{"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":14,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":1,"content":["1 Man that is born of a woman,\nShort of days and full of unrest,\n2 Cometh forth as a flower and is cut down;\nHe fleeth as a shadow, and continueth not.\n3 Moreover, Thou openest Thine eyes upon him,\nAnd Thou drawest me before Thy tribunal.\nEven if he yields to the restraint which his suffering imposes on him, to regard himself as a sinner undergoing punishment, he is not able to satisfy himself by thus persuading himself to this view of God's conduct towards him. How can God pass so strict a judgment on man, whose life is so short and full of sorrow, and which cannot possibly be pure from sin? - Job 14:1. אדם is followed by three clauses in apposition, or rather two, for אשּׁה ילוּד (lxx γεννητὸς γυναικός, as Mat 11:11; comp. γέννημα γυν. Sir. 10:18) belongs to the subject as an adjectival clause: woman-born man, short-lived, and full of unrest, opens out as a flower. Woman is weak, with pain she brings forth children; she is impure during her lying-in, therefore weakness, suffering, and impurity is the portion of man even from the birth (Job 15:14; Job 25:4). As קצר is the constr. of קצר, so (רגז) שׂבע is from שׂבע, which here, as Job 10:15, has the strong signification: endowed (with adversity). It is questionable whether ויּמּל, Job 14:2, signifies et marcescit or et succiditur. We have decided here as elsewhere (vid., on Psa 37:2; Psa 90:6, Genesis, S. 383) in favour of the latter meaning, and as the Targ. (אתמולל), translated \"he is mown down.\" For this meaning (prop. to cut off from above or before, to lop off), - in which the verb מלל (מוּל נמל) is become technical for the περιτομή, - is most probably favoured by its application in Job 24:24; where Jerome however translates, sicut summitates spicarum conterentur, since he derives ימלו from מלל in the signification not found in the Bible (unless perhaps retained in מלילה ni , Deu 23:25), fricare (Arab. mll, frigere, to parch). At the same time, the signification marcescere, which certainly cannot be combined with praecidere, but may be with fricare (conterere), is not unnatural; it is more appropriate to a flower (comp. נבל ציץ, Isa 40:7); it accords with the parallelism Psa 37:2, and must be considered etymologically possible in comparison with ק־מל א־מל. But it is not supported by any dialect, and none of the old translations furnish any certain evidence in its favour; ימולל, Psa 90:6, which is to be understood impersonally rather than intransitively, does not favour it; and none of the passages in which ימּל occurs demand it: least of all Job 24:24, where praeciduntur is more suitable than, and Job 18:16, praeciditur, quite as suitable as, marcescit. For these reasons we also take ויּמּל here, not as fut. Kal from מלל, or, as Hahn, from נמל = נבל, to wither, but as fut. Niph. from מלל, to cut down. At the same time, we do not deny the possibility of the notion of withering having been connected with ימל, whether it be that it belonged originally and independently to the root מל, or has branched off from some other radical notion, as \"to fall in pieces\" (lxx here ἐξέπεσεν, and similarly also Job 18:16; Job 24:24; comp. מלחים, rags, נמלח, to come to pieces, to be dissolved) or \"to become soft\" (with which the significations in the dialects, to grind and to parch, may be connected). As a flower, which having opened out is soon cut or withered, is man: אף, accedit quod, insuper. This particle, related to ἐπὶ, adds an enhancing cumulat. More than this, God keeps His eye open (not: His eyes, for the correct reading, expressly noted by the Masora, is עינך without Jod plur.), על־זה, super hoc s. tali, over this poor child of man, who is a perishable flower, and not a \"walking light, but a fleeting shadow\" (Gregory the Great), to watch for and punish his sins, and brings Job to judgment before himself, His tribunal which puts down every justification. Elsewhere the word is pointed במשׁפט, Job 9:32; Job 22:4; here it is במשׁפט, because the idea is rendered determinate by the addition of עמך. \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":4,"content":["4 Would that a pure one could come from an impure!\nNot a single one - - \n5 His days then are determined,\nThe number of his months is known to Thee,\nThou hast appointed bounds for him that he may not pass over:\n6 Look away from him then, and let him rest,\nUntil he shall accomplish as a hireling his day.\nWould that perfect sinlessness were possible to man; but since (to use a New Testament expression) that which is born of the flesh is flesh, there is not a single one pure. The optative מי־יתּן seems to be used here with an acc. of the object, according to its literal meaning, quis det s. afferat, as Job 31:31; Deu 28:67; Psa 14:7. Ewald remarks (and refers to 358, b, of his Grammar) that לא, Job 14:4, must be the same as לוּ; but although in Sa1 20:14; Sa2 13:26; Kg2 5:17, לא might be equivalent to the optative לו, which is questionable, still אחד לא here, as an echo of אין גם־אחד, Psa 14:3, is Job's own answer to his wish, that cannot be fulfilled: not one, i.e., is in existence. Like the friends, he acknowledges an hereditary proneness to sin; but this proneness to sin affords him no satisfactory explanation of so unmerciful a visitation of punishment as his seems to him to be. It appears to him that man must the rather be an object of divine forbearance and compassion, since absolute purity is impossible to him. If, as is really the case, man's days are חרוּצים, cut off, i.e., ἀποτόμως, determined (distinct from חרוצים with an unchangeable Kametz: sharp, i.e., quick, eager, diligent), - if the number of his months is with God, i.e., known by God, because fixed beforehand by Him, - if He has set fixed bounds (Keri חקּיו) for him, and he cannot go beyond them, may God then look away from him, i.e., turn from him His strict watch (מן שׁעה, as Job 7:19; מן שׁית, Job 10:20), that he may have rest (יחדּל, cesset), so that he may at least as a hireling enjoy his day. Thus ירצה is interpreted by all modern expositors, and most of them consider the object or reason of his rejoicing to be the rest of evening when his work is done, and thereby miss the meaning.