Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 12:1 - 12:1

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com

Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 12:1 - 12:1


(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)

This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

1 The Job began, and said:

2 Truly then ye are the people,

And wisdom shall die with you!

3 I also have a heart as well as you;

I do not stand behind you;

And to whom should not such things be known?

The admission, which is strengthened by כִּי אָמְנָם, truly then (distinct from אָמְנָם כִּי, for truly, Job 36:4, similar to כִּי הִנֵּה, behold indeed, Psa 128:4), is intended as irony: ye are not merely single individuals, but the people = race of men (עָם, as Isa 40:7; Isa 42:5), so that all human understanding is confined to you, and there is none other to be found; and when once you die, it will seem to have died out. The lxx correctly renders: μὴ ὑμεῖς ἐστὲ ἄνθρωποι μόνοι (according to the reading of the Cod. Alex.); he also has a heart like them, he is therefore not empty, נבוב, Job 11:12. Heart is, like Job 34:10, comp. נלבב, Job 11:12, equivalent to νοῦς διάνοια; Ewald's translation, “I also have a head even as you” (“brains” would better accord with the connection), is a western form of expression, and modern and unbiblical (vid., Division ”Herz und Haupt,” Psychol. iv. §12). He is not second to them; מִן נָפַל, like Job 13:2, properly to slip from, to be below any one; מִן is not the comparative (Ewald). Oetinger's translation is not bad: I cannot slink away at your presence. Who has not a knowledge of such things as those which they, by setting themselves up as defenders of God, have presented to him! אִתִּי הָיָה is equivalent to יָדַעְתִּי, σύνοιδα, Isa 59:12.