_JOB GOES ON TO POUR OUT HIS LAMENTATIONS IN THE MOST PATHETIC MANNER, AND EXPOSTULATES WITH GOD, PRAYING TO BE SPEEDILY RELEASED FROM HIS MISERIES; OR THAT GOD WOULD GRANT HIM SOME LITTLE RESPITE, TILL THE TIME OF THEIR TERMINATION SHOULD COME._ _Before Christ 1645._... [ Continue Reading ]
AS A SERVANT EARNESTLY DESIRETH, &C.— _As a servant panteth for the shade;_ that is, wherein he may refresh and recruit himself when wearied with labours in the heat of the day. Schultens. Heath renders the next clause, _And as the hireling earnestly longeth for his wages._... [ Continue Reading ]
SO AM I MADE TO POSSESS— _So am I made to inherit—and nights of misery are my portion:_ Heath; who, instead of _I am full of tossings,_ in the next verse, reads, _I am tired,_ or _wearied out with tossings._... [ Continue Reading ]
MY FLESH IS CLOTHED WITH WORMS, &C.— _My flesh is clothed with worms, and with the filth of dust: my skin is broken and putrifies._ Houbigant. Heath renders it, _The worm covereth my flesh, and filthy mud my skin; suddenly it will turn even to putrefaction._ See ch. Job 19:26.... [ Continue Reading ]
AND ARE SPENT WITHOUT HOPE— תקוה באפס ויכלו _vayiklu beaepes tikvah._ Literally, _And they are destroyed even to the extremity of hope._ Heath renders it, _And even the least glimmering of hope is at an end._... [ Continue Reading ]
THAT MY LIFE IS WIND— _That my life is but empty breath._ Houbigant. It is easy to observe, in almost all Job's speeches, the struggle which he laboured under, between an earnest desire of death, as a removal from a life of pain and misery, and a dread of it, as he must die in the ill opinion of his... [ Continue Reading ]
AM I A SEA, OR A WHALE, &C.— Houbigant renders it, _Am I a sea or a whale, that thou raisest a tempest against me?_ an idea which very well suits with that storm of troubles wherewith Job was nearly overwhelmed.... [ Continue Reading ]
SO THAT MY SOUL CHOOSETH STRANGLING, &C.— _My soul therefore chooseth strangling; death rather than the recovery of my health._ Heath. But Houbigant renders it thus: _Yet thou preservest me from a violent end, and drivest death far from my bones:_ Job 7:16. _Yet I shall not live always; cease theref... [ Continue Reading ]
WHAT IS MAN, &C.?— _What is mortal man, that thou shouldst contend with him, and that thou shouldst set thy heart against him?_ Schultens.... [ Continue Reading ]
HOW LONG WILT THOU NOT DEPART FROM ME?— Literally, _How long wilt thou not take thine eyes off me?_ This is a metaphor borrowed from combatants, who never take their eyes off from their antagonists. The figure is preserved in the next sentence, which represents a combatant seized by his adversary in... [ Continue Reading ]
I HAVE SINNED, &C.— As if he said, "Though I am no such wicked and ungodly wretch as these men imagine me to be, for thou knowest the uprightness of my heart, yet I acknowledge myself a sinner, and humble myself under thy afflicting hand; renouncing every sin or error that I may have been guilty of,... [ Continue Reading ]