\nHahn appropriately says, \"He desires that God would grant man the comparative rest of the hireling, who must toil in sorrow and eat his bread in the sweat of his brow, but still is free from any special suffering, by not laying extraordinary affliction on him in addition to the common infirmities beneath which he sighs. Since the context treats of freedom from special suffering in life, not of the hope of being set free from it, comp. Job 13:25-27; Job 14:3, the explanation of Umbreit, Ew., Hirz., and others, is to be entirely rejected, viz., that God would at least permit man the rest of a hireling, who, though he be vexed with heavy toil, cheerfully reconciles himself to it in prospect of the reward he hopes to obtain at evening time. Job does not claim for man the toil which the hireling gladly undergoes in expectation of complete rest, but the toil of the hireling, which seems to him to be rest in comparison with the possibility of having still greater toil to undergo.\" Such is the true connection.\n(Note: In honour of our departed friend, whose Commentary on Job abounds in observations manifesting a delicate appreciation of the writer's purpose and thought, we have quoted his own words.)\nMan's life - this life which is as a hand-breadth (Psa 39:6), and in Job 7:1. is compared to a hireling's day, which is sorrowful enough - is not to be overburdened with still more and extraordinary suffering.\nIt must be asked, however, whether ריה seq. acc. here signifies εὐδοκεῖν (τὸν βίον, lxx), or not rather persolvere; for it is undeniable that it has this meaning in Lev 26:34 (vid., however Keil [Pent., en loc.]) and elsewhere (prop. to satisfy, remove, discharge what is due). The Hiphil is used in this sense in post-biblical Hebrew, and most Jewish expositors explain ירצה by ישלים. If it signifies to enjoy, עד ought to be interpreted: that (he at least may, like as a hireling, enjoy his day). But this signification of עד (ut in the final sense) is strange, and the signification dum (Job 1:18; Job 8:21) or adeo ut (Isa 47:7) is not, however, suitable, if ירצה is to be explained in the sense of persolvere, and therefore translate donec persolvat (persolverit). We have translated \"until he accomplish,\" and wish \"accomplish\" to be understood in the sense of \"making complete,\" as Col 1:24, Luther (\"vollzhlig machen\") = ἀνταναπληροῦν. \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":7,"content":["7 For there is hope for a tree:\nIf it is hewn down, it sprouts again,\nAnd its shoot ceaseth not.\n8 If its root becometh old in the ground,\nAnd its trunk dieth off in the dust:\n9 At the scent of water it buddeth,\nAnd bringeth forth branches like a young plant.\nAs the tree falleth so it lieth, says a cheerless proverb. Job, a true child of his age, has a still sadder conception of the destiny of man in death; and the conflict through which he is passing makes this sad conception still sadder than it otherwise is. The fate of the tree is far from being so hopeless as that of man; for (1) if a tree is hewn down, it (the stump left in the ground) puts forth new shoots (on החליף, vid., on Psa 90:6), and young branches (יונקת, the tender juicy sucker μόσχος) do not cease. This is a fact, which is used by Isaiah (Isa 6:1-13) as an emblem of a fundamental law in operation in the history of Israel: the terebinth and oak there symbolize Israel; the stump (מצבת) is the remnant that survives the judgment, and this remnant becomes the seed from which a new sanctified Israel springs up after the old is destroyed. Carey is certainly not wrong when he remarks that Job thinks specially of the palm (the date), which is propagated by such suckers; Shaw's expression corresponds exactly to לא תחדל: \"when the old trunk dies, there is never wanting one or other of these offsprings to succeed it.\" Then (2) if the root of a tree becomes old (חזקין inchoative Hiphil: senescere, Ew. 122, c) in the earth, and its trunk (גּזע also of the stem of an undecayed tree, Isa 40:24) dies away in the dust, it can nevertheless regain its vitality which had succumbed to the weakness of old age: revived by the scent (ריח always of scent, which anything exhales, not, perhaps Sol 1:3 only excepted, odor = odoratus) of water, it puts forth buds for both leaves and flowers, and brings forth branches (קציר, prop. cuttings, twigs) again, כמו נטע, like a plant, or a young plant (the form of נטע in pause), therefore, as if fresh planted, lxx ὥσπερ νεόφυτον. One is here at once reminded of the palm which, on the one hand, is pre-eminently a φιλυδρον φυτόν,\n(Note: When the English army landed in Egypt in 1801, Sir Sydney Smith gave the troops the sure sign, that wherever date-trees grew there must be water; and this is supported by the fact of people digging after it generally, within a certain range round the tree within which the roots of the tree could obtain moisture from the fluid. - Vid., R. Wilson's History of the Expedition to Egypt, p. 18.)\non the other hand possesses a wonderful vitality, whence it is become a figure for youthful vigour. The palm and the phoenix have one name, and not without reason. The tree reviving as from the dead at the scent of water, which Job describes, is like that wondrous bird rising again from its own ashes (vid., on Job 29:18). Even when centuries have at last destroyed the palm - says Masius, in his beautiful and thoughtful studies of nature - thousands of inextricable fibres of parasites cling about the stem, and delude the traveller with an appearance of life. \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":10,"content":["10 But man dieth, he lieth there stretched out,\nMan giveth up the ghost, and where is he?\n11 The waters flow away from the sea,\nAnd a stream decayeth and dryeth up:\n12 So man lieth down and riseth not again;\nTill the heavens pass away they wake not,\nAnd are not aroused from their sleep.