Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 26:11 - 26:11
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
11 The pillars of heaven tremble
And are astonished at His threatening.
12 By His power He rouseth up the sea,
And by His understanding He breaketh Rahab in pieces.
13 By His breath the heavens become cheerful;
His hand hath formed the fugitive dragon.
The mountains towering up to the sky, which seem to support the vault of the sky, are called poetically “the pillars of heaven.” יְרֹופָפוּ is Pulal, like יְחֹולָלוּ, Job 26:5; the signification of violent and quick motion backwards and forwards is secured to the verb רוּף by the Targ. אִתְרֹופֵף = הִתְפַּלֵּץ, Job 9:6, and the Talm. רִפְרֵף of churned milk, blinding eyes (comp. הֶרֶף עַיִן, the twinkling of the eye, and Arab. rff, fut. i. o. nictare), flapping wings (comp. Arab. rff and rfrf, movere, motitare alas), of wavering thinking. גְּעָרָה is the divine command which looses or binds the powers of nature; the astonishment of the supports of heaven is, according to the radical signification of תָּמַהּ (cogn. שָׁמֵם), to be conceived of as a torpidity which follows the divine impulse, without offering any resistance whatever. That רָגַע, Job 26:12, is to be understood transitively, not like Job 7:5, intransitively, is proved by the dependent (borrowed) passages, Isa 51:15; Jer 31:35, from which it is also evident that רגע cannot with the lxx be translated κατέπαυσεν. The verb combines in itself the opposite significations of starting up, i.e., entering into an excited state, and of being startled, from which the significations of stilling (Niph., Hiph.), and of standing back or retreat (Arab. rj‛), branch off. The conjecture גָּעַר after the Syriac version (which translates, go‛ar bejamo) is superfluous. רַהַב, which here also is translated by the lxx τὸ κῆτος, has been discussed already on Job 9:13. It is not meant of the turbulence of the sea, to which מָחַץ is not appropriate, but of a sea monster, which, like the crocodile and the dragon, are become an emblem of Pharaoh and his power, as Isa 51:9. has applied this primary passage: the writer of the book of Job purposely abstains from such references to the history of Israel. Without doubt, רהב denotes a demoniacal monster, like the demons that shall be destroyed at the end of the world, one of which is called by the Persians akomano, evil thought, another taromaiti, pride. This view is supported by Job 26:13, where one is not at liberty to determine the meaning by Isa 51:9, and to understand נָחָשׁ בָּרִחַ, like תַּנִּין in that passage, of Egypt. But this dependent passage is an important indication for the correct rendering of חֹלְלָה. One thing is certain at the outset, that שִׁפְרָה is not perf. Piel = שִׁפְרָה, and for this reason, that the Dagesh which characterizes Piel cannot be omitted from any of the six mutae; the translation of Jerome, spiritus ejus ornavit coelos, and all similar ones, are therefore false. But it is possible to translate: “by His spirit (creative spirit) the heavens are beauty, His hand has formed the flying dragon.” Thus, in the signification to bring forth (as Pro 25:23; Pro 8:24.), חללה is rendered by Rosenm., Arnh., Vaih., Welte, Renan, and others, of whom Vaih. and Renan, however, do not understand Job 26:13 of the creation of the heavens, but of their illumination. By this rendering Job 26:13 and Job 26:13 are severed, as being without connection; in general, however, the course of thought in the description does not favour the reference of the whole of half of Job 26:13 to the creation. Accordingly, חללה is not to be taken as Pilel from חול (ליל), but after Isa 57:9, as Poel from חלל, according to which the idea of Job 26:13 is determined, since both lines of the verse are most closely connected.
(בָּרִיחַ) נָחָשׁ בָּרִחַ is, to wit, the constellation of the Dragon,
(Note: Ralbag, without any ground for it, understands it of the milky way (העגול החלבי), which, according to Rapoport, Pref. to Slonimski's Toledoth ha-schamajim (1838), was already known to the Talmud b. Berachoth, 58 b, under the name of נהר דנוד.)
one of the most straggling constellations, which winds itself between the Greater and Lesser Bears almost half through the polar circle.
“Maximus hic plexu sinuoso elabitur Anguis
Circum perque duas in morem fluminis Arctos.”
(Virgil, Georg. i. 244f.)
