Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 16:6 - 16:6

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 16:6 - 16:6


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

6 If I speak, my pain is not soothed;

And if I forbear, what alleviation do I experience?

7 Nevertheless now hath He exhausted me;

Thou hast desolated all my household,

8 And Thou filledst me with wrinkles - for a witness was it,

And my leanness rose up against me

Complaining to my face.

9 His wrath tore me, and made war upon me;

He hath gnashed upon me with His teeth,

As mine enemy He sharpeneth His eyes against me.

אִם stands with the cohortative in the hypothetical antecedent clause Job 16:6, and in 6b the cohortative stands alone as Job 11:17; Psa 73:16; Psa 139:8, which is more usual, and more in accordance with the meaning which the cohortative has in itself, Nägelsbach, §89, 3. The interrogative, What goes from me? is equivalent to, what (= nothing) of pain forsakes me. The subject of the assertion which follows (Job 16:7) is not the pain - Aben-Ezra thinks even that this is addressed in v. 7b - still less Eliphaz, whom some think, particularly on account of the sharp expressions which follow, must be understood, but God, whose wrath Job regards as the cause of his suffering, and feels as the most intolerable part of it. A strained connection is obtained by taking אַךְ either in an affirmative sense (Ew.: surely), as Job 18:21, or in a restrictive sense: only (= entirely) He has now exhausted me (Hirz., Hahn, also Schlottm.: only I feel myself oppressed, at least to express this), by which interpretation the עַתָּה, which stands between אַךְ and the verb, is in the way. We render it therefore in the adversative signification: nevertheless (verum tamen) now he seeks neither by speaking to alleviate his pain, nor by silence to control himself; God has placed him in a condition in which all his strength is exhausted. He is absolutely incapable of offering any resistance to his pain, and care has also been taken that no solacing word shall come to him from any quarter: Thou hast made all my society desolate (Carey: all my clan); עֵדָה of the household, as in Job 15:34. Jerome: in nihilum redacti sunt omnes artus mei (כל אברי, as explained by the Jewish expositors, e.g., Ralbag), as though the human organism could be called עֵדָה. Hahn: Thou hast destroyed all my testimony, which must have been אֵדָתִי (from עוּד, whereas עֵדָה, from וָעַד, has a changeable Ssere). He means to say that he stands entirely alone, and neither sees nor hears anything consolatory, for he does not count his wife. He is therefore completely shut up to himself; God has shrivelled him up; and this suffering form to which God has reduced him, is become an evidence, i.e., for himself and for others, as the three friends, an accusation de facto, which puts him down as a sinner, although his self-consciousness testifies the opposite to him.

Job 16:8

The verb קָמַט (Aram. קְמַט), which occurs only once beside (Job 22:16), has, like Arab. qmṭ (in Gecatilia's transl.), the primary meaning of binding and grasping firmly (lxx ἐπελάβου, Symm. κατέδησας, Targ. for לָכַד, תָּמַךְ, lengthened to a quadriliteral in Arab. qmṭr, cogn. קָמַץ),

(Note: On the other hand, קטם, Arab. qṭm, abscindere, praemordere, has no connection with קמט, with which Kimchi and Reiske confuse it. This is readily seen from the opposite primary distinction of the two roots, קם and קט, of which the former expresses union, the latter separation.)

constringere, from which the significations comprehendere and corrugare have branched off; the signification, to wrinkle (make wrinkled), to shrivel up, is the most common, and the reference which follows, to his emaciation, and the lines which occur further on from the picture of one sick with elephantiasis, show that the poet here has this in his mind. Ewald's conjecture, which changes הָיָה into הַיָּה, Job 6:2; Job 30:13 = הַוָּה, as subject to ותקמטני (calamity seizes me as a witness), deprives the thought contained in לְעֵד, which renders the inferential clause לעד הָיָה prominent, of much of its force and emphasis. In Job 16:8 this thought is continued: כַּחַשׁ signifies here, according to Psa 109:24 (which see), a wasting away; the verb-group כחשׁ, כחד, Arab. jḥd, kḥt, qḥṭ, etc., has the primary meaning of taking away and decrease: he becomes thin from whom the fat begins to fail; to disown is equivalent to holding back recognition and admission; the metaphor, water that deceives = dries up, is similar. His wasted, emaciated appearance, since God has thus shrivelled him up, came forth against him, told him to his face, i.e., accused him not merely behind his back, but boldly and directly, as a convicted criminal. God has changed himself in relation to him into an enraged enemy. Schlottm. wrongly translates: one tears and tortures me fiercely; Raschi erroneously understands Satan by צָרִי. In general, it is the wrath of God whence Job thinks his suffering proceeds. It was the wrath of God which tore him so (like Hos 6:1, comp. Amo 1:11), and pursued him hostilely (as he says with the same word in Job 30:21); God has gnashed against him with His teeth; God drew or sharpened (Aq., Symm., Theod., ὤξυνεν לָטַשׁ like Psa 7:13). His eyes or looks like swords (Targ. as a sharp knife, אִזֶמֵל, σμίλη) for him, i.e., to pierce him through. Observe the aorr. interchanging with perff. and imperff. He describes the final calamity which has made him such a piteous form with the mark of the criminal. His present suffering is only the continuation of the decree of wrath which is gone forth concerning him.