\nHow much less favoured is the final lot of man! He dies, and then lies there completely broken down and melted away (חלשׁ( yaw, in the neuter signification, confectum esse, rendered in the Targum by אתּבר and אתמקמק). The fut. consec. continues the description of the cheerless results of death: He who has thus once fallen together is gone without leaving a trace of life. In Job 14:11. this vanishing away without hope and beyond recovery is contemplated under the figure of running water, or of water that is dried up and never returns again to its channel. Instead of אזלוּ Isaiah uses נשּׁתוּ (Job 19:5) in the oracle on Egypt, a prophecy in which many passages borrowed from the book of Job are interwoven. The former means to flow away (related radically with נזל), the latter to dry up (transposed נתּשׁ, Jer 18:14). But he also uses יחרב, which signifies the drying in, and then ויבשׁ, which is the complete drying up which follows upon the drying in (vid., Genesis, S. 264). What is thus figuratively expressed is introduced by waw (Job 14:12), similar to the waw adaequationis of the emblematic proverbs mentioned at Job 5:7; Job 11:12 : so there is for man no rising (קוּם), no waking up (הקיץ), no ἐγείρεσθαι (נעור), and indeed not for ever; for what does not happen until the heavens are no more (comp. Psa 72:7, till the moon is no more), never happens; because God has called the heavens and the stars with their laws into existence, לעד לעולם (Psa 148:6), they never cease (Jer 31:35.), the days of heaven are eternal (Psa 89:30). This is not opposed to declarations like Psa 102:27, for the world's history, according to the teaching of Scripture, closes with a change in all these, but not their annihilation. What is affirmed in Job 14:10-12 of mankind in general, is, by the change to the plural in Job 14:12, affirmed of each individual of the race. Their sleep of death is עזלם שׁנת (Jer 51:39, Jer 51:57). What Sheôl summons away from the world, the world never sees again. Oh that it were otherwise! How would the brighter future have comforted him with respect to the sorrowful present and the dark night of the grave! \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["13 Oh that Thou wouldst hide me in Shel,\nThat Thou wouldst conceal me till Thine anger change,\nThat Thou wouldst appoint me a time and then remember me!\n14 If man dieth, shall he live again?\nAll the days of my warfare would I wait,\nUntil my change should come.\n15 Thou wouldst call and I would answer,\nThou wouldst have a desire for the work of Thy hands - \n16 For now thou numberest my steps,\nAnd dost not restrain thyself over my sins.\nThe optative יתּן מי introduces a wish that has reference to the future, and is therefore, as at Job 6:8, followed by futt.; comp. on the other hand, Job 23:3, utinam noverim. The language of the wish reminds one of such passages in the Psalms as Psa 31:21; Psa 27:5 (comp. Isa 26:20): \"In the day of trouble He hideth me in His pavilion, and in the secret of His tabernacle doth He conceal me.\" So Job wishes that Hades, into which the wrath of God now precipitates him for ever, may only be a temporary place of safety for him, until the wrath of God turn away (שׁוּב, comp. the causative, Job 9:13); that God would appoint to him, when there, a חק, i.e., a terminus ad quem (comp. Job 14:5), and when this limit should be reached, again remember him in mercy. This is a wish that Job marks out for himself. The reality is indeed different: \"if (ἐὰν) a man dies, will he live again?\" The answer which Job's consciousness, ignorant of anything better, alone can give, is: No, there is no life after death. It is, however, none the less a craving of his heart that gives rise to the wish; it is the most favourable thought, - a desirable possibility, - which, if it were but a reality, would comfort him under all present suffering: \"all the days of my warfare would I wait until my change came.\" צבא is the name he gives to the whole of this toilsome and sorrowful interval between the present and the wished-for goal, - the life on earth, which he likens to the service of the soldier or of the hireling (Job 7:1), and which is subject to an inevitable destiny (Job 5:7) of manifold suffering, together with the night of Hades, where this life is continued in its most shadowy and dismal phase. And חליפה does not here signify destruction in the sense of death, as the Jewish expositors, by comparing Isa 2:18 and Sol 2:11, explain it; but (with reference to צבאי, comp. Job 10:17) the following after (Arab. chlı̂ft, succession, successor, i.e., of Mohammed), relief, change (syn. תּמוּרה, exchange, barter), here of change of condition, as Psa 55:20, of change of mind; Aquila, Theod., ἄλλαγμα. Oh that such a change awaited him! What a blessed future would it be if it should come to pass! Then would God call to him in the depth of Shel, and he, imprisoned until the appointed time of release, would answer Him from the deep. After His anger was spent, God would again yearn after the work of His hands (comp. Job 10:3), the natural loving relation between the Creator and His creature would again prevail, and it would become manifest that wrath is only a waning power (Isa 54:8), and love His true and essential attribute. Schlottman well observes: \"Job must have had a keen perception of the profound relation between the creature and his Maker in the past, to be able to give utterance to such an imaginative expectation respecting the future.\"\nIn Job 14:16, Job supports what is cheering in this prospect, with which he wishes he might be allowed to console himself, by the contrast of the present. עתּה כּי is used here as in Job 6:21; כי is not, as elsewhere, where עתה כי introduces the conclusion, confirmatory (indeed now = then indeed), but assigns a reason (for now). Now God numbers his steps (Job 13:27), watching him as a criminal, and does not restrain himself over his sin. Most modern expositors (Ew., Hlgst, Hahn, Schlottm.) translate: Thou observest not my sins, i.e., whether they are to be so severely punished or not; but this is poor. Raschi: Thou waitest not over my sins, i.e., to punish them; instead of which Ralbag directly: Thou waitest not for my sins = repentance or punishment; but שׁמר is not supported in the meaning: to wait, by Gen 37:11. Aben-Ezra: Thou lookest not except on my sins, by supplying רק, according to Ecc 2:24 (where, however, probably משׁיאכל should be read, and מ after אדם, just as in Job 33:17, has fallen away). The most doubtful is, with Hirzel, to take the sentence as interrogative, in opposition to the parallelism: and dost Thou not keep watch over my sins? It seems to me that the sense intended must be derived from the phrase אף שׁמר, which means to keep anger, and consequently to delay the manifestation of it (Amo 1:11). This phrase is here so applied, that we obtain the sense: Thou keepest not Thy wrath to thyself, but pourest it out entirely. Mercerus is substantially correct: non reservas nec differs peccati mei punitionem. \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["17 My transgression is sealed up in a bag,\nAnd Thou hast devised additions to my iniquity.