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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 32:8 - 32:8
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
8 Still the spirit, it is in mortal man,
And the breath of the Almighty, that giveth them understanding.
9 Not the great in years are wise,
And the aged do not understand what is right.
10 Therefore I say: O hearken to me,
I will declare my knowledge, even I.
The originally affirmative and then (like אוּלָם) adversative אָכֵן also does not occur elsewhere in the book of Job. In contradiction to biblical psychology, Rosenm. and others take Job 32:8 as antithetical: Certainly there is spirit in man, but ... . The two halves of the verse are, on the contrary, a synonymous (“the spirit, it is in man, viz., that is and acts”) or progressive parallelism) thus according to the accents: ”the spirit, even that which is in man, and ... ”). It is the Spirit of God to which man owes his life as a living being, according to Job 33:4; the spirit of man is the principle of life creatively wrought, and indeed breathed into him, by the Spirit of God; so that with regard to the author it can be just as much God's רוּחַ or נְשָׁמָה, Job 34:14, as in respect of the possessor: man's רוח or נשׁמה. All man's life, his thinking as well as his bodily life, is effected by this inwrought principle of life which he bears within him, and all true understanding, without being confined to any special age of life, comes solely from this divinely originated and divinely living spirit, so far as he acts according to his divine origin and basis of life. רַבִּים are here (as the opposite of צעירים, Gen 25:23) grandes = grandaevi (lxx πολυχρόνιοι). לֹא governs both members of the verse, as Job 3:10; Job 28:17; Job 30:24. Understanding or ability to form a judgment is not limited to old age, but only by our allowing the πνεῦμα to rule in us in its connection with the divine. Elihu begs a favourable hearing for that of which he is conscious. דֵּעַ, and the Hebr.-Aramaic הִוָּה, which likewise belong to his favourite words, recur here.