_JOB COMPLAINS OF HIS FRIENDS' CRUELTY, PATHETICALLY LAMENTS HIS SUFFERINGS, AND IMPLORES THEIR PITY: HE APPEALS TO GOD, AND EXPRESSES HIS FAITH AND HOPE IN A FUTURE RESURRECTION._ _Before Christ 1645._ _JOB 19:1. THEN JOB ANSWERED AND SAID_— Disgusted by the little regard paid by the three friend... [ Continue Reading ]
YE ARE NOT ASHAMED— _Are ye not ashamed to be so very obstinate against me?_ Heath.... [ Continue Reading ]
AND MINE HOPE HATH HE REMOVED— _He rooteth up my hope like a tree._ Houbigant and Heath.... [ Continue Reading ]
HIS TROOPS COME TOGETHER, &C.— The words here are military terms, relative to a siege. _And raise up their way against me,_ Houbigant renders, _and fortify their way against me._... [ Continue Reading ]
MY KINSFOLK HAVE FAILED— _Have departed._ Houbigant. He means to say, that his friends had quite deserted him; had ceased from their office, according to the immediate meaning of the Hebrew word חדלו _chadlu._ See Schultens.... [ Continue Reading ]
HE GAVE ME NO ANSWER— _And he answered me not, though I intreated,_ &c. Houbigant.... [ Continue Reading ]
THOUGH I INTREATED FOR THE CHILDREN'S SAKE— The word חנתי _channothi,_ rendered _intreated,_ may signify the place of a man's dwelling. The sense may be rendered, _And my habitation to the children of my body._ Houbigant translates the verse, _My wife abhors even my breath; the children of my body f... [ Continue Reading ]
YEA, YOUNG CHILDREN DESPISED ME— _Even the very meanest of my family despised me; and if I rise up, they flout at me._ See Schultens and Houbigant.... [ Continue Reading ]
INWARD FRIENDS— Rather _intimate friends._... [ Continue Reading ]
MY BONE CLEAVETH TO MY SKIN, &C.— _My bones pierce through my skin and my flesh, and my teeth slip out from my gums._ Heath and Le Clerc. Chappelow renders the clause, _I am escaped with a torn skin,_ or, _with my skin all over wrinkles,_ to denote his being quite emaciated. Schultens says, that _to... [ Continue Reading ]
HAVE PITY UPON ME! &C.— Nothing can be more pathetic than the repetition in this passage, as well as the immediate application to his friends: _O ye my friends!_ "You, at least, with whom I have enjoyed so intimate and friendly a correspondence; you, who more especially should exert the tender offic... [ Continue Reading ]
OH THAT THEY WERE PRINTED IN A BOOK!— The sense of these words, according to the translation of Schultens, is this: "Who now will write my words? Who will record them in a book? Let them be engraven on some sepulchral stone, with an iron pen and with lead, so as to last for ever." The word _rock,_ w... [ Continue Reading ]
FOR I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVETH, &C.— We are now come to the celebrated text which has so much divided interpreters, and which has been generally thought to express Job's strong faith in a future resurrection; and that so clearly, that some have imagined the passage an interpolation, as they conc... [ Continue Reading ]