\n18 But a falling mountain moveth indeed,\nAnd a rock falleth from its place.\n19 Water holloweth out stone,\nIts overflowings carry away the dust of the earth,\nAnd the hope of man - Thou destroyest.\nThe meaning of Job 14:17 is, not that the judgment which pronounces him guilty lies in the sealed-up bag of the judge, so that it requires only to be handed over for execution (Hirz., Ew., Renan), for although פּשׁע (though not exactly the punishment of sin, which it does not signify even in Dan 9:24) can denote wickedness, as proved and recorded, and therefore metonomically the penal sentence, the figure is, however, taken not from the mode of preserving important documents, but from the mode of preserving collected articles of value in a sealed bag. The passage must be explained according to Hos 13:12; Deu 32:34; Rom 2:5, comp. Jer 17:1. The evil Job had formerly (Job 13:26) committed according to the sentence of God, God has gathered together as in a money bag, and carefully preserved, in order now to bring them home to him. And not this alone, however; He has devised still more against him than his actual misdeeds. Ewald translates: Thou hast sewed up my punishment; but טפל (vid., on Job 13:4) signifies, not to sew up, but: to sew on, patch on, and gen. to add (טפל, Rabb. accidens, a subordinate matter, opp. עקּר), after which the lxx translates ἐπεσημήνω (noted in addition), and Gecatilia Arab. ḥftṣt (added to in collecting). It is used here just as in the Aramaic phrase טפל שׁקרא (to patch on falsehood, to invent scandal).\nThe idea of the figures which follow is questionable. Hahn maintains that they do not describe destruction, but change, and that consequently the relation of Job 14:19 to what precedes is not similarity, but contrast: stones are not so hard, that they are not at length hollowed out, and the firm land is not so firm that it cannot be carried away by the flood; but man's prospect is for ever a hopeless one, and only for him is there no prospect of his lot ever being changed. Thus I thought formerly it should be explained: considering the waw, Job 14:19, as indicative not of comparison, but of contrast. But the assumption that the point of comparison is change, not destruction, cannot be maintained: the figures represent the slow but inevitable destruction wrought by the elements on the greatest mountains, on rocks, and on the solid earth. And if the poet had intended to contrast the slow but certain changes of nature with the hopelessness of man's lot, how many more appropriate illustrations, in which nature seems to come forth as with new life from the dead, were at his command! Raschi, who also considers the relation of the clauses to be antithetical, is guided by the right perception when he interprets: even a mountain that is cast down still brings forth fruit, and a rock removed from its place, even these are not without some signs of vitality in them, יבּול = (יבוּל) יעשׂהבוּל, which is indeed a linguistic impossibility. The majority of expositors are therefore right when they take the waw, Job 14:19, similarly to Job 5:7; Job 11:12; Job 12:11, as waw adaequationis. With this interpretation also, the connection of the clause with what precedes by ואוּלם (which is used exactly as in Job 1:11; Job 11:5; Job 12:7, where it signifies verum enim vero or attamen) is unconstrained. The course of thought is as follows: With unsparing severity, and even beyond the measure of my guilt, hast Thou caused me to suffer punishment for my sins, but (nevertheless) Thou shouldst rather be gentle and forbearing towards me, since even that which is firmest, strongest, and most durable cannot withstand ultimate destruction; and entirely in accordance with the same law, weak, frail man (אנושׁ) meets an early certain end, and at the same time Thou cuttest off from him every ground of hope of a continued existence. The waw, Job 14:19, is consequently, according to the sense, more quanto magis than sic, placing the things to be contrasted over against each other. הר־נופL is a falling, not a fallen (Ralbag) mountain; and having once received the impetus, it continues gradually to give way; Renan: s'effondre peu peu. Carey, better: \"will decay,\" for נבל (cogn. נבל) signifies, decrease from external loses; specially of the falling off of leaves, Isa 34:4. The second figure, like Job 18:4, is to be explained according to Job 9:5 : a rock removes (not as Jerome translates, transfertur, which would be יעתק, and also not as lxx παλαιωθήσεται, Schlottm.: becomes old and crumbles away, although in itself admissible both as to language and fact; comp. on Job 21:7) from its place; it does not stand absolutely, immovably fast. In the third figure אבנים is a prominent object, as the accentuation with Mehupach legarmeh or (as it is found in correct Codd.) with Asla legarmeh rightly indicates שׁחק signifies exactly the same as Arab. sḥq, attere, conterere. In the fourth figure, ספיח must not be interpreted as meaning that which grows up spontaneously without re-sowing, although the Targum translates accordingly: it (the water) washes away its (i.e., the dust of the earth's) after-growth (כּתהא), which Symm. follows (τὰ παραλελειμνένα). It is also impossible according to the expression; for it must have been עפר הארץ. Jerome is essentially correct: et alluvione paullatim terra consumitur. It is true that ספח in Hebrew does not mean effundere in any other passage (on this point, vid., on Hab 2:15), but here the meaning effusio or alluvio may be supposed without much hesitation; and in a book whose language is so closely connected with the Arabic, we may even refer to ספח = Arab. sfḥ (kindred to Arab. sfk, שׁפך), although the word may also (as Ralbag suggests), by comparison with מטר סחף, Pro 28:3, and Arab. sḥı̂qt, a storm of rain, be regarded as transposed from חיפיה, from סחף in Arab. to tear off, sweep away, Targ. to thrust away (= רחף), Syr., Talm. to overthrow, subvertere (whence s'chifto, a cancer or cancerous ulcer). The suffix refers to מים, and תּשׁטף before a plural subject is quite according to rule, Ges. 146, 3. ספיחיה is mostly marked with Mercha, but according to our interpretation Dech, which is found here and there in the Codd., would be more correct.