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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 24:9 - 24:9
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
9 They tear the fatherless from the breast,
And defraud the poor.
10 Naked, they slink away without clothes,
And hungering they bear the sheaves.
11 Between their walls they squeeze out the oil;
They tread the wine-presses, and suffer thirst.
12 In the city vassals groan, And the soul of the oppressed crieth out -
And Eloah heedeth not the anomaly.
The accentuation of Job 24:9 (יגזלו with Dechî, משׁד with Munach) makes the relation of שֹׁד יָתֹום genitival. Heidenheim (in a MS annotation to Kimchi's Lex.) accordingly badly interprets: they plunder from the spoil of the orphan; Ramban better: from the ruin, i.e., the shattered patrimony; both appeal to the Targum, which translates מביזת יתום, like the Syriac version, men bezto de-jatme (comp. Jerome: vim fecerunt depraedantes pupillos). The original reading, however, is perhaps (vid., Buxtorf, Lex. col. 295) מִבִּיזָא, ἀπὸ βυζίου, from the mother's breast, as it is also, the lxx (ἀπὸ μαστοῦ), to be translated contrary to the accentuation. Inhuman creditors take the fatherless and still tender orphan away from its mother, in order to bring it up as a slave, and so to obtain payment. If this is the meaning of the passage, it is natural to understand יַחְבֹּלוּ, Job 24:9, of distraining; but (1) the poet would then repeat himself tautologically, vid., Job 24:3, where the same thing is far more evidently said; (2) חָבַל, to distrain, would be construed with עַל, contrary to the logic of the word. Certainly the phrase חבל על may be in some degree explained by the interpretation, “to impose a fine” (Ew., Hahn), or “to distrain” (Hirz., Welte), or “to oppress with fines” (Schlottm.); but violence is thus done to the usage of the language, which is better satisfied by the explanation of Ralbag (among modern expositors, Ges., Arnh., Vaih., Stick., Hlgst.): and what the unfortunate one possesses they seize; but this עַל = אֲשֶׁר עַל directly as object is impossible. The passage, Deu 7:25, cited by Schultens in its favour, is of a totally different kind.
But throughout the Semitic dialects the verb חָבַל also signifies "to destroy, to treat injuriously” (e.g., Arab. el-châbil, a by-name of Satan); it occurs in this signification in Job 34:31, and according to the analogy of הֵרֵעַ עַל, 1Ki 17:20, can be construed with על as well as with לְ. The poet, therefore, by this construction will have intended to distinguish the one חבל from the other, Job 22:6; Job 24:3; and it is with Umbreit to be translated: they bring destruction upon the poor; or better: they take undue advantage of those who otherwise are placed in trying circumstances.
The subjects of Job 24:10 are these עניים, who are made serfs, and become objects of merciless oppression, and the poet here in Job 24:10 indeed repeats what he has already said almost word for word in Job 24:7 (comp. Job 31:19); but there the nakedness was the general calamity of a race oppressed by subjugation, here it is the consequence of the sin of merces retenta laborum, which cries aloud to heaven, practised on those of their own race: they slink away (הִלֵּךְ, as Job 30:28) naked (nude), without (בְּלִי = מִבְּלִי, as perhaps sine = absque) clothing, and while suffering hunger they carry the sheaves (since their masters deny them what, according to Deu 25:4, shall not be withheld even from the beasts). Between their walls (שׁוּרֹת like שָׁרֹות, Jer 5:10, Chaldee שׁוּרַיָּא), i.e., the walls of their masters who have made them slaves, therefore under strict oversight, they press out the oil (יַצְהִירוּ, ἅπ. γεγρ.), they tread the wine-vats (יְקָבִים, lacus), and suffer thirst withal (fut. consec. according to Ew. §342, a), without being allowed to quench their thirst from the must which runs out of the presses (נִּתֹּות, torcularia, from which the verb דָּרַךְ is here transferred to the vats). Böttch. translates: between their rows of trees, without being able to reach out right or left; but that is least of all suitable with the olives. Carey correctly explains: “the factories or the garden enclosures of these cruel slaveholders.” This reference of the word to the wall of the enclosure is more suitable than to walls of the press-house in particular. From tyrannical oppression in the country,
(Note: Brentius here remarks: Quantum igitur judicium in eos futurum est, qui in homines ejusdem carnis, ejusdem patriae, ejusdem fidei, ejusdem Christi committunt quod nec in bruta animalia committendum est, quod malum in Germania frequentissimum est. Vae igitur Germaniae!)
Job now passes over to the abominations of discord and was in the cities.
