{"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":37,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":1,"content":["1 Yea, at this my heart trembleth\nAnd tottereth from its place.\n2 Hear, O hear the roar of His voice,\nAnd the murmur that goeth out of His mouth.\n3 He sendeth it forth under the whole heaven,\nAnd His lightning unto the ends of the earth.\n4 After it roareth the voice of the thunder,\nHe thundereth with the voice of His majesty,\nAnd spareth not the lightnings, when His voice is heard.\n5 God thundereth with His voice marvellously,\nDoing great things, incomprehensible to us.\nLouis Bridel is perhaps right when he inserts after Job 36 the observation: L'clair brille, la tonnerre gronde. לזאת does not refer to the phenomenon of the storm which is represented in the mind, but to that which is now to be perceived by the senses. The combination שׁמעוּ שׁמוע can signify both hear constantly, Isa 6:9, and hear attentively, Job 13:17; here it is the latter. רגז of thunder corresponds to the verbs Arab. rḥz and rjs, which can be similarly used. The repetition of קול fo noititeper eh five times calls to mind the seven קולות (ἑπτὰ βρονταί) in Psa 29:1-11. The parallel is הגה, Job 37:2, a murmuring, as elsewhere of the roar of the lion and the cooing of the dove. The suff. of ישׁרהוּ refers to the thunder which rolls through the immeasurable breadth under heaven; it is not perf. Piel of ישׁר (Schlottm.), for \"to give definite direction\" (Ch2 32:30) is not appropriate to thunder, but fut. Kal of שׁרה, to free, to unbind (Ew., Hirz. and most others). What Job 37:3 says of thunder, Job 37:3 says of light, i.e., the lightning: God sends it forth to the edges, πτέρυγες, i.e., ends, of the earth. אחריו, Job 37:4, naturally refers to the lightning, which is followed by the roar of the thunder; and יעקּבם to the flashes, which, when once its rumble is heard, God does not restrain (עקּב = עכּב of the Targ., and Arab. ‛aqqaba, to leave behind, postpone), but causes to flash forth in quick succession. Ewald's translation: should He not find (prop. non investigaverit) them (the men that are to be punished), gives a thought that has no support in this connection. In Job 37:5 נפלאות, mirabilia, is equivalent to mirabiliter, as Dan 8:24, comp. Psa 65:6; Psa 139:14. ולא נדע is intended to say that God's mighty acts, with respect to the connection between cause and effect and the employment of means, transcend our comprehension. \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["6 For He saith to the snow: Fall towards the earth,\nAnd to the rain-shower\nAnd the showers of His mighty rain.\n7 He putteth a seal on the hand of every man,\nThat all men may come to a knowledge of His creative work.\n8 The wild beast creepeth into a hiding-place,\nAnd in its resting-place it remaineth.\n9 Out of the remote part cometh the whirlwind,\nAnd cold from the cloud-sweepers.\n10 From the breath of God cometh ice,\nAnd the breadth of the waters is straitened.\nLike אבי, Job 34:36, and פּשׁ, Job 35:15, הוא, Job 37:6 (is falsely translated \"be earthwards\" by lxx, Targ., and Syr.), also belongs to the most striking Arabisms of the Elihu section: it signifies delabere (Jer. ut descendat), a signification which the Arab. hawâ does not gain from the radical signification placed first in Gesenius-Dietrich's Handwrterbuch, to breathe, blow, but from the radical signification, to gape, yawn, by means of the development of the meaning which also decides in favour of the primary notion of the Hebr. הוּה, according to which, what was said on Job 6:2; Job 30:13 is to be corrected.\n(Note: Arab. hawâ is originally χαίνειν, to gape, yawn, hiare, e.g., hawat et-ta‛natu, the stab gapes (imperf. tahwı̂, inf. huwı̂jun), \"when it opens its mouth\" - the Turkish Kamus adds, to complete the picture: like a tulip. Thence next hâwijatun, χαίνουσα χαῖνον, i.e., χᾶσμα = hûwatun, uhwı̂jatun, huwâatun, mahwâtun, a cleft, yawning deep, chasm, abyss, βάραθρον, vorago; hawı̂jatun and hauhâtun (a reduplicated form), especially a very deep pit or well. But these same words, hâwijatun, hûwatun, uhwı̂jatun, mahwâtun, also signify, like the usual Arab. hawa'â'un, the χάσμα between heaven and earth, i.e., the wide, empty space, the same as 'gauwun. The wider significations, or rather applications and references of hawâ: air set in motion, a current of air, wind, weather, are all secondary, and related to that primary signification as samâ, rain-clouds, rain, grass produced by the rain, to the prim. signification height, heaven, vid., Mehren, Rhetorik d. Araber, S. 107, Z. 14ff. This hawâ, however, also signifies in general: a broad, empty space, and by transferring the