Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 39:1 - 39:1
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
1 Dost thou know the bearing time of the wild goats of the rock?
Observest thou the circles of the hinds?
2 Dost thou number the months which they fulfil,
And knowest thou the time of their bringing forth?
3 They bow down, they let their young break through,
They cast off their pains.
4 Their young ones gain strength, grow up in the desert,
They run away and do not return.
The strophe treats of the female chamois or steinbocks, ibices (perhaps including the certainly different kinds of chamois), and stags. The former are called יְעֵלִים, from יָעַל, Arab. w‛l (a secondary formation from עלה, Arab. ‛lâ), to mount, therefore: rock-climbers. חֹולֵל is inf. Pil.: τὸ ὠδίνειν, comp. the Pul. Job 15:7. שָׁמַר, to observe, exactly as Ecc 11:4; 1Sa 1:12; Zec 11:11. In Job 39:2 the question as to the expiration of the time of bearing is connected with that as to the time of bringing forth. תִּסְפֹּור, plene, as Job 14:16; לִדְתָּנָה (littâna, like עֵת = עִדְתּ) with an euphonic termination for לִדְתָּן, as Gen 42:36; Gen 21:29, and also out of pause, Rth 1:19, Ges. §91, 1, rem. 2. Instead of תְּפַלַּחְנָה Olsh. wishes to read תְּפַלַּטְנָה, but this (synon. תמלטנה) would be: they let slip away; the former (synon. תבקענה): they cause to divide, i.e., to break through (comp. Arab. felâh, the act of breaking through, freedom, prosperity). On כָּרַע, to kneel down as the posture of one in travail, vid., 1Sa 4:19. “They cast off their pains” is not meant of an easy working off of the after-pains (Hirz., Schlottm.), but חֶבֶל signifies in this phrase, as Schultens has first shown, meton. directly the foetus, as Arab. ḥabal, plur. ahbâl, and ὠδίν, even of a child already grown up, as being the fruit of earlier travail, e.g., in Aeschylus, Agam. 1417f.; even the like phrase, ῥίψαι ὠδῖνα = edere foetum, is found in Euripides, Ion 45. Thus born with ease, the young animals grow rapidly to maturity (חָלַם, pinguescere, pubescere, whence חֲלֹום, a dream as the result of puberty, vid., Psychol. S. 282), grow in the desert (בַּבָּר, Targ. = בַּחוּץ, vid., i. 329, note), seek the plain, and return not again לָמֹו, sibi h. e. sui juris esse volentes (Schult.), although it might also signify ad eas, for the Hebr. is rather confused on the question of the distinction of gender, and even in חבליהם and בניהם the masc. is used ἐπικοίνως. We, however, prefer to interpret according to Job 6:19; Job 24:16. Moreover, Bochart is right: Non hic agitur de otiosa et mere speculativa cognitione, sed de ea cognitione, quae Deo propria est, qua res omnes non solum novit, sed et dirigit atque gubernat.