Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 16:12 - 16:12
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
12 I was at ease, but He hath broken me in pieces;
And He hath taken me by the neck and shaken me to pieces,
And set me up for a mark for himself.
13 His arrows whistled about me;
He pierced my reins without sparing;
He poured out my gall upon the ground.
14 He brake through me breach upon breach,
He ran upon me like a mighty warrior.
He was prosperous and contented, when all at once God began to be enraged against him; the intensive form פַּרְפַּר (Arab. farfara) signifies to break up entirely, crush, crumble in pieces (Hithpo. to become fragile, Isa 24:19); the corresponding intensive form פִּצְפֵּץ (from פָּצַץ, Arab. fḍḍ, cogn. נָפַץ), to beat in pieces (Polel of a hammer, Jer 23:29), to dash to pieces: taking him by the neck, God raised him on high in order to dash him to the ground with all His might. מַטָּרָה (from נָטַר, τηρεῖν, like σκοπός from σκέπτισθαι) is the target, as in the similar passage, Lam 3:12, distinct from מִפְגָּע, Job 7:20, object of attack and point of attack: God has set me up for a target for himself, in order as it were to try what He and His arrows can do. Accordingly רַבָּיו (from רָבַב = רָבָה, רָמָה, jacere) signifies not: His archers (although this figure would be admissible after Job 10:17; Job 19:12, and the form after the analogy of רַב, רַע, etc., is naturally taken as a substantival adj.), but, especially since God appears directly as the actor: His arrows (= הִצָּיו, Job 6:4), from רַב, formed after the analogy of בַּז, מַס, etc., according to which it is translated by lxx, Targ., Jer., while most of the Jewish expositors, referring to Jer 50:29 (where we need not, with Böttch., point רֹבִים, and here רֹבָיו), interpret by מורי החצים. On all sides, whichever way he might turn himself, the arrows of God flew about him, mercilessly piercing his reins, so that his gall-bladder became empty (comp. Lam 2:11, and vid., Psychol. S. 268). It is difficult to conceive what is here said;
(Note: The emptying of the gall takes place if the gall-bladder or any of its ducts are torn; but how the gall itself (without assuming some morbid condition) can flow outwardly, even with a severe wound, is a difficult question, with which only those who have no appreciation of the standpoint of imagery and poetry will distress themselves. [On the ”spilling of the gall” or “bursting of the gall-bladder” among the Arabs, as the working of violent and painful emotions, vid., Zeitschr. der deutschen morgenländ. Gesellsch. Bd. xvi. S. 586, Z. 16ff. - Fl.])
it is, moreover, not meant to be understood strictly according to the sense: the divine arrows, which are only an image for divinely decreed sufferings, pressed into his inward parts, and wounded the noblest organs of his nature. In Job 16:14 follows another figure. He was as a wall which was again and again broken through by the missiles or battering-rams of God, and against which He ran after the manner of besiegers when storming. פֶּרֶץ is the proper word for such breaches and holes in a wall generally; here it is connected as obj. with its own verb, according to Ges. §138, rem. 1. The second פרץ (פָּרֶץ with Kametz) has Ssade minusculum, for some reason unknown to us.
The next strophe says what change took place in his own conduct in consequence of this incomprehensible wrathful disposition of God which had vented itself on him.