notion of \"empty\" to mind and heart, as the reduplicated forms hûhatun and hauhâtun: devoid of understanding and devoid of courage, e.g., Koran xiv. 44: wa-af'i-datuhum hawâun, where Bedhw first explains hawâ directly by chalâ, emptiness, empty space, i.e., as he adds, châlijetun ‛an el-fahm, as one says of one without mind and courage qalbuhu hawâun. Thence also hauwun, emptiness, a hole, i.e., in a wall or roof, a dormar-window (kauwe, kûwe), but also with the genit. of a person or thing: their hole, i.e., the space left empty by them, the side not taken up by them, e.g., qa‛ada fi hauwihi, he set himself beside him. From the signification to be empty then comes (1) hawat el-mar'atu, i.e., vacua fuit mulier = orba oiberis, as χήρα, vidua, properly empty, French vide; (2) hawâ er-ragulu, i.e., vacuus, inanis factus est vir = exanimatus (comp. Arab. frg, he became empty, euphemistic for he died).\nFrom this variously applied primary signification is developed the generally known and usual Arab. hawâ, loose and free, without being held or holding to anything one's self, to pass away, fly, swing, etc., libere ferri, labi, in general in every direction, as the wind, or what is driven hither and thither by the wind, especially however from above downwards, labi, delabi, cadere, deorsum ruere. From this point, like many similar, the word first passes into the signification of sound (as certainly also שׁאה, שא): as anything falling has a full noise, and so on, δουπεῖν, rumorem, fragorem edere (fragor from frangi), hence hawat udhnuhu jawı̂jan of a singing in the ears.\nFinally, the mental Arab. hawan (perf. hawija, imperf. jahwâ with the acc.), animo ad or in aliquid ferri, is attached to the notion of passing and falling through space (though by no means to hiare, or the supposed meaning \"to breathe, blow\"). It is used both emotionally of desire, lust, appetites, passions, and strong love, and intellectually of free opinions or assertions springing from mere self-willed preference, caprices of the understanding. - Fl.)\nThe ל of לשּׁלג influences Job 37:6 also. The Hebr. name for rain, גּשׁם (cogn. with Chald. גשׁם, Arab. gism, a body), denotes the rain collectively. The expression Job 37:6 is exceeded in Job 37:6, where מטרות does not signify rain-drops (Ew.), but, like the Arab. amtr, rain-showers. The wonders of nature during the rough season (חרף, סתיו, Sol 2:11), between the autumnal and vernal equinoxes, are meant; the rains after the autumnal equinox (the early rain), which begin the season, and the rains before the vernal equinox (the late rain, Zac 10:1), which close it, with the falls of snow between, which frequently produce great desolation, especially the proper winter with its frosty winds and heavy showers, when the business of the husbandmen as of the nomads is brought to a stand-still, and every one retreats to his house or seeks a sheltering corner.\nThis is the meaning of Job 37:7 : He sealeth up (חתם בּ as Job 33:16) the hand of all men that they cannot, viz., on account of the cold out of doors, be opened for work, that all people of His work (i.e., thanking Him for their origin as His handiwork, Job 34:19) may come to the perception (of Him who doeth all things). The expression is remarkable, and by the insertion of a m may be as easily cleared up as Job 33:17 : לדעת כּל־אנשׁים מעשׂהוּ, in order that each and every one may acknowledge His work; after which even Jer. translates: ut noverint singuli opera sua. The conjecture אנשׁים עשׂהוּ (Schultens junior, Reiske, Hirz.) is inferior to the former (Olsh.) by its awkward synecdoche num. The fut. consec. in Job 37:8 continues the description of what happens in consequence of the cold rainy season; the expression calls to mind Psa 104:22, as Job 34:14. does Psa 104:29. The winter is also the time of the stormy and raw winds. In Job 37:9 Elihu means the storms which come across from the great wide desert, Job 1:19, therefore the south (Isa 21:1; Zac 9:14), or rather south-east winds (Hos 13:15), increasing in violence to storms. החדר (properly the surrounded, enclosed space, never the storehouse, - so that Psa 135:7 should be compared, - but adytum, penetrale, as Arab. chidr, e.g., in Vita Timuri ii. 904: after the removal of the superincumbent earth, they drew away sitr chidrihâ, the curtain of its innermost part, i.e., uncovered its lowest depth) is here the innermost part of the south (south-east), - comp. Job 9:9 חדרי תימן, and Job 23:9 יעטף ימין (so far as יעטף there signifies si operiat se), - especially of the great desert lying to the south (south-east), according to which ארץ חדרך, Zac 9:1, is translated by the Targ. דרומא ארעא. In opposition to the south-east wind, מזרים, Job 37:9, seems to mean the north winds; in and of itself, however, the word signifies the scattering or driving, as also in the Koran the winds are called the scatterers, dhârijât, Sur. li. 1.