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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 3:1 - 3:1
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Job's first longer utterance now commences, by which he involved himself in the conflict, which is his seventh temptation or trial.
1, 2 After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed his day. And Job spake, and said.
Job 3:2
Job 3:2 consists only of three words, which are separated by Rebia; and ויאמר, although Milel, is vocalized וַיֹּאמַר, because the usual form וַיֹּאמֶר, which always immediately precedes direct narration, is not well suited to close the verse. עָנָה, signifies to begin to speak from some previous incitement, as the New Testament ἀποκρίνεσθαι (not always = הֵשִׁיב) is also sometimes used.
(Note: Vid., on this use of ἀποκρίνεσθαι, Quaestio xxi. of the Amphilochia of Photius in Ang. Maji Collectio, i. 229f.)
The following utterance of Job, with which the poetic accentuation begins, is analysed by modern critics as follows: Job 3:3-10, Job 3:11-19, Job 3:20-26. Schlottmann calls it three strophes, Hahn three parts, in the first of which delirious cursing of life is expressed; in the second, eager longing for death; in the third, reproachful inquiry after the end of such a life of suffering. In reality they are not strophes. Nevertheless Ebrard is wrong when he maintains that, in general, strophe-structure is as little to be found in the book of Job as in Wallenstein's Monologue. The poetical part of the book of Job is throughout strophic, so far as the nature of the drama admits it. So also even this first speech. Stickel has correctly traced out its divisions; but accidentally, for he has reckoned according to the Masoretic verses. That this is false, he is now fully aware; also Ewald, in his Essay on Strophes in the Book of Job, is almost misled into this groundless reckoning of the strophes according to the Masoretic verses (Jahrb. iii. X. 118, Anm. 3). The strophe-schema of the following speech is as follows: 8. 10. 6. 8. 6. 8. 6. The translation will show how unmistakeably it may be known. In the translation we have followed the complete lines of the original, and their rhythm: the iambic pentameter into which Ebrard, and still earlier Hosse (1849), have translated, disguises the oriental Hebrew poetry of the book with its variegated richness of form in a western uniform, the monotonous impression of which is not, as elsewhere, counter-balanced in the book of Job by the change of external action. After the translation we give the grammatical explanation of each strophe; and at the conclusion of the speech thus translated and explained, its higher exposition, i.e., its artistic importance in the connection of the drama, and its theological importance in relation to the Old and New Testament religion and religious life.