suffering is partly the result of sin, and partly it sets the mark of sin on the man who is no sinner. תּרב (fut. apoc. Hiph. Ges. 75, rem. 15) is also the voluntative form: Thou wouldst multiply, increase Thy malignity against me. עם, contra, as also in other passages with words denoting strife and war, Job 13:19; Job 23:6; Job 31:13; or where the context implies hostility, Psa 55:19; Psa 94:16. The last line is a clause by itself consisting of nouns. וצבא חליפות is considered by all modern expositors as hendiadys, as Mercier translates: impetor variis et sibi succedentibus malorum agminibus; and צבא is mostly taken collectively. Changes and hosts = hosts continuously dispersing themselves, and always coming on afresh to the attack. But is not this form of expression unnatural? By חליפות Job means the advancing troops, and by צבא the main body of the army, from which they are reinforced; the former stands first, because the thought figuratively expressed in תחדשׁ and תרב is continued (comp. Job 19:12): the enmity of God is manifested against him by ever fresh sufferings, which are added to the one chief affliction. Bttcher calls attention to the fact that all the lines from v. 14 end in , a rhythm formed by the inflection, which is also continued in v. 18. This repetition of the pronominal suffix gives intensity to the impression that these manifestations of the divine wrath have special reference to himself individually. \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":18,"content":["18 And wherefore hast Thou brought me forth out of the womb?\nI should have expired, that no eye had seen me,\n19 I should have been as though I had never been,\nCarried from the womb to the grave.\n20 Are not my days few? then cease\nAnd turn from me, that I may become a little cheerful,\n21 Before I go to return no more\nInto the land of darkness and of the shadow of death,\n22 The land of deep darkness like to midnight,\nOf the shadow of death and of confusion,\nAnd which is bright like midnight.\nThe question Wherefore? Job 10:18, is followed by futt. as modi conditionales (Ges. 127, 5) of that which would and should have happened, if God had not permitted him to be born alive: I should have expired, prop. I ought to have expired, being put back to the time of birth (comp. Job 3:13, where the praet. more objectively expressed what would then have happened). These modi condit. are continued in Job 10:19 : I should have been (sc. in the womb) as though I had not been (comp. the short elliptical \n(Note: כלא is there = לא כאשׁר, like ללא, Isa 65:1 = לא לאשׁר [vid. Ges. 123, 3], and כּ is used as a conjunction as little as ל (vid., on Psa 38:14).)\nexpression, Oba 1:16), i.e., as one who had scarcely entered upon existence, and that only of the earliest (as at conception); I should have been carried (הוּבל, as Job 21:32) from the womb (without seeing the light as one born alive) to the grave. This detestation of his existence passes into the wish, Job 10:20, that God would be pleased at least somewhat to relieve him ere he is swallowed up by the night of Hades. We must neither with the Targ. translate: are not my days few, and vanishing away? nor with Oetinger: will not my fewness of days cease? Both are contrary to the correct accentuation. Olshausen thinks it remarkable that there is not a weaker pausal accent to ימי; but such a one is really indirectly there, for Munach is here equivalent to Dech, from which it is formed (vid., the rule in Comm. ber den Psalter, ii. 504). Accordingly, Seb. Schmid correctly translates: nonne parum dies mei? ideo cessa. The Keri substitutes the precative form of expression for the optative: cease then, turn away from me then (imper. consec. with waw of the result, Ewald, 235, a); comp. the precative conclusion to the speech, Job 7:16., but there is no real reason for changing the optative form of the text. ישׁית (voluntative for ישׁת, Job 9:33) may be supplemented by ידו, פניו, עיניו ,פ, or לבו (Job 7:17) (not, however, with Hirz., שׁבטו, after Job 9:34, which is too far-fetched for the usage of the language, or with Bttch., מחנהו, copias suas); שׁית can however, like שׂים, Job 4:20, signify to turn one's self to, se disponere = to attend to, consequently מן שׁית, to turn the attention from, as מן שׁעה, Job 7:19, Ps. 39:14 (where, as here, ואבליגה follows).\nHe desires a momentary alleviation of his sufferings and ease before his descent to Hades, which seems so near at hand. He calls Hades the land of darkness and of the shadow of death. צלמות, which occurs for the first time in the Old Testament in Psa 23:4, is made into a compound from סלמוּת, and is the proper word for the obscurity of the region of the dead, and is accordingly repeated later on. Further, he calls it the land of encircling darkness (עפתה, defective for עיפתה, from עוף, caligare, and with He parag. intensive for עיפה, in Amo 4:13, who also uses הבליג, Job 5:9, in common with Job), like midnight darkness. אפל cannot mean merely the grey of twilight, it is the entire absence of sunlight, Job 3:6; Job 28:3; Psa 91:6; comp. ex. Job 10:22, where the Egyptian darkness is called אפלה חשׁך. Bttch. correctly compares אפל and נפל: mersa ad imum h.e. profunda nox (the advancing night). Still further he calls it (the land) of the shadow of death, and devoid