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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 16:15 - 16:15
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
15 I sewed sackcloth upon my skin,
And defiled my horn with dust.
16 My face is exceeding red with weeping,
And on mine eyelids is the shadow of death,
17 Although there is no wrong in my hand,
And my prayer is pure.
Coarse-haired cloth is the recognised clothing which the deeply sorrowful puts on, ἱμάτιον στενοχωρίας καὶ πένθους, as the Greek expositors remark. Job does not say of it that he put it on or slung it round him, but that he sewed it upon his naked body; and this is to be attributed to the hideous distortion of the body by elephantiasis, which will not admit of the use of the ordinary form of clothes. For the same reason he also uses, not עֹורִי, but גִּלְדִּי, which signifies either the scurfy scaly surface (as גֶּלֶד and הִנְלִיד in Talmudic of the scab of a healing wound, but also occurring e.g., of the bedaggled edge of clothes when it has become dry), or scornfully describes the skin as already almost dead; for the healthy skin is called עֹזר, גֶּלֶד, on the other hand, βύρσα (lxx), hide (esp. when removed from the body), Talm. e.g., sole-leather. We prefer the former interpretation (adopted by Raschi and others): The crust in which the terrible lepra has clothed his skin (vid., on Job 7:5; Job 30:18-19, Job 30:30) is intended. עֹלַלְתִּי in Job 16:15 is referred by Rosenm., Hirz., Ges., and others (as indeed by Saad. and Gecat., who transl. “I digged into”), to עֲלַל (Arab. gll), to enter, penetrate: “I stuck my horn in the dust;” but this signification of the Hebrew עֹלֵל is unknown, it signifies rather to inflict pain, or scorn (e.g., Lam 3:51, mine eye causeth pain to my soul), generally with לְ, here with the accusative: I have misused, i.e., injured or defiled (as the Jewish expositors explain), my horn with dust. This is not equivalent to my head (as in the Syr. version), but he calls everything that was hitherto his power and pride קַרְנִי (lxx, Targ.); all this he has together at the same time injured, i.e., represented as come to destruction, by covering his head with dust and ashes.
Job 16:16
The construction of the Chethib is like 1Sa 4:15, of the Keri on the other hand like Lam 1:20; Lam 2:11 (where the same is said of מֵעַי, viscera mea); חֳמַרְמַר is a passive intensive form (Ges. §55, 3), not in the signification: they are completely kindled (lxx συγκέκανται, Jer. intumuit, from the חָמַר, Arab. chmr, which signifies to ferment), but: they are red all over (from חָמַר, Arab. ḥmr, whence the Alhambra, as a red building, takes its name), reddened, i.e., from weeping; and this has so weakened them, that the shadow of death (vid., on Job 10:21.) seems to rest upon his eyelids; they are therefore sad even to the deepest gloom. Thus exceedingly miserable is his state and appearance, although he is no disguised hypocrite, who might need to do penance in sackcloth and ashes, and shed tears of penitence without any solace. Hirz. explains עַל as a preposition: by the absence of evil in my hands; but Job 16:17 and Job 16:17 are substantival clauses, and על is therefore just, like Isa 53:9, a conjunction (= על־אשׁר). His hands are clean from wrong-doing, free from violence and oppression; his prayer is pure, pura; as Merc. observes, ex puritate cordis et fidei. From the feeling of the strong contrast between his piety and his being stigmatized as an evil-doer by such terrible suffering, - from this extreme contrast which has risen now to its highest in his consciousness of patient endurance of suffering, the lofty thoughts of the next strophe take their rise.