\nThe point of the four illustrations is not that not one of them is restored to its former condition (Oetinger, Hirz.), but that in spite of their stability they are overwhelmed by destruction, and that irrecoverably. Even the most durable things cannot defy decay, and now even as to mortal man - Thou hast brought his hope utterly to nought (האבדת with Pathach in pause as frequently; vid., Psalter ii. 468). The perf. is praegnans: all at once, suddenly - death, the germ of which he carries in him even from his birth, is to him an end without one ray of hope, - it is also the death of his hope. \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":20,"content":["20 Thou siezest him for ever, then he passeth away;\nThou changest his countenance and castest him forth.\n21 If his sons come to honour, he knoweth it not;\nOr to want, he observeth them not.\n22 Only on his own account his flesh suffereth pain,\nAnd on his own account is his soul conscious of grief.\nThe old expositors thought that תּתקפהוּ must be explained by תתקף נמנו (Thou provest thyself stronger than he, according to Ges. 121, 4), because תּקף is intrans.; but it is also transitive in the sense of seizing forcibly and grasping, Job 15:24; Ecc 4:12, as Talm. תּקף (otherwise commonly אתקף as החזיק), Arab. taqifa, comprehendere. The many sufferings which God inflicts on him in the course of his life are not meant; לנצח does not signify here: continually, without intermission, as most expositors explain, but as Job 4:20; Job 20:7, and throughout the book: for ever (Rosenm., Hahn, Welte). God gives him the death-stroke which puts an end to his life for ever, he passes away βαίνει, οἴχεται (comp. Job 10:21); disfiguring his countenance, i.e., in the struggle of death and in death by the gradual working of decay, distorting and making him unlike himself, He thrusts him out of this life (שׁלּח like Gen 3:23). The waw consec. is used here as e.g., Psa 118:27.\nWhen he is descended into Hades he knows nothing more of the fortune of his children, for as Ecc 9:6 says: the dead have absolutely no portion in anything that happens under the sun. In Job 14:21 Job does not think of his own children that have died, nor his grandchildren (Ewald); he speaks of mankind in general. כּבד and צער are not here placed in contrast in the sense of much and little, but, as in Jer 30:19, in the wider sense of an important or a destitute position; כּבד, to be honoured, to attain to honour, as Isa 66:5. בּין (to observe anything) is joined with ל of the object, as in Psa 73:17 (on the other hand, להּ, Job 13:1, was taken as dat. ethicus). He neither knows nor cares anything about the welfare of those who survive him: \"Nothing but pain and sadness is the existence of the dead; and the pain of his own flesh, the sadness of his own soul, alone engage him. He has therefore no room for rejoicing, nor does the joyous or sorrowful estate of others, though his nearest ones, affect him\" (Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, i. 495). This is certainly, as Ewald and Psychol. S. 444, the meaning of Job 14:22; but עליו is hardly to be translated with Hofmann \"in him,\" so that it gives the intensive force of ἴδιος to the suff. For it is improbable that in this connection, - where the indifference of the deceased respecting others, and the absolute reference to himself of the existence of pain on his own account, are contrasted, - עליו, Job 14:22, is to be understood according to Job 30:16 (Psychol. S. 152), but rather objectively (over him). On the other hand, Job 14:22 is not to be translated: over himself only does his flesh feel pain (Schlottm., Hirz., and others); for the flesh as inanimate may indeed be poetically, so to speak zeugmatically, represented as conscious of pain, but not as referring its pain to another, and consequently as self-conscious. On this account, עליו, Job 14:22, is to be taken in the signification, over him = upon him, or as Job 14:22 (beyond him), which is doubtful; or it signifies, as we have sought to render it in our translation in both cases, propter eum. Only on his own account does his flesh suffer, i.e., only applying to himself, only on his own account does his soul mourn, i.e., only over his own condition. He has no knowledge and interest that extends beyond himself; only he himself is the object of that which takes place with his flesh in the grave, and of that on which his soul reflects below in the depths of Hades. According to this interpretation אך belongs to עליו, after the hyperbaton described at Job 2:10, comp. Job 13:15, Isa 34:15. And he עליו, Job 14:22, implies the idea (which is clearly expressed in Isa 66:24, and especially in Judith 16:17: δοῦναι πῦρ καὶ σκώληκας εἰς σάρκας αὐτῶν καὶ κλαύσονται ἐν αἰσθήσει ἕως αἰῶνος) that the process of the decomposition of the body is a source of pain and sorrow to the departed spirit, - a conception which proceeds from the supposition, right in itself, that a connection between body and soul is still continued beyond the grave, - a connection which is assumed by the resurrection, but which, as Job viewed it, only made the future still more sorrowful.\nThis speech of Job (Job 12-14), which closes here, falls into three parts, which correspond to the divisions into chapters. In the impassioned speech of Zophar, who treats Job as an empty and conceited babbler, the one-sided dogmatical standpoint of the friends was maintained with such arrogance and assumption, that Job is obliged to put forth all his power in self-defence. The first part of the speech (Job 12) triumphantly puts down this arrogance and assumption. Job replies that the wisdom, of which they profess to be the only possessors, is nothing remarkable, and the contempt with which they treat him is the common lot of the innocent, while the prosperity of the ungodly remains undisturbed. In order, however, to prove to them that what they say of the majesty of God, before which he should humble himself, can neither overawe nor help him, he refers them to creation, which in its varied works testifies to this majesty, this creative power of God, and the absolute dependence of every living thin on Him, and proves that he is not wanting in an appreciation of the truth contained in the sayings of the ancients by a description of the absolute majesty of God as it is manifested in the works of nature, and especially in the history of man, which excels everything that the three had said. This description is, however, throughout a gloomy picture of disasters which God brings about in the world, corresponding to the gloomy condition of mind in which Job is, and the disaster which is come upon himself.