of order (סדרים, ἅπ. λεγ. in the Old Testament, but a common word in the later Hebrew), i.e., where everything is so encompassed by the shadow of death that it seems a chaos, without any visible or distinct outline. It is difficult to determine whether ותּפע is to be referred to ארץ: and which lights (fut. consec. as the accent on the penult. indicates, the syntax like Job 3:21, Job 3:23; Isa 57:3); or is to be taken as neuter: and it shines there (= and where it shines) like midnight darkness. Since ותּפע (from יפע = ופע, to rise, shine forth; vid., on Psa 95:4), as also האיר, does not occur elsewhere as neuter, we prefer, with Hirzel, to refer it to ארץ ot, as being more certain. Moreover, אפל is here evidently the intensest darkness, ipsum medullitium umbrae mortis ejusque intensissimum, as Oetinger expresses it. That which is there called light, i.e., the faintest degree of darkness, is like the midnight of this world; \"not light, but darkness visible,\" as Milton says of hell.\nThe maxim of the friends is: God does not pervert right, i.e., He deals justly in all that He does. They conclude from this, that no man, no sufferer, dare justify himself: it is his duty to humble himself under the just hand of God. Job assents to all this, but his assent is mere sarcasm at what they say. He admits that everything that God does is right, and must be acknowledged as right; not, however, because it is right in itself, but because it is the act of the absolute God, against whom no protest uttered by the creature, though with the clearest conviction of innocence, can avail. Job separates goodness from God, and regards that which is part of His very being as a produce of His arbitrary will. What God says and does must be true and right, even if it be not true and right in itself. The God represented by the friends is a God of absolute justice; the God of Job is a God of absolute power. The former deals according to the objective rule of right; the latter according to a freedom which, because removed from all moral restraint, is pure caprice.\nHow is it that Job entertains such a cheerless view of the matter? The friends, by the strong view which they have taken up, urge him into another extreme. On their part, they imagine that in the justice of God they have a principle which is sufficient to account for all the misfortunes of mankind, and Job's in particular. They maintain, with respect to mankind in general (Eliphaz by an example from his own observation, and Bildad by calling to his aid the wisdom of the ancients), that the ungodly, though prosperous for a time, come to a fearful end; with respect to Job, that his affliction is a just chastisement from God, although designed for his good. Against the one assertion Job's own experience of life rebels; against the other his consciousness rises up with indignation. Job's observation is really as correct as that of the friends; for the history of the past and of the present furnishes as many illustrations of judgments which have suddenly come upon the godless in the height of their prosperity, as of general visitations in which the innocent have suffered with the guilty, by whom these judgments have been incurred. But with regard to his misfortune, Job cannot and ought not to look at it from the standpoint of the divine justice. For the proposition, which we will give in the words of Brentius, quidquid post fidei justificationem pio acciderit, innocenti accidit, is applicable to our present subject.\nIf, then, Job's suffering were not so severe, and his faith so powerfully shaken, he would comfort himself with the thought that the divine ways are unsearchable; since, on the one hand, he cannot deny the many traces of the justice of the divine government in the world (he does not deny them even here), and on the other hand, is perplexed by the equally numerous incongruities of human destiny with the divine justice. (This thought is rendered more consolatory to us by the revelation which we possess of the future life; although even in the later Old Testament times the last judgment is referred to as the adjustment of all these incongruities; vid., the conclusion of Ecclesiastes.) His own lot might have remained always inexplicable to him, without his being obliged on that account to lose the consciousness of the divine love, and that faith like Asaph's, which, as Luther says, struggles towards God through wrath and disfavour, as through thorns, yea, even through spears and swords.\nJob is passing through conflict and temptation. He does not perceive the divine motive and purpose of his suffering, nor has he that firm and unshaken faith which will keep him from mistaken views of God, although His dispensations are an enigma to him; but, as his first speech (ch. 3) shows, he is tormented by thoughts which form part of the conflict of temptation. The image of the gracious God is hidden from him, he feels only the working of the divine wrath, and asks, Wherefore doth God give light to the suffering ones? - a question which must not greatly surprise us, for, as Luther says, \"There has never been any one so holy that he has not been tormented with this quare, quare, Wherefore? wherefore should it be so?