Aratus in Cicero, de nat. Deorum, ii. 42, describes it more graphically, both in general, and in regard to the many stars of different magnitudes which form its body from head to tail. Among the Arabs it is called el-hajje, the serpent, e.g., in Firuzabâdi: the hajje is a constellation between the Lesser Bear (farqadân, the two calves) and the Greater Bear (benât en-na‛sch, the daughters of the bier), “or et-tanı̂n, the dragon, e.g., in one of the authors quoted by Hyde on Ulugh Beigh's Tables of the Stars, p. 18: the tanîn lies round about the north pole in the form of a long serpent, with many bends and windings.” Thus far the testimony of the old expositors is found in Rosenmüller. The Hebrew name תְּלִי (the quiver) is perhaps to be distinguished from טְלִי and דְּלִי, the Zodiac constellations Aries and Aquarius.
(Note: Vid., Wissenschaft, Kunst, Judenthum (1838), S. 220f.)
It is questionable how בְּרִחַ is to be understood. The lxx translates δράκοντα ἀποστάτην in this passage, which is certainly incorrect, since בריח beside נחשׁ may naturally be assumed to be an attributive word referring to the motion or form of the serpent. Accordingly, Isa 27:1, ὄφιν φείγοντα is more correct, where the Syr. version is חֶוְיָא חַרְמָנָא, the fierce serpent, which is devoid of support in the language; in the passage before us the Syr. also has חֶוְיָא דַערַק, the fleeing serpent, but this translation does not satisfy the more neuter signification of the adjective. Aquila in Isaiah translates ὄφιν μόχλον, as Jerome translates the same passage serpentem vectem (whereas he translates coluber tortuosus in our passage), as though it were בְּרִיחַ; Symm. is better, and without doubt a substantially similar thought, ὄφιν συγκλείοντα, the serpent that joins by a bolt, which agrees with the traditional Jewish explanation, for the dragon in Aben-Ezra and Kimchi (in Lex.) - after the example of the learned Babylonian teacher of astronomy, Mar-Samuel (died 257), who says of himself that the paths of the heavens are as familiar to him as the places of Nehardea
(Note: Vid., Grätz, Geschichte der Juden, iv. 324. On Isa 27:1 Kimchi interprets the מבריח differently: he scares (pushes away).)
- is called נחשׁ עקלתון, because it is as though it were wounded, and בריח, because it forms a bar (מבריח) from one end of the sky to the other; or as Sabbatai Donolo (about 94), the Italian astronomer,
(Note: Vid., extracts from his המזלות ספר in Joseph Kara's Comm. on Job, contributed by S. D. Luzzatto in Kerem Chemed, 7th year, S. 57ff.)
expresses it: “When God created the two lights (the sun and moon) and the five stars (planets) and the twelve מזלור (the constellations of the Zodiac), He also created the תלי (dragon), to unite these heavenly bodies as by a weaver's beam (מנור אורגים), and made it stretch itself on the firmament from one end to another as a bar (כבריח), like a wounded serpent furnished with the head and tail.” By this explanation בָּרִיחַ is either taken directly as בְּרִיחַ, vectis, in which signification it does not, however, occur elsewhere, or the signification transversus (transversarius) is assigned to the בָּרִיחַ (= barrı̂ah) with an unchangeable Kametz, - a signification which it might have, for brch Arab. brḥ signifies properly to go through, to go slanting across, of which the meanings to unite slanting and to slip away are only variations. בָּרִיחַ, notwithstanding, has in the language, so far as it is preserved to us, everywhere the signification fugitivus, and we will also keep to this: the dragon in the heavens is so called, as having the appearance of fleeing and hastening away. But in what sense is it said of God, that He pierces or slays it? In Isa 51:9, where the תנין is the emblem of Egypt (Pharaoh), and Isa 27:1, where נחשׁ בריח is the emblem of Assyria, the empire of the Tigris, the idea of destruction by the sword of Jehovah is clear. The present passage is to be explained according to Job 3:8, where לִוְיָתָן is only another name for נחש בריח (comp. Isa 27:1). It is the dragon in the heavens which produces the eclipse of the sun, by winding itself round about the sun; and God must continually wound it anew, and thus weaken it, if the sun is to be set free again. That it is God who disperses the clouds of heaven by the breath of His spirit, the representative of which in the elements is the wind, so that the azure becomes visible again; and that it is He who causes the darkening of the sun to cease, so that the earth can again rejoice in the full brightness of that great light, - these two contemplations of the almighty working of God in nature are so expressed by the poet, that he clothes the second in the mythological garb of the popular conception.
In the closing words which now follow, Job concludes his illustrative description: it must indeed, notwithstanding, come infinitely short of the reality.