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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 2:11 - 2:11
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After the sixth temptation there comes a seventh; and now the real conflict begins, through which the hero of the book passes, not indeed without sinning, but still triumphantly.
11 When Job's three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz from Teman, and Bildad from Shuach, and Zophar from Naama: for they had made an appointment to come together to go and sympathize with him, and comfort him.
אֱלִיפַז is, according to Gen 36, an old Idumaean name (transposed = Phasaël in the history of the Herodeans; according to Michaelis, Suppl. p. 87; cui Deus aurum est, comp. Job 22:25), and תֵּימָן a district of Idumaea, celebrated for its native wisdom (Jer 49:7; Bar. 3:22f.). But also in East-Hauran a Têmâ is still found (described by Wetzstein in his Bericht über seine Reise in den beiden Trachonen und um das Hauran-Gebirge, Zeitschr. für allg. Erdkunde, 1859), and about fifteen miles south of Têmâ, a Bûzân suggestive of Elihu's surname (comp. Jer 25:23). שׁוּחַ we know only from Gen 25 as the son of Abraham and Keturah, who settled in the east country. Accordingly it must be a district of Arabia lying not very far from Idumaea: it might be compared with trans-Hauran Schakka, though the sound, however, of the word makes it scarcely admissible, which is undoubtedly one and the same with Dakkai'a, east from Batanaea, mentioned in Ptolem. v. 15. נַעֲמָה is a name frequent in Syria and Palestine: there is a town of the Jewish Shephêla (the low ground by the Mediterranean) of this name, Jos 15:41, which, however, can hardly be intended here. הַבָּאָה is Milel, consequently third pers. with the art. instead of the relative pron. (as, besides here, Gen 18:21; Gen 46:27), vid., Ges. §109 ad init. The Niph. נֹועַד is strongly taken by some expositors as the same meaning with נֹועַץ, to confer with, appoint a meeting: it signifies, to assemble themselves, to meet in an appointed place at an appointed time (Neh 6:2). Reports spread among the mounted tribes of the Arabian desert with the rapidity of telegraphic despatches.