\nAs the friends have failed to solace him by their descriptions of God, so his own description is also utterly devoid of comfort. For the wisdom of God, of which he speaks, is not the wisdom that orders the world in which one can confide, and in which one has the surety of seeing every mystery of life sooner or later gloriously solved; but this wisdom is something purely negative, and repulsive rather than attractive, it is abstract exaltation over all created wisdom, whence it follows that he puts to shame the wisdom of the wise. Of the justice of God he does not speak at all, for in the narrow idea of the friends he cannot recognise its control; and of the love of God he speaks as little as the friends, for as the sight of the divine love is removed from them by the one-sidedness of their dogma, so is it from him by the feeling of the wrath of God which at present has possession of his whole being. Hegel has called the religion of the Old Testament the religion of sublimity (die Religion der Erhabenheit); and it is true that, so long as that manifestation of love, the incarnation of the Godhead, was not yet realized, God must have relatively transcended the religious consciousness. From the book of Job, however, this view can be brought back to its right limits; for, according to the tendency of the book, neither the idea of God presented by the friends nor by Job is the pure undimmed notion of God that belongs to the Old Testament. The friends conceive of God as the absolute One, who acts only according to justice; Job conceives of Him as the absolute One, who acts according to the arbitrariness of His absolute power. According to the idea of the book, the former is dogmatic one-sidedness, the latter the conception of one passing through temptation. The God of the Old Testament consequently rules neither according to justice alone, nor according to a \"sublime whim.\"\nAfter having proved his superiority over the friends in perception of the majesty of God, Job tells them his decision, that he shall turn away from them. The sermon they address to him is to no purpose, and in fact produces an effect the reverse of that intended by them. And while it does Job no good, it injures them, because their very defence of the honour of God incriminates themselves in the eyes of God. Their aim is missed by them, for the thought of the absolute majesty of God has no power to impart comfort to any kind of sufferer; nor can the thought of His absolute justice give any solace to a sufferer who is conscious that he suffers innocently. By their confidence that Job's affliction is a decree of the justice of God, they certainly seem to defend the honour of God; but this defence is reversed as soon as it is manifest that there exists no such just ground for inflicting punishment on him. Job's self-consciousness, however, which cannot be shaken, gives no testimony to its justice; their advocacy of God is therefore an injustice to Job, and a miserable attempt at doing God service, which cannot escape the undisguised punishment of God. It is to be carefully noted that in Job 13:6-12 Job seriously warns the friends that God will punish them for their partiality, i.e., that they have endeavoured to defend Him at the expense of truth.\nWe see from this how sound Job's idea of God is, so far as it is not affected by the change which seems, according to the light which his temptation casts upon his affliction, to have taken place in his personal relationship to God. While above, ch. 9, he did not acknowledge an objective right, and the rather evaded the thought, of God's dealing unjustly towards him, by the desperate assertion that what God does is in every case right because God does it, he here recognises an objective truth, which cannot be denied, even in favour of God, and the denial of which, even though it were a pientissima fraus, is strictly punished by God. God is the God of truth, and will therefore be neither defended nor honoured by any perverting of the truth. By such pious lies the friends involve themselves in guilt, since in opposition to their better knowledge they regard Job as unrighteous, and blind themselves to the incongruities of daily experience and the justice of God. Job will therefore have nothing more to do with them; and to whom does he now turn? Repelled by men, he feels all the more strongly drawn to God. He desires to carry his cause before God. He certainly considers God to be his enemy, but, like David, he thinks it is better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of man (Sa2 24:14). He will plead his cause with God, and prove to Him his innocence: he will do it, even though he be obliged to expiate his boldness with his life; for he knows that morally he will not be overcome in the contest. He requires compliance with but two conditions: that God would grant a temporary alleviation of his pain, and that He would not overawe him with the display of His majesty. Job's disputing with God is as terrible as it is pitiable. It is terrible, because he uplifts himself, Titan-like, against God; and pitiable, because the God against which he fights is not the God he has known, but a God that he is unable to recognise, - the phantom which the temptation has presented before his dim vision instead of the true God. This phantom is still the real God to him, but in other respects in no way differing from the inexorable ruling fate of the Greek tragedy. As in this the hero of the drama seeks to maintain his personal freedom against the mysterious power that is crushing him with an iron arm, so Job, even at the risk of sudden destruction, maintains the stedfast conviction of his innocence, in opposition to a God who has devoted him, as an evil-doer, to slow but certain destruction. The battle of freedom against necessity is the same as in the Greek tragedy. Accordingly one is obliged to regard it as an error, arising from simple ignorance, when it has been recently maintained that the boundless oriental imagination is not equal to such a truly exalted task as that of representing in art and poetry the power of the human spirit, and the maintenance of its dignity in the conflict with hostile powers, because a task that can only be accomplished by an imagination formed with a perception of the importance of recognising ascertained phenomena.\n(Note: Vid., Arnold Ruge, Die Academie, i. S. 29.)