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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 20:12 - 20:12
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
12 If wickedness tasted sweet in his mouth,
He hid it under his tongue;
13 He carefully cherished it and did not let it go,
And retained it in his palate:
14 His bread is now changed in his bowels,
It is the gall of vipers within him.
15 He hath swallowed down riches and now he spitteth them out,
God shall drive them out of his belly.
16 He sucked in the poison of vipers,
The tongue of the adder slayeth him.
The evil-doer is, in Job 20:12, likened to an epicure; he keeps hold of wickedness as long as possible, like a delicate morsel that is retained in the mouth (Renan: comme un bonbon qu'on laisse fondre dans la bouche), and seeks to enjoy it to the very last. הִמְתִּיק, to make sweet, has here the intransitive signification dulcescere, Ew. §122, c. הִכְחִיד, to remove from sight, signifies elsewhere to destroy, here to conceal (as the Piel, Job 6:10; Job 15:18). חָמַל, to spare, is construed with עַל, which is usual with verbs of covering and protecting. The conclusion of the hypothetical antecedent clauses begins with Job 20:14; the perf. נֶהְפָּךְ (with Kametz by Athnach) describes the suddenness of the change; the מְרֹורַת which follows is not equivalent to לִמְרורת (Luther: His food shall be turned to adder's gall in his body), but Job 20:14 expresses the result of the change in a substantival clause. The bitter and poisonous are synonymous in the ancient languages; hence we find the meanings poison and gall (Job 20:25) in מְרֹרָה, and רֹאשׁ signifies both a poisonous plant which is known by its bitterness, and the poison of plants like to the poison of serpents (Job 20:16; Deu 32:33). חַיִל (Job 20:15) is property, without the accompanying notion of forcible acquisition (Hirz.), which, on the contrary, is indicated by the בָּלַע. The following fut. consec. is here not aor., but expressive of the inevitable result which the performance of an act assuredly brings: he must vomit back the property which he has swallowed down; God casts it out of his belly, i.e., (which is implied in בָּלַע, expellere) forcibly, and therefore as by the pains of colic. The lxx, according to whose taste the mention of God here was contrary to decorum, trans. ἐξ οἰκίας (read κοιλίας, according to Cod. Alex.) αὐτοῦ ἐξελκύσει αὐτὸν ἄγγελος (Theod. δυνάστης). The perf., Job 20:15, is in Job 20:16 changed into the imperf. fut. יִינָק, which more strongly represents the past action as that which has gone before what is now described; and the ασυνδέτως, fut. which follows, describes the consequence which is necessarily and directly involved in it. Psa 140:4 may be compared with Job 20:16, Pro 23:32 with Job 20:16. He who sucked in the poison of low desire with a relish, will meet his punishment in that in which he sinned: he is destroyed by the poisonous deadly bite of the serpent, for the punishment of sin is fundamentally nothing but the nature of sin itself brought fully out.