Armenia in comments -- Book: Job (tJob) Յոբ
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tJob 27::8 What is the hope of the hypocrite - The word חנף chaneph, which we translate, most improperly, hypocrite, means a wicked fellow, a defiled, polluted wretch, a rascal, a knave, a man who sticks at nothing in order to gain his ends. In this verse it means a dishonest man, a rogue, who by overreaching, cheating, etc., has amassed a fortune.
When God taketh away his soul? - Could he have had any well grounded hope of eternal blessedness when he was acquiring earthly property by guilt and deceit? And of what avail will this property be when his soul is summoned before the judgment-seat? A righteous man yields up his soul to God; the wicked does not, because he is afraid of God, of death, and of eternity. God therefore takes the soul away - forces it out of the body. Mr. Blair gives us an affecting picture of the death of a wicked man. Though well known, I shall insert it as a striking comment on this passage: -
"How shocking must thy summons be, O death!
To him that is at ease in his possessions;
Who, counting on long years of pleasures here;
Is quite unfurnished for that world to come!
In that dread moment how the frantic soul
Raves round the walls of her clay tenement;
Runs to each avenue, and shrieks for help,
But shrieks in vain! How wishfully she looks
On all she's leaving, now no longer hers!
A little longer, yet a little longer,
O, might she stay, to wash away her stains,
And fit her for her passage! Mournful sight!
Her very eyes weep blood; and every groan
She heaves is big with horror. But the foe,
Like a stanch murderer, steady to his purpose,
Pursues her close, through every lane of life,
Nor misses once the track, but presses on;
Till, forced at last to the tremendous verge,
At once she sinks to everlasting ruin."
The Grave.
The Chald:ee has, What can the detractor expect who has gathered together (ממון דשקר mamon dishkar, the mammon of unrighteousness) when God plucks out his soul? The Septuagint: Τις γαρ εστιν ετι ελπις ασεβει, ὁτι επεχει; Μη πεποιθως επι Κυριον ει αρα σωθησεται; "For what is the hope of the ungodly that he should wait for? shall he, by hoping in the Lord, be therefore saved?" Mr. Good translates differently from all the versions: -
"Yet what is the hope of the wicked that he should prosper,
That God should keep his soul in quiet?"
I believe our version gives as true a sense as any; and the words appear to have been in the eye of our Lord, when he said, "For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" Mat 16:26. Job 27:11 tJob 27::11 I will teach you by the hand of God - Relying on Divine assistance, and not speaking out of my own head, or quoting what others have said I will teach you what the mind of the Almighty is, and I will conceal nothing. Job felt that the good hand of his God was upon him, and that therefore he should make no mistake in his doctrines. In this way the Chald:ee understood the words, ביד אל beyad El, by the hand of God, which it translates בנבואת אלהא binbuath Elaha, by the prophecy of God. Those who reject the literal meaning, which conveys a very good sense, may adopt the translation of Mr. Good, which has much to recommend it: "I will teach you concerning the dealings of God." Job 27:12 tJob 27::15 Those that remain of him - שרידיו seridaiv, his remains, whether meaning himself personally, or his family.
Shall be buried in death - Shall come to utter and remediless destruction. Death shall have his full conquest over them, and the grave its complete victory. These are no common dead. All the sting, all the wound, and all the poison of sin, remains: and so evident are God's judgments in his and their removal, that even widows shall not weep for them; the public shall not bewail them; for when the wicked perish there is shouting. Mr. Good, following the Chald:ee, translates: Entombed in corruption, or in the pestilence. But I see no reason why we should desert the literal reading. Entombed in corruption gives no nervous sense in my judgment; for in corruption are the high and the low, the wicked and the good, entombed: but buried in death is at once nervous and expressive. Death itself is the place where he shall lie; he shall have no redemption, no resurrection to life; death shall ever have dominion over him. The expression is very similar to that in Luk 16:22 (note), as found in several versions and MSS.: The rich man died, and was buried in hell; and, lifting up his eyes, being in torment, he saw, etc. See my note there. Job 27:16
tJob 27::11 I will teach you by the hand of God - Margin, "or, being in." Coverdale, "In the name of God." So Tindal, Noyes, "Concerning the hand of God." Good, "Concerning the dealings of God." The Chald:ee renders it אלהא בנביאת - "By the prophecy of God." Luther, "I will teach you by the hand of God." The idea evidently is, that Job would instruct them by what God had done. He would appeal to his works, and to the dispensations of his providence; and by the indications of wisdom and skill which were to be found there, he would derive important lessons for their instruction on the great principles of his administration. Accordingly, in the remainder of this chapter, he makes his appeal to what actually occurs in the dispensations of Providence, and in the next, he refers to various scientific subjects, evincing the wisdom which God had shown in the mineral kingdom. The hand is the instrument by which we accomplish anything, and hence, it is used here to denote what God does.