\n(Note: This dhârijât is also differently explained; but the first explanation in Beidhwi (ii. 183, Fleischer's edition) is, \"the winds which scatter (blow away) the dust and other things.\")\nIn מזרים, Reiske, without any ground for it, traces the Arab. mirzam (a name of two stars, from which north wind, rain, and cold are derived); the Targ. also has one of the constellations in view: מכּוּת מזרים (from the window, i.e., the window of the vault of heaven, of the mezarim); Aq., Theod. ἀπὸ μαζούρ (= מזרות, Job 38:32); lxx ἀπὸ δὲ τῶν ἀκρωτηρίων, we know not wherefore. Concerning מנּשׁמת־אל (with causal מן) with reference to the wind, vid., on Job 4:15. יתּן, it gives, i.e., comes to light, is used as in Gen 38:28; Pro 13:10. The idea of מוּצק (not fusum from יצק, but coarctatum from צוּק) cannot be doubtful in connection with the antithesis of רחב, comp. Job 36:16, the idea is like Job 38:30 (comp. Mutenebbi: \"the flood is bound by bands of ice\"); the בּ of בּמוּצק is, as Job 36:32, the Beth essentiae, used far more extensively in Hebr. than in Arab. as an exponent of the predicate: the breadth of the water is (becomes) straitened (forcibly drawn together). \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":11,"content":["11 Also He loadeth the clouds with water,\nHe spreadeth far and wide the cloud of His light,\n12 And these turn themselves round about,\nDirected by Him, that they execute\nAll that He hath commanded them\nOver the wide earth.\n13 Whether for a scourge, or for the good of His earth,\nOr for mercy, He causeth it to discharge itself.\nWith אף extending the description, Elihu, in the presence of the storm that is in the sky, continually returns to this one marvel of nature. The old versions connect בּרי partly with בּר, electus (lxx, Syr., Theod.) or frumentum (Symm., Jer.), partly with בּרה = בּרר in the signification puritas, serenitas (Targ.); but בּרי is, as Schultens has already perceived, the Hebr.-Arabic רי, Arab. rı̂yun, rı̂j-un (from רוה = riwj), abundant irrigation, with בּ; and יטריח does not signify, according to the Arab. atraha, \"to hurl down,\" so that what is spoken of would be the bursting of the clouds (Stick.), \n(Note: This \"atraha\" is, moreover, a pure invention of our ordinary Arabic lexicons instead of ittaraha (VIII form): (1) to throw one's self, (2) to throw anything from one's self, with an acc. of the thing. - Fl.)\nbut, according to טרח, a burden (comp. Arab. taraha ala, to load), \"to burden;\" with fluidity (Ew., Hirz., Hahn, Schlottm.), better: fulness of water, He burdens the clouds (comp. rawij-un as a designation of cloud as the place of rain). ענן אורו, His cloud of light, is that that is charged with lightning, and הפיץ has here its Hebr.-Arab. radical signification effundere, diffundere, with a preponderance of the idea not of scattering, but of spreading out wide (Arab. faid, abundance). והוּא, Job 37:12, refers to the cloud pregnant with lightning; this turns round about (מסבּות, adv. as מסב, round about, Kg1 6:29) seeking a place, where it shall unburden itself by virtue of His (God's) direction or disposing (תחבּוּלת, a word belonging to the book of Proverbs; lxx, Cod. Vat. and Alex., untranslated: εν θεεβουλαθωθ, Cod. Sinait. still more monstrous), in order that they (the clouds full of lightning) may accomplish everything that He commands them over the surface of the earth; ארצה as Job 34:13, and the combination תּבל ארצה as Pro 8:31, comp. ארץ ותבל, Psa 90:2. The reference of the pronominal suff. to men is as inadmissible here as in Job 37:4. In Job 37:13 two אם have certainly, as Job 34:29, two ו, the correlative signification sive ... sive (Arab. in ... wa-in), in a third, as appears, a conditional, but which? According to Ew., Hirz., Hahn, Schlottm., and others, the middle one: if it (the rod) belongs to His land, i.e., if it has deserved it. But even the possessive suff. of לארצו shows that the ל is to be taken as dat. commodi: be it for a rod, be it for the good of His land; which is then followed by a conditional verbal clause: in case He mercifully causes it (the storm) to come, i.e., causes this His land to be overtaken by it (המציא here with the acc., the thing coming, whereas in Job 34:11 of the thing to be overtaken). The accentuation, indeed, appears to assume a threefold sive: whether He causeth it to discharge itself upon man for punishment, man for mercy, or His earth for good with reference to man. Then Elihu would think of the uninhabited steppe in connection with אם לארצו. Since a conditional אם by the side of two correlatives is hazardous, we decide finally with the lxx, Targ., and all the old versions, in favour of the same rendering of the threefold אם, especially since it corresponds to the circumstances of the case. \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":14,"content":["14 Hearken unto this, O Job;\nStand still and consider the wonderful works of God!