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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 3:13 - 3:13
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
13 So should I now have lain and had quiet,
I should have slept, then it would have been well with me,
14 With kings and councillors of the earth,
Who built ruins for themselves,
15 Or with princes possessing gold,
Who filled their houses with silver:
16 Or like a hidden untimely birth I had not been,
And as children that have never seen the light.
The perf. and interchanging fut. have the signification of oriental imperfecta conjunctivi, according to Ges. §126, 5; עַתָּה כִּי is the usual expression after hypothetical clauses, and takes the perf. if the preceding clause specifies a condition which has not occurred in the past (Gen 31:42; Gen 43:10; Num 22:29, Num 22:33; 1Sa 14:30), the fut. if a condition is not existing in the present (Job 6:3; Job 8:6; Job 13:19). It is not to be translated: for then; כי rather commences the clause following: so I should now, indeed then I should. Ruins, הֳרָבֹות, are uninhabited desolate buildings, elsewhere such as have become, here such as are from the first intended to remain, uninhabited and desolate, consequently sepulchres, mausoleums; probably, since the book has Egyptian allusions, in other passages also, a play upon the pyramids, in whose name (III-XPAM, according to Coptic glossaries) III is the Egyptian article (vid., Bunsen, Aeg. ii. 361); Arab. without the art. hirâm or ahrâm (vid., Abdollatîf, ed. de Sacy, p. 293, s.).
(Note: We think that חרבות sounds rather like חרמות, the name of the pyramids, as the Arabic haram (instead of hharam), derived from XPAM, recalls harmân (e.g., beith harmân, a house in ruins), the synonym of hhardân (חרבאן).)
Also Renan: Qui se bâtissent des mausolées. Böttch. de inferis, §298 (who, however, prefers to read רחבות, wide streets), rightly directs attention to the difference between החרבות בנה (to rebuild the ruins) and לו בנה ח (to build ruins for one's self). With אֹו like things are then ranged after one another. Builders of the pyramids, millionaires, abortions (vid., Ecc 6:3), and the still-born: all these are removed from the sufferings of this life in their quiet of the grave, be their grave a “ruin” gazed upon by their descendants, or a hole dug out in the earth, and again filled in as it was before.