That which is with the Almighty will I not conceal - That is, I will appeal to his works, and show what traces of wisdom there are in them. Job 27:12 tJob 27::18 He buildeth his house as a moth - The house which the moth builds is the slight fabric which it makes for its own dwelling in the garment which it consumes. On this verse compare Job 8:14. The dwelling of the moth is composed of the materials of the garment on which it feeds, and there may be an allusion here not only to the fact that the house which the wicked reared for themselves would be temporary, and that it would soon pass away like the dwelling of the moth, but that it was obtained - like the dwelling of the moth - at the expense of others. The idea of frailty, however, and of its being only a very temporary habitation, is probably the main thought in the passage. The allusion here is to the moth-worm as it proceeds from the egg, before it is changed into the chrysalis, aurelia, or nymph. "The young moth, upon leaving the egg which a papilio has lodged upon a piece of stuff, or a skin well dressed, and commodious for her purpose, immediately finds a habitation and food in the nap of the stuff, or hair of the skin. It gnaws and lives upon the nap, and likewise builds with it its apartment, accommodated both with a front door and a back one: the whole is well fastened to the ground of the stuff, with several cords and a little glue. The moth sometimes thrusts her head out of one opening, and sometimes out of the other, and perpetually demolishes all about her; and when she has cleared the place about her, she draws out all the stakes of the tent, after which she carries it to some little distance, and then fixes it with her slender cords in a new situation."
Burder. It is to the insect in its larvae or caterpillar state that Job refers here, and the slightness of the habitation will be easily understood by anyone who has watched the operations of the silkworm, or of the moths that appear in this country. The idea is, that the habitation which the wicked constructed was temporary and frail, and would soon be left. The Chald:ee and Syriac render this "the spider;" and so does Luther - Spinne. The slight gossamer dwelling of the spider would well correspond with the idea here expressed by Job.
And as a booth - A tent, or cottage.
That the keeper maketh - That one who watches vineyards or gardens makes as a temporary shelter from the storm or the cold at night. Such edifices were very frail in their structure, and were designed to be only temporary habitations; see the subject explained in the notes at Isa 1:8. Niebuhr, in his description of Arabia, p. 158, says, "In the mountains of Yemen they have a sort of nest on the trees, where the Arabs sit to watch the fields after they have been planted. But in the Kehama, where they have but few trees, they build a light kind of scaffolding for this purpose." Mr. Southey opens the fifth part of his Curse of Kehama with a similar allusion:
"Evening comes on: - arising from the stream
Homeward the tall flamingo wings his flight;
And when hc sails athwart the setting beam,
His scarlet plumage glows with deeper light.
The watchman, at the wish'd approach of night
Gladly forsakes the field, where he all day,
To scare the winged plunderers from their prey,
With shout and sling, on yonder clay-built height,
Hath borne the sultry ray. Job 27:19
tJob 27::7
Let mine enemy be as the wicked,.... Job in this, and some following verses, shows, that he was not, and could not, and would not be a wicked man and an hypocrite, or however had no opinion and liking of such persons; for whatever his friends might think of him, because he had said so much of their outward prosperity in this world; yet he was far from approving of or conniving at their wickedness and hypocrisy, or choosing them for his companions, and joining with them in their actions, or imagining they were really happy persons; so far from it, that he would not be in their condition and circumstances for all the world: for if he was to wish a bad thing to the greatest enemy he had, he could not wish him any worse than to be as a wicked and unrighteous man; that is, to be a wicked and unrighteous man; which it is impossible for a good man to wish, and indeed would be a needless wish, since all that are enemies to good men, as such, must be wicked; and such were Job's enemies, as the Chald:eans and Sabeans; but that they might be as such, in their state and circumstances, or rather as they will be in the consequence of things, most wretched and miserable; for they are always under the displeasure of God, and hated by him; and whatever fulness they may have of the things of this world, they have them with a curse, and they are curses to them, and their end will be everlasting ruin and destruction; wherefore the Septuagint version is, "as the overthrow of the ungodly, and as the perdition of transgressors;'' though some take this to be a kind of an ironic imprecation, and that by the wicked man here, and unrighteous in the next clause, he means himself, whom his friends reckoned a wicked and unrighteous man; and then the sense is, I wish you all, my friends, and even the worst enemies I have, were but as wicked Job is, as you call him; not that he wished they might be afflicted in body, family, and estate, as he was, but that they were as good men as he was, and partook of as much of the grace of God as he did, and had the same integrity and righteousness as he had, see Act 26:29; and such a wish as this, as it serves to illustrate his own character, so it breathes charity and good will to others; and indeed it cannot be thought the words are to be taken in such a sense as that he wished the same evils might be retorted upon his enemies, whether open or secret, which they were the means of bringing upon him, which was contrary to the spirit of Job, Job 31:29. Some consider them not as an imprecation, but as a prediction, "mine enemy shall be as the wicked" (e); and may have respect to his friends, who were so ready to charge him with wickedness, and suggests that in the issue of thin; they would be found, and not he, guilty of sin folly, and to have said the things that were not right, neither of God, nor of him, which had its accomplishment, Job 42:7; and he that riseth up against me as the unrighteous; which is but another way of expressing the same thing; for an enemy, and one that rises up against a man, is the same person; only this the better explains what enemy is intended, even an open one, that rises up in an hostile manner, full of rage and fury; and so a wicked and an unrighteous man are the same, and are frequently put together as describing the same sort of persons, see Isa 55:7. (e) "erit ut impius inimieus meus", Pagninus, Montanus, Boldacius; so Junius & Tremellius, Broughton, & Ramban. Job 27:8