\" And when the friends, who know as little as Job himself about the right solution of this mystery, censure him for his inquiry, and think that in the propositions: man has no righteousness which he can maintain before God, and God does not pervert the right, they have found the key to the mystery, the conflict becomes fiercer for Job, because the justice of God furnishes him with no satisfactory explanation of his own lot, or of the afflictions of mankind generally. The justice of God, which the friends consider to be sufficient to explain everything that befalls man, Job can only regard as the right of the Supreme Being; and while it appears to the friends that every act of God is controlled by His justice, it seems to Job that whatever God does must be right, by virtue of His absolute power.\nThis principle, devoid of consolation, drives Job to the utterances so unworthy of him, that, in spite of his conviction of his innocence, he must appear guilty before God, because he must be speechless before His terrible majesty, - that if, however, God would only for once so meet him that he could fearlessly address Him, he would know well enough how to defend himself (ch. 9). After these utterances of his feeling, from which all consciousness of the divine love is absent, he puts forth the touching prayer: Condemn me not without letting me know why Thou dost condemn me! (Job 10:1-7).\nAs he looks back, he is obliged to praise God, as his Creator and Preserver, for what He has hitherto done for him (Job 10:8-12); but as he thinks of his present condition, he sees that from the very beginning God designed to vent His wrath upon him, to mark his infirmities, and to deprive him of all joy in the consciousness of his innocence (Job 10:13-17). He is therefore compelled to regard God as his enemy, and this thought overpowers the remembrance of the divine goodness. If, however, God were his enemy, he might well ask, Wherefore then have I come into being? And while he writhes as a worm crushed beneath the almighty power of God, he prays that God would let him alone for a season ere he passes away into the land of darkness, whence there is no return (Job 10:18-22).\nBrentius remarks that this speech of Job contains inferni blasphemias, and explains them thus: non enim in tanto judicii horrore Deum patrem, sed carnificem sentit; but also adds, that in passages like Job 10:8-12 faith raises its head even in the midst of judgment; for when he praises the mercies of God, he does so spiritu fidei, and these he would not acknowledge were there not a fidei scintilla still remaining. This is true. The groundwork of Job's faith remains even in the fiercest conflict of temptation, and is continually manifest; we should be unable to understand the book unless we could see this fidei scintilla, the extinction of which would be the accomplishment of Satan's design against him, glimmering everywhere through the speeches of Job. The unworthy thoughts he entertains of God, which Brentius calls inferni blasphemias, are nowhere indulged to such a length that Job charges God with being his enemy, although he fancies Him to be an enraged foe. In spite of the imagined enmity of God against him, Job nowhere goes so far as to declare enmity on his part against God, so far as אלהים ברך. He does not turn away from God, but inclines to Him in prayer. His soul is filled with adoration of God, and with reverence of His power and majesty; he can clearly discern God's marvellous works in nature and among men, and His creative power and gracious providence, the workings of which he has himself experienced. But that mystery, which the friends have made still more mysterious, has cast a dark cloud over his vision, so that he can no longer behold the loving countenance of God. His faith is unable to disperse this cloud, and so he sees but one side of the divine character - His Almightiness. Since he consequently looks upon God as the Almighty and the Wrathful One, his felling alternately manifests itself under two equally tragical phases. At one time he exalts himself in his consciousness of the justice of his cause, to sink back again before the majesty of God, to whom he must nevertheless succumb; at another time his feeling of self-confidence is overpowered by the severity of his suffering, and he betakes himself to importunate supplication.\nIt is true that Job, so long as he regards his sufferings as a dispensation of divine judgment, is as unjust towards God as he believes God to be unjust towards him; but if we bear in mind that this state of conflict and temptation does not preclude the idea of a temporal withdrawal of faith, and that, as Baumgarten (Pentat. i. 209) aptly expresses it, the profound secret of prayer is this, that man can prevail with the Divine Being, then we shall understand that this dark cloud need only be removed, and Job again stands before the God of love as His saint. \n"]}]},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/JOB/10.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"keil-delitzsch","book":"JOB","chapter":10},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/JOB/11.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"keil-delitzsch","book":"JOB","chapter":11},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/JOB/9.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"keil-delitzsch","book":"JOB","chapter":9},"numberOfVerses":5}