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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 32:11 - 32:11
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
11 Behold, I waited upon your words,
Hearkened to your perceptions,
While ye searched out replies.
12 And I attended closely to you,
Yet behold: there was no one who refuted Job,
Who answered his sentences, from you.
13 Lest ye should say: “We found wisdom,
God is able to smite him, not man!”
14 Now he hath not arranged his words against me,
And with your sentences I will not reply to him.
He has waited for their words, viz., that they might give utterance to such words as should tend to refute and silence Job. In what follows, עַד still more emphatically than לְ refers this aim to that to which Elihu had paid great attention: I hearkened to your understandings, i.e., explanations of the matter, that, or whether, they came forth, (I hearkened) to see if you searched or found out words, i.e., appropriate words. Such abbreviated forms as אָזִין = אַֽאֲזִין (comp. מֵזִין = מֵיזִין for מַֽעֲזִין, Pro 17:4, Ges. §68, rem. 1, if it does not signify nutriens, from זוּן) we shall frequently meet with in this Elihu section. In Job 32:12, Job 32:12 evidently is related as an antecedent to what follows: and I paid attention to you (עָדֵיכֶם contrary to the analogy of the cognate praep. instead of עֲדֵיכֶם, moreover for עֲלֵיכֶם, with the accompanying notion: intently, or, according to Aben-Duran: thoroughly, without allowing a word to escape me), and behold, intently as I paid attention: no one came forward to refute Job; there was no one from or among you who answered (met successfully) his assertions. Every unbiassed reader will have an impression of the remarkable expressions and constructions here, similar to that which one has in passing from the book of the Kings to the characteristic sections of the Chronicles. The three, Elihu goes on to say, shall not indeed think that in Job a wisdom has opposed them - a false wisdom, indeed - which only God and not any man can drive out of the field (נָדַף, Arab. ndf, discutere, dispellere, as the wind drives away chaff or dry leaves); while he has not, however (וְלֹא followed directly by a v. fin. forming a subordinate clause, as Job 42:3; Psa 44:18, and freq., Ew. §341, a), arrayed (עָרַךְ in a military sense, Job 33:5; or forensic, Job 23:4; or even as Job 37:19, in the general sense of proponere) words against him (Elihu), i.e., utterances before which he would be compelled to confess himself affected and overcome. He will not then also answer him with such opinions as those so frequently repeated by them, i.e., he will take a totally different course from theirs in order to refute him.