\nIn treating this subject, the book of Job not only attains to, but rises far above, the height attained by the Greek tragedy: for, on the one hand, it brings this conflict before us in all the fearful earnestness of a death-struggle; on the other, however, it does not leave us to the cheerless delusion that an absolute caprice moulds human destiny. This tragic conflict with the divine necessity is but the middle, not the beginning nor the end, of the book; for this god of fate is not the real God, but a delusion of Job's temptation. Human freedom does not succumb, but it comes forth from the battle, which is a refining fire to it, as conqueror. The dualism, which the Greek tragedy leaves unexplained, is here cleared up. The book certainly presents much which, from its tragic character, suggests this idea of destiny, but it is not its final aim - it goes far beyond: it does not end in the destruction of its hero by fate; but the end is the destruction of the idea of this fate itself.\nWe have seen in this speech (comp. Job 13:23, Job 13:26; Job 14:16.), as often already, that Job is as little able as the friends to disconnect suffering from the idea of the punishment of sin. If Job were mistaken or were misled by the friends respecting his innocence, the history of his sufferings would be no material for a drama, because there would be no inner development. But it is just Job's stedfast conviction of his innocence, and his maintenance of it in spite of the power which this prejudice exercises over him, that makes the history of his affliction the history of the development of a new and grand idea, and makes him as the subject, on whom it is developed, a tragic character. In conformity with his prepossession, Job sees himself put down by his affliction as a great sinner; and his friends actually draw the conclusion from false premises that he is such. But he asserts the testimony of his conscience to his innocence; and because this contradicts those premises, the one-sidedness of which he does not discern, God himself appears to him to be unjust and unmerciful. And against this God, whom the temptation has distorted and transformed to the miserable image of a ruler, guided only by an absolute caprice, he struggles on, and places the truth and freedom of his moral self-consciousness over against the restraint of the condemnatory sentence, which seems to be pronounced over him in the suffering he has to endure. Such is the struggle against God which we behold in the second part of the speech (ch. 13): ready to prove his innocence, he challenges God to trial; but since God does not appear, his confidence gives place to despondency, and his defiant tone to a tone of lamentation, which is continued in the third part of the speech (ch. 14).\nWhile he has raised his head towards heaven with the conscious pride of a תמים צדיק, first in opposition to the friends and then to God, he begins to complain as one who is thrust back, and yielding to the pressure of his affliction, begins to regard himself as a sinner. But he is still unable to satisfy himself respecting God's dealings by any such forcible self-persuasion. For how can God execute such strict judgment upon man, whose life is so short and full of care, and who, because he belongs to a sinful race, cannot possibly be pure from sin, without allowing him the comparative rest of a hireling? How can he thus harshly visit man, to whose life He has set an appointed bound, and who, when he once dies, returns to life no more for ever? The old expositors cannot at all understand this absolute denial of a new life after death. Brentius erroneously observes on donec coelum transierit: ergo resurget; and Mercerus, whose exposition is free from all prejudice, cannot persuade himself that the elecus et sanctus Dei vir can have denied not merely a second earthly life, but also the eternal imperishable life after death. And yet it is so: Job does not indeed mean that man when he dies is annihilated, but he knows of no other life after death but the shadowy life in Shel, which is no life at all. His laments really harmonize with those in Moschos iii. 106ff.:\nΑἲ αἲ, ταὶ μαλάχαι μὲν ἐπὰν κατὰ κᾶπον ὄλωνται,\nἬ τὰ χλωρὰ σέλινα, τό τ ̓ εὐθαλὲς οὖλον ἄνηθον,\nὝστερον αὖ ζώοντι καὶ εἰς ἔτος ἄλλο φύοντι·\nἌμμες δ ̓ οἱ μεγάλοι καὶ καρτεροὶ ἢ σοφοὶ ἄνδρες,\nὉππότε πρῶτα θάνωμες, ἀνάκοοι ἐν χθονὶ κοίλᾳ\nΕὔδομες εὖ μάλα μακρὸν ἀτέρμονα νήγρετον ὕπνον.\nAlas! alas! the mallows, after they are withered in the garden,\nOr the green parsley and the luxuriant curly dill,\nLive again hereafter and sprout in future years;\nBut we men, the great and brave, or the wise,\nWhen once we die, senseless in the bosom of the earth\nWe sleep a long, endless, and eternal sleep.\nAnd with that of Horace, Od. iv. 7, 1:\nNos ubi decidimus\nQuo pius Aeneas, quo dives Tullus et Ancus,\nPulvis et umbra sumus;\nOr with that of the Jagur Weda: \"While the tree that has fallen sprouts again from the root fresher than before, from what root does mortal man spring forth when he has fallen by the hand of death?\" \n(Note: Vid., Carey, The Book of Job, p. 447. We append here an extract from a letter of Consul Wetzstein, as giving an explanation of Job 14:7-9, derived from personal observation: \"The practice of cutting down the trees in order to obtain a new and increased use from them, is an important part of husbandry in the country east of the Jordan. It is, however, now almost confined to the region round Damascus, in consequence of the devastation of the country. This operation is called gemm (גמם), and is performed only with the axe, because the stump would decay away if sawn. When the vine, after bearing from sixty to eighty years, loses its fruitfulness and begins to decay, it is cut down close to the ground in the second kânûn (January). The first year it bears little or nothing, but throws out new branches and roots; and afterwards it bears plenteously, for the vine-stock has renewed its youth. The fig-tree (tı̂ne) and the pomegranate (rummâne), when old and decayed, are cut down in like manner. Their shoots are very numerous, and in the following winter as many as ten young plants may be taken from the pomegranate. Those that are left on the old stem bear fruit in the fourth year. The walnut-tree (gôze) ceases to bear much after 100 years, and becomes hollow and decayed. It is then cut down to within two or three yards from the ground. If the trees are well watered, the new shoots spring up in a year in uncommon luxuriance, and bear fruit in the second year. The new shoot is called darbne. From many trees, as the citron (lı̂mûne), ash (dardâre), and mulberry (tûte), this new shoot often attains a length of twelve feet in the first year, provided the tree has the conditio sine qua non which Job styles ריח מים - a plentiful supply of water.