\n15 Dost thou know when God designeth\nTo cause the light of His clouds to shine?\n16 Dost thou understand the balancings of the clouds,\nThe wondrous things of Him who is perfect in knowledge?\nJob is to stand still, instead of dictating to God, in order to draw from His wondrous acts in nature a conclusion with reference to his mystery of suffering. In Job 37:15 ידע בּ does not, as Job 35:15 (Ew. 217, S. 557), belong together, but בּ is the temporal Beth. שׂוּם is equivalent to שׂים לבּו (vid., on Job 34:23); עליהם does not refer to נפלאות (Hirz.) or the phenomena of the storm (Ew.), but is intended as neuter (as בּם Job 36:31, בּהם Job 22:21), and finds in Job 37:15 its distinctive development: \"the light of His clouds\" is their effulgent splendour. Without further support, ידע על is to have knowledge concerning anything, Job 37:16; מפלשׂי is also ἁπ. γεγρ.. It is unnecessary to consider it as wrongly written from מפרשׂי, Job 36:29, or as from it by change of letter (as אלמנות = ארמנות, Isa 13:22). The verb פּלּס signifies to make level, prepare (viz., a way, also weakened: to take a certain way, Pro 5:6), once: to weigh, Psa 58:3, as denom. from פּלס, a balance (and indeed a steelyard, statera), which is thus mentioned as the means of adjustment. מפלשׂי accordingly signifies either, as synon. of משׁקלי (thus the Midrash, vid., Jalkut, 522), weights (the relations of weight), or even equipoised balancings (Aben-Ezra, Kimchi, and others), Lat. quomodo librentur nubes in are.\n(Note: The word is therefore a metaphor taken from the balance, and it may be observed that the Syro-Arabic, on account of the most extensive application of the balance, is unusually rich in such metaphors. Moreover, the Arabic has no corresponding noun: the teflı̂s (a balance) brought forward by Ges. in his Thes. and Handwrterbuch from Schindler's Pentaglotton, is a word devoid of all evidence from original sources and from the modern usage of the language, in this signification.)\nמפלאות is also a word that does not occur elsewhere; in like manner דּע belongs exclusively to Elihu. God is called תּמים דּעים (comp. Job 36:4) as the Omniscient One, whose knowledge is absolute as to its depth as well as its circumference. \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["17 Thou whose garments became hot,\nWhen the land is sultry from the south:\n18 Dost thou with Him spread out the sky,\nThe strong, as it were molten, mirror?\n19 Let us know what we shall say to Him! - \nWe can arrange nothing by reason of darkness.\n20 Shall it be told Him that I speak,\nOr shall one wish to be destroyed?\nMost expositors connect Job 37:17 with Job 37:16 : (Dost thou know) how it comes to pass that ... ; but אשׁר after ידע signifies quod, Exo 11:7, not quomodo, as it sometimes occurs in a comparing antecedent clause, instead of כאשׁר, Exo 14:13; Jer 33:22. We therefore translate: thou whose ... , - connecting this, however, not with Job 37:16 (vid., e.g., Carey), but as Bolduc. and Ew., with Job 37:18 (where ה before תרקיע is then the less missed): thou who, when the land (the part of the earth where thou art) keeps rest, i.e., in sultriness, when oppressive heat comes (on this Hiph. vid., Ges. 53, 2) from the south (i.e., by means of the currents of air which come thence, without דּרום signifying directly the south wind), - thou who, when this happens, canst endure so little, that on the contrary the heat from without becomes perceptible to thee through thy clothes: dost thou now and then with Him keep the sky spread out, which for firmness is like a molten mirror? Elsewhere the hemispheric firmament, which spans the earth with its sub-celestial waters, is likened to a clear sapphire Exo 24:10, a covering Psa 104:2, a gauze Isa 40:22; the comparison with a metallic mirror (מוּצק here not from צוּק, Job 37:10; Job 36:16, but from יצק) is therefore to be understood according to Petavius: Coelum areum στερέωμα dicitur non a naturae propria conditione, sed ab effectu, quod perinde aquas separet, ac si murus esset solidissimus. Also in תרקיע lies the notion both of firmness and thinness; the primary notion (root רק) is to beat, make thick, stipare (Arab. rq‛, to stop up in the sense of resarcire, e.g., to mend stockings), to make thick by pressure. The ל joined with תרקיע is nota acc.; we must not comp. Job 8:8; Job 21:22, as well as Job 5:2; Job 19:3.