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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 36:26 - 36:26
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26 Behold, God is exalted-we know Him not entirely;
The number of His years, it is unsearchable.
27 For He draweth down the drops of water,
They distil as rain in connection with its mist,
28 Which the clouds do drop,
Distil upon the multitude of men.
29 Who can altogether understand the spreadings of the clouds,
The crash of His tabernacle?
The Waw of the quasi-conclusion in Job 36:26 corresponds to the Waw of the train of thought in Job 36:26 (Ges. §145, 2). מִסְפַּר שָׁנָיו is, as the subject-notion, conceived as a nominative (vid., on Job 4:6), not as in similar quasi-antecedent clauses, e.g., Job 23:12, as an acc. of relation. שַׂגִּיא here and Job 37:23 occurs otherwise only in Old Testament Chaldee. In what follows Elihu describes the wondrous origin of rain. “If Job had only come,” says a Midrash (Jalkut, §518), “to explain to us the matter of the race of the deluge (vid., especially Job 22:15-18), it had been sufficient; and if Elihu had only come to explain to us the matter of the origin of rain (מעשׂה ירידת גשׁמים), it had been enough.” In Gesenius' Handwörterbuch, Job 36:27 is translated: when He has drawn up the drops of water to Himself, then, etc. But it is יְגָרַע, not גֵּרַע; and גָּרַע neither in Hebr. nor in Arab. signifies attrahere in sublime (Rosenm.), but only attrahere (root גר) and detrahere; the latter signification is the prevailing one in Hebr. (Job 15:8; Job 36:7). With כִּי the transcendent exaltation of the Being who survives all changes of creation is shown by an example: He draws away (draws off, as it were) the water-drops, viz., from the waters that are confined above on the circle of the sky, which pass over us as mist and cloud (vid., Genesis, S. 107); and these water-drops distil down (זָקַק, to ooze, distil, here not in a transitive but an intransitive signification, since the water-drops are the rain itself) as rain, לְאֵדֹו, with its mist, i.e., since a mist produced by it (Gen 2:6) fills the expanse (רָקִיעַ), the downfall of which is just this rain, which, as Job 36:28 says, the clouds (called שְׁחָקִים on account of its thin strata of air, in distinction from the next mist-circle) cause to flow gently down upon the multitude of men, i.e., far and wide over the mass of men who inhabit the district visited by the rain; both verbs are used transitively here, both נָזַל as Isa 45:8, and רָעַף, as evidently Pro 3:20. אַף אִם, Job 36:29, commences an intensive question: moreover, could one understand = could one completely understand; which certainly, according to the sense, is equivalent to: how much less (אַף כִּי). אִם is, however, the interrogative an, and אַף אִם corresponds to הֲאַף in the first member of the double question, Job 34:17; Job 40:8. מִפְרְשֵׂי are not the burstings, from פָּרַשׂ = פָּרַס, frangere, findere, but spreadings, as Eze 27:7 shows, from פָּרַשׂ, expandere, Psa 105:39, comp. supra on Job 36:9. It is the growth of the storm-clouds, which collect often from a beginning ”small as a man's hand” (1Ki 18:44), that is intended; majestic omnipotence conceals itself behind these as in a סֻכָּה (Psa 18:12) woven out of thick branches; and the rolling thunder is here called the crash (תְּשֻׁאֹות, as Job 39:7, is formed from שֹׁוא, to rumble, whence also שֹׁואָה, if it is not after the form גֹּולָה, migration, exile, from שׁאה morf ,, vid., on Job 30:3) of this pavilion of clouds in which the Thunderer works.