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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 11:7 - 11:7
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
7 Canst thou find out the nature of Eloah,
And penetrate to the foundation of the existence of the Almighty?
8 It is as the heights of heaven-what wilt thou do?
Deeper than Hades-what canst thou know?
9 The measure thereof is longer than the earth,
And broader than the sea.
The majority of modern commentators erroneously translate חֵקֶר searching = comprehension, and תַּכְלִית perfection, a meaning which this word never has. The former, indeed, signifies first in an active sense: finding out by search; and then also objectively: the object sought after: “the hidden ground” (Ewald), the depth (here and Job 38:16; also, according to Ew., Job 8:8, of the deep innermost thought). The latter denotes penetrating to the extreme, and then the extreme, πέρας, itself (Job 26:10; Job 28:3). In other words: the nature that underlies that which is visible as an object of search is called חקר; and the extreme of a thing, i.e., the end, without which the beginning and middle cannot be understood, is called תכלית. The nature of God may be sought after, but cannot be found out; and the end of God is unattainable, for He is both: the Perfect One, absolutus; and the Endless One, infinitus.
Job 11:8-9
The feminine form of expression has reference to the divine wisdom (Chokma, Job 11:6), and amplifies what is there said of its transcendent reality. Its absoluteness is described by four dimensions, like the absoluteness of the love which devised the plan for man's redemption (Eph 3:18). The pronoun הִיא, with reference to this subject of the sentence, must be supplied. She is as “the heights of heaven” (comp. on subst. pro adj. Job 22:12); what wilt or canst thou do in order to scale that which is high as heaven? In Job 11:9 we have translated according to the reading מִדָּה with He mappic. This feminine construction is a contraction for מִדָּתָהּ, as Job 5:13, ערמם for ערמתם; Zec 4:2, גלה for גלתה, and more syncopated forms of a like kind (vid., Comm. über den Psalter, i. 225, ii. 172). The reading recorded by the Masora is, however, מִדָּה with He raph., according to which the word seems to be the accusative used adverbially; nevertheless the separation of this acc. relativus from its regens by the insertion of a word between them (comp. Job 15:10) would make a difficulty here where הִיא is wanting, and consequently מדה seems to signify mensura ejus whichever way it may be written (since ah raphe is also sometimes a softened form of the suffix, Job 31:22; Ewald, §94, b). The wisdom of God is in its height altogether inaccessible, in its depth fathomless and beyond research, in its length unbounded, in its breadth incomprehensible, stretching out far beyond all human thought.