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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 33:19 - 33:19
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
19 He is chastened also with pain upon his bed,
And with the unceasing conflict of his limbs;
20 And his life causeth him to loathe bread,
And his soul dainty meat.
21 His flesh consumeth away to uncomeliness,
And his deranged limbs are scarcely to be seen.
22 Then his soul draweth near to the grave,
And his life to the destroyers.
Another and severer lesson which God teaches man is by painful sickness: he is chastened with pain (בְּ of the means) on his bed, he and the vigorous number of his limbs, i.e., he with this hitherto vigorous (Raschi), or: while the multitude of his limbs is still vigorous (Ew). Thus is the Keri וְרֹב to be understood, for the interpretation: and the multitude of his limbs with unceasing pain (Arnh. after Aben-Ezra), is unnatural. But the Chethib is far more commendable: and with a constant tumult of his limbs (Hirz. and others). Job 33:19 might also be taken as a substantival clause: and the tumult of his limbs is unceasing (Umbr., Welte); but that taking over of בְּ from במכאוב is simpler and more pleasing. רִיב (opposite of שָׁלֹום, e.g., Psa 38:4) is an excellent description of disease which consists in a disturbance of the equilibrium of the powers, in the dissolution of their harmony, in the excitement of one against another (Psychol. S. 287). אֵתָן for אֵיתָן belongs to the many defective forms of writing of this section. In Job 33:20 we again meet a Hebraeo-Arabic hapaxlegomenon. זִהֵם from זָהַם. In Arab. zahuma signifies to stink, like the Aram. זְהַם (whence זוּהַם, dirt and stench), zahama to thrust back, restrain, after which Abu Suleiman Daûd Alfâsi, in his Arabic Lexicon of the Hebrew, interprets: “his soul thrusts back (תזהם נפסה) food and every means of life,”
(Note: Vid., Pinsker's Likkute Kadmoniot, p. קמג.)
beside which the suff. of וְזִהֲמַתּוּ is taken as an anticipation of the following object (vid., on Job 29:3): his life feels disgust at it, at bread, and his soul at dainty meat. The Piel has then only the intensive signification of Kal (synon. תִּעֵב, Psa 107:18), according to which it is translated by Hahn with many before him. But if the poet had wished to be so understood, he would have made use of a less ambiguous arrangement of the words, וזהמתו לחם חיתו. We take זִהֵם with Ew. §122, b, as causative of Kal, in which signification the Piel, it is true, occurs but rarely, yet it does sometimes, instead of Hiph.; but without translating, with Hirz., חיה by hunger and נפשׁ by appetite, which gives a confused thought. Schlottm. appropriately remarks: “It is very clearly expressed, as the proper vital power, the proper ψυχή, when it is inwardly consumed by disease, gives one a loathing for that which it otherwise likes as being a necessary condition of its own existence.” Thus it is: health produces an appetite, sickness causes nausea; the soul that is in an uninjured normal state longs for food, that which is severely weakened by sickness turns the desire for dainties into loathing and aversion.
Job 33:21
The contracted future form יִכֶל, again, like יָשֶׂם, Job 33:11, is poetic instead of the full form: his flesh vanishes מֵרֹאִי, from sight, i.s. so that it is seen no longer; or from comeliness, i.e., so that it becomes unsightly; the latter (comp. 1Sa 16:12 with Isa 53:2, ולא־מראה) might be preferred. In Job 33:21 the Keri corrects the text to וְשֻׁפּוּ, et contrita sunt, whereas the Chethib is to be read וּשְׁפִי, et contritio. The verb שָׁפָה, which has been explained by Saadia from the Talmudic,
(Note: He refers to b. Aboda zara 42a: If a heathen have broken an idol to pieces (שִׁפָּה) to derive advantage from the pieces, both the (shattered) idol and the fragments (שִׁפּוּיִין) are permitted (since both are deprived of their heathenish character).)
signifies conterere, comminuere; Abulwalîd (in Ges. Thes.) interprets it here by suhifet wa-baradet, they are consumed and wasted away, and explains it by כֻּתְּתוּ. The radical notion is that of scraping, scratching, rubbing away (not to be interchanged with Arab. sf', ספה, which, starting from the radical notion of sweeping away, vanishing, comes to have that of wasting away; cognate, however, with the above Arab. sḥf, whence suhâf, consumption, prop. a rasure of the plumpness of the body). According to the Keri, Job 33:21 runs: and his bones (limbs) are shattered (fallen away), they are not seen, i.e., in their wasting away and shrivelling up they have lost their former pleasing form. Others, taking the bones in their strict sense, and שׁפה in the signification to scrape away = lay bare, take לא ראו as a relative clause, as Jer. has done: ossa quae tecta fuerant nudabuntur (rather nudata sunt), but this ought with a change of mood to be לא ראו...וַיְשֻׁפּוּ. To the former interpretation corresponds the unexceptionable Chethib: and the falling away of his limbs are not seen, i.e., (per attractionem) his wasting limbs are diminished until they are become invisible. רֻאוּ is one of the four Old Testament words (Gen 43:26; Ezr 8:18; Lev 23:17) which have a Dagesh in the Aleph; in all four the Aleph stands between two vowels, and the dageshing (probably the remains of a custom in the system of pointing which has become the prevailing one, which, with these few exceptions, has been suffered to fall away) is intended to indicate that the Aleph is here to be carefully pronounced as a guttural (to use an Arabic expression, as Hamza), therefore in this passage ru-'û.
(Note: Vid., Luzzatto's Grammatica della Lingua Ebraica (1853), §54. Ewald's (§21) view, that in these instances the pointed Aleph is to be read as j (therefore ruju), is unfounded; moreover, the point over the Aleph is certainly only improperly called Dagesh, it might at least just as suitably be called Mappik.)
Thus, then, the soul (the bearer of the life of the body) of the sick man, at last succumbing to this process of decay, comes near to the pit, and his life to the מְמִתִים, destroying angels (comp. Psa 78:49; 2Sa 24:16), i.e., the angels who are commissioned by God to slay the man, if he does not anticipate the decree of death by penitence. To understand the powers of death in general, with Rosenm., or the pains of death, with Schlottm. and others, does not commend itself, because the Elihu section has a strong angelological colouring in common with the book of Job. The following strophe, indeed, in contrast to the ממיתים, speaks of an angel that effects deliverance from death.