Job 24:12
It is natural, with Umbr., Ew., Hirz., and others, to read מֵתִים like the Peschito; but as mı̂te in Syriac, so also מתים in Hebrew as a noun everywhere signifies the dead (Arab. mauta), not the dying, mortals (Arab. maïtûna); wherefore Ephrem interprets the praes. “they groan” by the perf. “they have groaned.” The pointing מְתִים, therefore, is quite correct; but the accentuation which, by giving Mehupach Zinnorith to מעיר, and Asla legarmeh to מתים, places the two words in a genitival relation, is hardly correct: in the city of men, i.e., the inhabited, thickly-populated city, they groan; not: men (as Rosenm. explains, according to Gen 9:6; Pro 11:6) groan; for just because מְתִים appeared to be too inexpressive as a subject, this accentuation seems to have been preferred. It is also possible that the signification fierce anger (Hos 11:9), or anguish (Jer 15:8), was combined with עִיר, comp. Arab. gayrt, jealousy, fury (= קִנְאָה), of which, however, no trace is anywhere visible.
(Note: Wetzstein translates Hos 11:9 : I will not come as a raging foe, with בְ of the attribute = Arab. b-ṣifat 'l-‛ayyûr (comp. Jer 15:8, עִיר, parall. שֹׁדֵד) after the form קִים, to which, if not this עִיר, certainly the עִיר, ἐγρήγορος, occurring in Dan 4:10, and freq., corresponds. What we remarked above, p. 483, on the form קִים, is cleared up by the following observation of Wetzstein: “The form קִים belongs to the numerous class of segolate forms of the form פִעְל, which, as belonging to the earliest period of the formation of the Semitic languages, take neither plural nor feminine terminations; they have often a collective meaning, and are not originally abstracta, but concreta in the sense of the Arabic part. act. mufâ‛l. This inflexible primitive formation is frequently found in the present day in the idiom of the steppe, which shows that the Hebrew is essentially of primeval antiquity (uralt). Thus the Beduin says: hû qitlı̂ (הוּא קִטְלִי), he is my opponent in a hand-to-hand combat; nithı̂ (נִטְחִי), my opponent in the tournament with lances; chı̂lfı̂ (חִלְפִי) and diddı̂ (צִדִּי), my adversary; thus a step-mother is called dı̂r (צִיר), as the oppressor of the step-children, and a concubine dirr (צִרְר), as the oppressor of her rival. The Kamus also furnishes several words which belong here, as tilb (טִלְב), a persecutor.” Accordingly, קִים is derived from קִוְם, as also עִיר, a city, from עִוְר (whence, according to a prevalent law of the change of letters, we have עִיְר first of all, plur. עֲיָרִים, Jdg 10:4), and signifies the rebelling one, i.e., the enemy (who is now in the idiom of the steppe called qômâni, from qôm, a state of war, a feud), as עִיר, a keeper and צִיר, a messenger; עִיר (קִיר) is also originally concrete, a wall (enclosure).)
With Jer., Symm., and Theod., we take מתים as the sighing ones themselves; the feebleness of the subject disappears if we explain the passage according to such passages as Deu 2:34; Deu 3:6, comp. Jdg 20:48 : it is the male inhabitants that are intended, whom any conqueror would put to the sword; we have therefore translated men (men of war), although "people” (Job 11:3) also would not have been unsuitable according to the ancient use of the word. נָאַק is intended of the groans of the dying, as Jer 51:52; Eze 30:24, as Job 24:12 also shows: the soul of those that are mortally wounded cries out. חַלָלִים signifies not merely the slain and already dead, but, according to its etymon, those who are pierced through those who have received their death-blow; their soul cries out, since it does not leave the body without a struggle. Such things happen without God preventing them. לֹא־יָשִׂים תִּפְלָה, He observeth not the abomination, either = לא ישׂים בלבו, Job 22:22 (He layeth it not to heart), or, since the phrase occurs nowhere elliptically, = לא ישׂים לבו על, Job 1:8; Job 34:23) He does not direct His heart, His attention to it), here as elliptical, as in Job 4:20; Isa 41:20. True, the latter phrase is never joined with the acc. of the object; but if we translate after שִׂים בְּ, Job 4:18 : non imputat, He does not reckon such תפלה, i.e., does not punish it, בָּם (בָּהֶם) ought to be supplied, which is still somewhat liable to misconstruction, since the preceding subject is not the oppressors, but those who suffer oppression. תִּפְלָה is properly insipidity (comp. Arab. tafila, to stink), absurdity, self-contradiction, here the immorality which sets at nought the moral order of the world, and remains nevertheless unpunished. The Syriac version reads תְּפִלָּה, and translates, like Louis Bridel (1818): et Dieu ne fait aucune attention à leur prière.