\nTherefore: As God is the only Creator (Job 9:8), so He is the all-provident Preserver of the world - make us know (הודיענוּ, according to the text of the Babylonians, Keri of הודיעני) what we shall say to Him, viz., in order to show that we can cope with Him! We cannot arrange, viz., anything whatever (to be explained according to ערך מלּין, Job 32:14, comp. \"to place,\" Job 36:19), by reason of darkness, viz., the darkness of our understanding, σκότος τῆς διανοίας; מפּני is much the same as Job 23:17, but different from Job 17:12, and חשׁך different from both passages, viz., as it is often used in the New Testament, of intellectual darkness (comp. Ecc 2:14; Isa 60:2). The meaning of Job 37:20 cannot now be mistaken, if, with Hirz., Hahn, and Schlottm., we call to mind Job 36:10 in connection with אמר כּי: can I, a short-sighted man, enshrouded in darkness, wish that what I have arrogantly said concerning and against Him may be told to God, or should one earnestly desire (אמר, a modal perf., as Job 35:15) that (an jusserit s. dixerit quis ut) he may be swallowed up, i.e., destroyed (comp. לבלעו, Job 2:3)? He would, by challenging a recognition of his unbecoming arguing about God, desire a tribunal that would be destructive to himself. \n"]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["21 Although one seeth now the sunlight\nThat is bright in the ethereal heights:\nA wind passeth by and cleareth them up.\n22 Gold is brought from the north, - \nAbove Eloah is terrible majesty.\n23 The Almighty, whom we cannot find out,\nThe excellent in strength,\nAnd right and justice He perverteth not.\n24 Therefore men regard Him with reverence,\nHe hath no regard for all the wise of heart.\nHe who censures God's actions, and murmurs against God, injures himself - how, on the contrary, would a patiently submissive waiting on Him be rewarded! This is the connection of thought, by which this final strophe is attached to what precedes. If we have drawn the correct conclusion from Job 37:1, that Elihu's description of a storm is accompanied by a storm which was coming over the sky, ועתּה, with which the speech, as Job 35:15, draws towards the close, is not to be understood as purely conclusive, but temporal: And at present one does not see the light (אור of the sun, as Job 31:26) which is bright in the ethereal heights (בּהיר again a Hebr.-Arab. word, comp. bâhir, outshining, surpassing, especially of the moon, when it dazzles with its brightness); yet it only requires a breath of wind to pass over it, and to clear it, i.e., brings the ethereal sky with the sunlight to view. Elihu hereby means to say that the God who his hidden only for a time, respecting whom one runs the risk of being in perplexity, can suddenly unveil Himself, to our surprise and confusion, and that therefore it becomes us to bow humbly and quietly to His present mysterious visitation. With respect to the removal of the clouds from the beclouded sun, to which Job 37:21 refers, זהב, Job 37:22, seems to signify the gold of the sun; esh-shemsu bi-tibrin, the sun is gold, says Abulola. Oriental and Classic literature furnishes a large number of instances in support of this calling the sunshine gold; and it should not perplex us here, where we have an Arabizing Hebrew poet before us, that not a single passage can be brought forward from the Old Testament literature. But מצּפון is against this figurative rendering of the זהב (lxx νέφη χρυσαυγοῦντα). In Eze 1:4 there is good reason for the storm-clouds, which unfold from their midst the glory of the heavenly Judge, who rideth upon the cherubim, coming from the north; but wherefore should Elihu represent the sun's golden light as breaking through from the north? On the other hand, in the conception of the ancients, the north is the proper region for gold: there griffins (grupe's) guard the gold-pits of the Arimaspian mountains (Herod. iii. 116); there, from the narrow pass of the Caucasus along the Gordyaean mountains, gold is dug by barbarous races (Pliny, h. n. vi. 11), and among the Scythians it is brought to light by the ants (ib. xxxiii. 4). Egypt could indeed provide itself with gold from Ethiopia, and the Phoenicians brought the gold of Ophir, already mentioned in the book of Job, from India; but the north was regarded as the fabulously most productive chief mine of gold; to speak more definitely: Northern Asia, with the Altai mountains.\n(Note: Vid., the art. Gold, S. 91, 101, in Ersch and Gruber. The Indian traditions concerning Uttaraguru (the \"High Mountain\"), and concerning the northern seat of the god on wealth Kuvra, have no connection here; on their origin comp. Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, i. 848.)\nThus therefore Job 28:1, Job 28:6 is to be compared here.\nWhat Job describes so grandly and minutely in Job 28:1, viz., that man lays bare the hidden treasures of the earth's interior, but that the wisdom of God still transcends him, is here expressed no less grandly and compendiously: From the north cometh gold, which man wrests from the darkness of the gloomy unknown region of the north (צפון, ζόφος, from צפן, cogn. טמן, טמר,\n(Note: The verb צּפּה, obducere, does not belong here, but to צפח, and signifies properly to flatten (as רקע, to make thin and thick by striking), comp. Arab. ṣfḥ, to strike on something flat (whence el-musâfaha, the salutation by striking the hand), and Arab. ṣf‛, to strike with the flat hand on anything, therefore diducendo obducere.)\nupon Eloah, on the contrary is terrible majesty (not genitival: terror of majesty, Ew. 293, c), i.e., it covers Him like a garment (Psa 104:1), making Him inaccessible (הוד, glory as resounding praise, vid., on Job 39:20, like כבוד as imposing dignity). The beclouded sun, Job 37:21 said, has lost none of the intensity of its light, although man has to wait for the removing of the clouds to behold it again. So, when God's doings are mysterious to us, we have to wait, without murmuring, for His solution of the mystery. While from the north comes gold - Job 37:22 continues - which is obtained by laying bare the interior of the northern mountains, God, on the other hand, is surrounded by inaccessibly terrible glory: the Almighty - thus Job 37:23 completes the thought towards which Job 37:22 tends - we cannot reach, the Great in power, i.e., the nature of the Absolute One remains beyond us, the counsel of the Almighty impenetrable; still we can at all times be certain of this, that what He does is right and good: \"Right and the fulness of justice (ורב־ according to the Masora, not ורב-) He perverteth not.\" The expression is remarkable: ענּה משׁפּט is, like the Talmudic ענּה דּין, equivalent elsewhere to הטּה משׁפט; and that He does not pervert רב־צדקה, affirms that justice in its whole compass is not perverted by Him; His acts are therefore perfectly and in every way consistent with it: רב־צדקה is the abstract. to צדיק כביר, Job 34:17, therefore summa justitia. One may feel tempted to draw ומשׁפט to שׂגיא כח, and to read ורב according to Pro 14:29 instead of ורב, but the expression gained by so doing is still more difficult than the combination לא יענּה...ומשׁפט; not merely difficult, however, but putting a false point in place of a correct one, is the reading לא יענה (lxx, Syr., Jer.), according to which Hirz. translates: He answers, not, i.e., gives no account to man. The accentuation rightly divides Job 37:23 into two halves, the second of which begins with ומשׁפט - a significant Waw, on which J. H. Michaelis observes: Placide invicem in Deo conspirant infinita ejus potentia et justitia quae in hominibus saepe disjuncta sunt.\nElihu closes with the practical inference: Therefore men, viz., of the right sort, of sound heart, uncorrupted and unaffected, fear Him (יראוּהוּ verentur eum, not יראוּהוּ veremini eum); He does not see (regard) the wise of heart, i.e., those who imagine themselves such and are proud of their לב, their understanding. The qui sibi videntur (Jer.) does not lie in לב (comp. Isa 5:21), but in the antithesis. Stick. and others render falsely: Whom the aggregate of the over-wise beholds not, which would be יראנּוּ. God is the subj. as in Job 28:24; Job 34:21, comp. Job 41:26. The assonance of יראוהו and יראה, which also occurs frequently elsewhere (e.g., Job 6:21), we have sought to reproduce in the translation.\nIn this last speech also Elihu's chief aim (Job 36:2-4) is to defend God against Job's charge of injustice. He shows how omnipotence, love, and justice are all found in God. When judging of God's omnipotence, we are to beware of censuring Him who is absolutely exalted above us and our comprehension; when judging of God's love, we are to beware of interpreting His afflictive dispensations, which are designed for our well-being, as the persecution of an enemy; when judging of His justice, we are to beware of maintaining our own righteousness at the cost of the Divine, and of thus avoiding the penitent humbling of one's self under His well-meant chastisement. The twofold peculiarity of Elihu's speeches comes out in this fourth as prominently as in the first: (1) They demand of Job penitential submission, not by accusing him of coarse common sins as the three have done, but because even the best of men suffer for hidden moral defects, which