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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 30:13 - 30:13
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
13 They tear down my path,
They minister to my overthrow,
They who themselves are helpless.
14 As through a wide breach they approach,
Under the crash they roll onwards.
15 Terrors are turned against me,
They pursue my nobility like the wind,
And like a cloud my prosperity passed away. -
They make all freedom of motion and any escape impossible to him, by pulling down, diruunt, the way which he might go. Thus is נָֽתְסוּ (cogn. form of נתץ, נתע, נתשׁ) to be translated, not: they tear open (proscindunt), which is contrary to the primary signification and the usage of the language. They, who have no helper, who themselves are so miserable and despised, and yet so feelingless and overbearing, contribute to his ruin. הֹועִיל, to be useful, to do any good,to furnish anything effective (e.g., Isa 47:12), is here united with לְ of the purpose; comp. עָזַר לְ, to help towards anything, Zec 1:15. הָיָה (for which the Keri substitutes the primary form הַוָּה), as was already said on Job 6:2, is prop. hiatus, and then barathrum, pernicies, like הַוָּה in the signification cupiditas, prop. inhiatio. The verb הָוָה, Arab. hwy, also signifies delabi, whence it may be extended (vid., on Job 37:6) in like manner to the signification abyss (rapid downfall); but a suitable medium for the two significations, strong passion (Arab. hawa) and abyss (Arab. hâwije, huwwe, mahwa), is offered only by the signification of the root flare (whence hawâ, air). לֹא עֹזֵר לָמֹו is a genuine Arabic description of these Idumaean or Hauranite pariahs. Schultens compares a passage of the Hamâsa: “We behold you ignoble, poor, laisa lakum min sâir-in-nâsi nasirun, i.e., without a helper among the rest of men.” The interpretations of those who take לָמֹו for לֹו, and this again for לִי (Eichh., Justi), condemn themselves. It might more readily be explained, with Stick.: without any one helping them, i.e., with their own strong hand; but the thought thus obtained is not only aimless and tame, but also halting and even untrue (vid., Job 19:13).
Job 30:14
The figure of a siege, which is begun with Job 30:12 and continued in Job 30:13, leaves us in no doubt concerning פֶּרֶץ רָחָב and שֹׁאָה. The Targ. translates: like the force of the far-extending waves of the sea, not as though פֶּרֶץ could in itself signify a stream of water, but taking it as = פרץ מַיִם, 2Sa 5:20 (synon. diffusio aquarum). Hitzig's translation:
(Note: Vid., Deutsche Morgenländ. Zeitschr. ix. (1855), S. 741, and Proverbs, S. 11.)
“like a broad forest stream they come, like a rapid brook they roll on,” gives unheard-of significations to the doubtful words. In Job 16:14 we heard Job complain: He (Eloah) brake through me על־פני־פרץ פרץ, breach upon breach, - by the divine decrees of sufferings, which are completed in this ill-treatment which he receives from good-for-nothing fellows, he is become as a wall with a wide-gaping breach, through which they rush in upon him (instar rupturae, a concise mode of comparison instead of tanquam per rupt.), in order to get him entirely into their power as a plaything for their coarse passions. שֹׁאָה is the crash of the wall with the wide breaches, and תַּחַת שֹׁאָה signifies sub fragore in a local sense: through the wall which is broken through and crashes above the assailants. There is no ground in Job 30:15 for dividing, with Umbreit, thus: He hath turned against me! Terrors drove away, etc., although this would not be impossible according to the syntax (comp. Gen 49:22, בָּנֹות צָֽעֲדָה). It is translated: terrors are turned against me; so that the predicate stands first in the most natural, but still indefinite, personal form, Ges. §147, a, although בַּלָּהֹות might also be taken as the accus. of the object after a passive, Ges. §143, 1. The subj. of Job 30:15 remains the same: they (these terrors) drive away my dignity like the wind; the construction is like Job 27:20; Job 14:19; on the matter, comp. Job 18:11. Hirz. makes כָּרוּחַ the subj.: quasi ventus aufert nobilitatem meam, in which case the subj. would be not so much ventus as similitudo venti, as when one says in Arabic, 'gâani kazeidin, there came to me one of Zeid's equals, for in the Semitic languages כְּ has the manner of an indeclinable noun in the signification instar. But the reference to בלהות is more natural; and Hahn's objection, that calamity does not first, if it is there, drive away prosperity, but takes the place of that which is driven away, is sophisticated and inadequate, since the object of the driving away here is not Job's prosperity, but Job's נְדִיבָה, appearance and dignity, by which he hitherto commanded the respect of others (Targ. רַבָּנוּתִי). The storms of suffering which pass over him take this nobility away to the last fragment, and his salvation - or rather, since this word in the mouth of an extra-Israelitish hero has not the meaning it usually otherwise has, his prosperous condition (from Arab. wasi‛a, amplum esse) - is as a cloud, so rapidly and without trace (Job 7:9; Isa 44:22), passed away and vanished. Observe the music of the expression כְּעָב עָֽבְרָה, which cannot be reproduced in translation.