\")\nThese laments echo through the ancient world from one end to the other, and even Job is without any superior knowledge respecting the future life. He denies a resurrection and eternal life, not as one who has a knowledge of them and will not however know anything about them, but he really knows nothing of them: our earthly life seems to him to flow on into the darkness of Shel, and onward beyond Shel man has no further existence.\nWe inquire here: Can we say that the poet knew nothing of a resurrection and judgment after death? If we look to the psalms of the time of David and Solomon, we must reply in the negative. Since, however, as the Grecian mysteries fostered and cherished ἡδυστέρας ἐλπίδας, the Israelitish Chokma also, by its constant struggles upwards and onwards, anticipated views of the future world which reached beyond the present (Psychol. S. 410): it may be assumed, and from the book of Job directly inferred, that the poet had a perception of the future world which went beyond the dim perception of the people, which was not yet lighted up by any revelation. For, on the one hand, he has reproduced for us a history of the patriarchal period, not merely according to its external, but also according to its internal working, with as strict historical faithfulness as delicate psychological tact; on the other, he has with a master hand described for us in the history of Job what was only possible from an advanced standpoint of knowledge, - how the hope of a life beyond the present, where there is no express word of promise to guide it, struggles forth from the heart of man as an undefined desire and longing, so that the word of promise is the fulfilment and seal of this desire and yearning. For when Job gives expression to the wish that God would hide him in Shel until His anger turn, and then, at an appointed time, yearning after the work of His hands, raise him again from Shel (Job 14:13-17), this wish it not to be understood other than that Shel might be only his temporary hiding-place from the divine anger, instead of being his eternal abode. He wishes himself in Shel, so far as he would thereby be removed for a time from the wrath of God, in order that, after an appointed season, he might again become an object of the divine favour. He cheers himself with the delightful thought, All the days of my warfare would I wait till my change should come, etc.; for then the warfare of suffering would become easy to him, because favour, after wrath and deliverance from suffering and death, would be near at hand. We cannot say that Job here expresses the hope of a life after death; on the contrary, this hope is wanting to him, and all knowledge respecting the reasons that might warrant it. The hope exists only in imagination, as Ewald rightly observes, without becoming a certainty, since it is only the idea, How glorious it would be if it were so, that is followed up. But, on the one side, the poet shows us by this touching utterance of Job how totally different would be his endurance of suffering if he but knew that there was really a release from Hades; on the other side, he shows us, in the wish of Job, the incipient tendency of the growing hope that it might be so, for what a devout mind desires has a spiritual power which presses forward from the subjective to the objective reality. The hope of eternal life is a flower, says one of the old commentators, which grows on the verge of the abyss. The writer of the book of Job supports this. In the midst of this abyss of the feeling of divine wrath in which Job is sunk, this flower springs up to cheer him. In its growth, however, it is not hope, but only at first a longing. And this longing cannot expand into hope, because no light of promise shines forth in that night, by which Job's feeling is controlled, and which makes the conflict darker than it is in itself. Scarcely has Job feasted for a short space upon the idea of that which he would gladly hope for, when the thought of the reality of that which he has to fear overwhelms him. He seems to himself to be an evil-doer who is reserved for the execution of the sentence of death. If it is not possible in nature for mountains, rocks, stones, and the dust of the earth to resist the force of the elements, so is it an easy thing for God to destroy the hope of a mortal all at once. He forcibly thrust him hence from this life; and when he is descended to Hades, he knows nothing whatever of the lot of his own family in the world above. Of the life and knowledge of the living, nothing remains to him but the senseless pain of his dead body, which is gnawed away, and the dull sorrow of his soul, which continues but a shadowy life in Shel.\nThus the poet shows us, in the third part of Job's speech, a grand idea, which tries to force its way, but cannot. In the second part, Job desired to maintain his conviction of innocence before God: his confidence is repulsed by the idea of the God who is conceived of by him as an enemy and a capricious ruler, and changes to despair. In the third part, the desire for a life after death is maintained; but he is at once overwhelmed by the imagined inevitable and eternal darkness of Shel, but overwhelmed soon to appear again above the billows of temptation, until, in ch. 19, the utterance of faith respecting a future life rises as a certain confidence over death and the grave: the γνῶσις which comes forth from the conflict of the πίστις anticipates that better hope which in the New Testament is established and ratified by the act of redemption wrought by the Conqueror of Hades. \n"]}]},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/JOB/14.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"keil-delitzsch","book":"JOB","chapter":14},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/JOB/15.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"keil-delitzsch","book":"JOB","chapter":15},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/JOB/13.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"keil-delitzsch","book":"JOB","chapter":13},"numberOfVerses":7}