must be perceived by them in order not to perish on account of them. Elihu here does for Job just what in Bunyan (Pilgrim's Progress) the man in the Interpreter's house does, when he sweeps the room, so that Christian had been almost choked with the dust that flew about. Then (2) they teach that God makes use of just such sufferings, as Job's now are, in order to bring man to a knowledge of his hidden defects, and to bless him the more abundantly if he will be saved from them; that thus the sufferings of those who fear God are a wholesome medicine, disciplinary chastenings, and saving warnings; and that therefore true, not merely feigned, piety must be proved in the school of affliction by earnest self-examination, remorseful self-accusation, and humble submission.\nElihu therefore in this agrees with the rest of the book, that he frees Job's affliction from the view which accounts it the evil-doer's punishment (vid., Job 32:3). On the other hand, however, he nevertheless takes up a position apart from the rest of the book, by making Job's sin the cause of his affliction; while in the idea of the rest of the book Job's affliction has nothing whatever to do with Job's sin, except in so far as he allows himself to be drawn into sinful language concerning God by the conflict of temptation into which the affliction plunges him. For after Jehovah has brought Job over this his sin, He acknowledges His servant (Job 42:7) to be in the right, against the three friends: his affliction is really not a merited affliction, it is not a result of retributive justice; it also had not chastisement as its design, it was an enigma, under which Job should have bowed humbly without striking against it - a decree, into the purpose of which the prologue permits us an insight, which however remains unexplained to Job, or is only explained to him so far as the issue teaches him that it should be to him the way to a so much the more glorious testimony on the part of God Himself.\nWith that criticism of Job, which the speeches of Jehovah consummate, the criticism which lies before us in the speeches of Elihu is irreconcilable. The older poet, in contrast with the false doctrine of retribution, entirely separates sin and punishment or chastisement in the affliction of Job, and teaches that there is an affliction of the righteous, which is solely designed to prove and test them. His thema, not Elihu's (as Simson \n(Note: Zur Kritik des B. Hiob, 1861, S. 34.)\nwith Hengstenberg thinks), is the mystery of the Cross. For the Cross according to its proper notion is suffering ἕνεκεν δικαιοσύνης (or what in New Testament language is the same, ἕνεκεν Χριστοῦ). Elihu, however, leaves sin and suffering together as inseparable, and opposes the false doctrine of retribution by the distinction between disciplinary chastisement and judicial retribution. The Elihu section, as I have shown elsewhere, \n(Note: Vid., Herzog's Real-Encyklopdie, art. Hiob, S. 119.)\nhas sprung from the endeavour to moderate the bewildering boldness with which the older poet puts forth his idea. The writer has felt in connection with the book of Job what every Christian must feel. Such a maintaining of his own righteousness in the face of friendly exhortations to penitence, as we perceive it in Job's speeches, is certainly not possible where \"the dust of the room has flown about.\" The friends have only failed in this, that they made Job more and more an evil-doer deservedly undergoing punishment. Elihu points him to vainglorying, to carnal security, and in the main to those defects from which the most godly cannot and dare not claim exemption. It is not contrary to the spirit of the drama that Job holds his peace at these exhortations to penitence. The similarly expressed admonition to penitence with which Eliphaz, Job 4:1, begins, has not effected it. In the meanwhile, however, Job is become more softened and composed, and in remembrance of his unbecoming language concerning God, he must feel that he has forfeited the right of defending himself. Nevertheless this silent Job is not altogether the same as the Job who, in Job 40 and 42, forces himself to keep silence, whose former testimony concerning himself, and whose former refusal of a theodicy which links sin and calamity together, Jehovah finally sets His seal to.\nOn the other hand, however, it must be acknowledged, that what the introduction to Elihu's speeches, Job 32:1-5, sets before us, is consistent with the idea of the whole, and that such a section as the introduction leads one to expect, may be easily understood really as a member of the whole, which carries forward the dramatic development of this idea; for this very reason one feels urged to constantly new endeavours, if possible, to understand these speeches as a part of the original form. But they are without result, and, moreover, many other considerations stand in our way to the desired goal; especially, that Elihu is not mentioned in the epilogue, and that his speeches are far behind the artistic perfection of the rest of the book. It is true the writer of these speeches has, in common with the rest of the book, a like Hebraeo-Arabic, and indeed Hauranitish style, and like mutual relations to earlier and later writings; but this is explained from the consideration that he has completely blended the older book with himself (as the points of contact of the fourth speech with Job 28:1 and the speeches of Jehovah, show), and that to all appearance he is a fellow-countryman of the older poet. There are neither linguistic nor any other valid reasons in favour of assigning it to a much later period. He is the second issuer of the book, possibly the first, who brought to light the hitherto hidden treasure, enriched by his own insertion, which is inestimable in its relation to the history of the perception of the plan of redemption.\nWe now call to mind that in the last (according to our view) strophe of Job's last speech. Job 31:35-37, Job desires, yea challenges, the divine decision between himself and his opponents. His opponents have explained his affliction as the punishment of the just God; he, however, is himself so certain of his innocence, and of his victory over divine and human accusation, that he will bind the indictment of his opponents as a crown upon his brow, and to God, whose hand of punishment supposedly rests upon him, will he render an account of all his steps, and go forth as a prince to meet Him. That he considers himself a צדיק is in itself not censurable, for he is such: but that he is מצדק נפשׁו מאלהים, i.e., considers himself to be righteous in opposition to God, who is no angry with him and punishes him; that he maintains his own righteousness to the prejudice of the Divine; and that by maintaining his own right, places the Divine in the shade, - all this is explainable as the result of the false idea which he entertains of his affliction, and in which he is strengthened by the friends; but there is need of censure and penitence. For since by His nature God can never do wrong, all human wrangling before God is a sinful advance against the mystery of divine guidance, under which he should rather humbly bow. But we have seen that Job's false idea of God as his enemy, whose conduct he cannot acknowledge as just, does not fill his whole soul. The night of temptation in which he is enshrouded, is broken in upon by gleams of faith, in connection with which God appears to him as his Vindicator and Redeemer. Flesh and spirit, nature and grace, delusion and faith, are at war within him. These two elements are constantly more definitely separated in the course of the controversy; but it is not yet come to the victory of faith over delusion, the two lines of conception go unreconciled side by side in Job's soul. The last monologues issue on the one side in the humble confession that God's wisdom is unsearchable, and the fear of God is the share of wisdom appointed to man; on the other side, in the defiant demand that God may answer for his defence of himself, and the vaunting offer to give Him an account of all his steps, and also then to enter His presence with the high feeling of a prince. If now the issue of the drama is to be this, that God really reveals Himself as Job's Vindicator and Redeemer, Job's defiance and boldness must be previously punished in order that lowliness and submission may attain the victory over them. God cannot acknowledge job as His servant before he penitently acknowledges as such the sinful weakness under which he has proved himself to be God's servant, and so exhibits himself anew in his true character which cherishes no known sin. This takes place when Jehovah appears, and in language not of wrath but of loving condescension, and yet earnest reproof, He makes the Titan quite puny in his own eyes, in order then to exalt him who is outwardly and inwardly humbled. \n"]}]},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/JOB/37.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"keil-delitzsch","book":"JOB","chapter":37},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/JOB/38.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"keil-delitzsch","book":"JOB","chapter":38},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/keil-delitzsch/JOB/36.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"keil-delitzsch","book":"JOB","chapter":36},"numberOfVerses":6}