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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 40:15 - 40:15
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
15 Behold now the behêmôth,
Which I have made with thee:
He eateth grass like an ox.
16 Behold now, his strength is in his loins,
And his force in the sinews of his belly.
17 He bendeth his tail like a cedar branch,
The sinews of his legs are firmly interwoven.
18 His bones are like tubes of brass,
His bones like bars of iron.
בְּהֵמֹות (after the manner of the intensive plur. הֹולֵלֹות, חָכְמֹות, which play the part of the abstract termination), which sounds like a plur., but without the numerical plural signification, considered as Hebrew, denotes the beast κατ ̓ ἐξοχήν, or the giant of beasts, is however Hebraized from the Egyptian p-ehe-mau, (muau), i.e., the (p) ox (ehe) of the water (mau as in the Hebraized proper name מֹשֶׁה). It is, as Bochart has first of all shown, the so-called river or Nile horse, Hippopotamus amphibius (in Isa 30:6, בַּֽהֲמֹות נֶגֶב, as emblem of Egypt, which extends its power, and still is active in the interest of others), found in the rivers of Africa, but no longer found in the Nile, which is not inappropriately called a horse; the Arab. water-hog is better, Italian bomarino, Eng. sea-cow ?, like the Egyptian p-ehe-mau. The change of p and b in the exchange of Egyptian and Semitic words occurs also elsewhere, e.g., pug' and בּוּץ, harpu and חֶרֶב (ἅρπη), Apriu and עִבְרִים (according to Lauth). Nevertheless p-ehe-mau (not mau-t, for what should the post-positive fem. art. do here?) is first of all only the בהמות translated back again into the Egyptian by Jablonsky; an instance in favour of this is still wanting. In Hieroglyph the Nile-horse is called apet; it was honoured as divine. Brugsch dwelt in Thebes in the temple of the Apet.
(Note: In the astronomical representations the hippopotamus is in the neighbourhood of the North Pole in the place of the dragon of the present day, and bears the name of hes-mut, in which mut = t. mau, “the mother.” Hes however is obscure; Birch explains it by: raging.)
In Job 40:15 עִמָּךְ signifies nothing but “with thee,” so that thou hast it before thee. This water-ox eats חָצִיר, green grass, like an ox. That it prefers to plunder the produce of the fields - in Arab. chadı̂r signifies, in particular, green barley - is accordingly self-evident. Nevertheless, it has gigantic strength, viz., in its plump loins and in the sinews (שְׁרִירֵי, properly the firm constituent parts,
(Note: Staring from its primary signification (made firm, fast), Arab. srı̂r, שׁרירא can signify e.g., also things put together from wood: a throne, a hand-barrow, bedstead and cradle, metaphor. the foundation. Wetzst. otherwise: “The שׂרירי הבטן are not the sinews and muscles, still less 'the private parts' of others, but the four bearers of the animal body = arkân el-batn, viz., the bones of the מתנים, Job 40:16, together with the two shoulder-blades. The Arab. sarı̂r is that on which a thing is supported or rests, on which it stands firmly, or moves about. Neshwân (i. 280) says: ‛sarı̂r is the substratum on which a thing rests,' and the sarı̂r er-ra's, says the same, is the place where the head rests upon the nape of the neck. The Kâmûs gives the same signification primo loco, which shows that it is general; then follows in gen. Arab. muḍṭaja‛, “the support of a thing.”)
therefore: ligaments and muscles) of its clumsy belly. The brush of a tail, short in comparison with the monster itself, is compared to a cedar (a branch of it), ratione glabritiei, rotunditatis, spissitudinis et firmitatis (Bochart); since the beast is in general almost without hair, it looks like a stiff, naked bone, and yet it can bend it like an elastic cedar branch; חָפַץ is Hebraeo-Arab., ḥfḍ
(Note: Wetzst. otherwise: One may compare the Arab. chafaḍa, fut. i, to hold, sit, lie motionless (in any place), from which the signification of desiring, longing, has been developed, since in the Semitic languages the figure of fixing (ta‛alluq) the heard and the eye on any desired object is at the basis of this notion (wherefore such verbs are joined with the praep. בְּ). According to this, it is to be explained, “his tail is motionless like (the short and thick stem of) The cedar,” for the stunted tail of an animal is a mark of its strength to a Semite. In 1860, as I was visiting the neighbouring mountain fortress of el-Hosn with the octogenarian Fêjâd, the sheikh of Fîk in Gôlân, we rode past Fêjâd's ploughmen; and as one of them was letting his team go slowly along, the sheikh cried out to him from a distance: Faster! faster! They (the steers, which thou ploughest) are not oxen weak with age, nor are they the dower of a widow (who at her second marriage receives only a pair of weak wretched oxen from her father or brother); but they are heifers (3-4 year-old steers) with stiffly raised tails (wadhujûluhin muqashmare, מֻקַשְׁמָר an intensive קָשׁוּר or שַׁלְאֲנָן comp. שַׁלְאֲנָן, Job 21:23).)
is a word used directly of the bending of wood (el-‛ûd).
Since this description, like the whole book of Job, is so strongly Arabized, פחד, Job 40:17, will also be one word with the Arab. fachidh, the thigh; as the Arabic version also translates: ‛urûku afchâdhihi (the veins or strings of its thigh). The Targ., retaining the word of the text here,
(Note: Another Targ., which translates גבריה ושׁעבוזוהי, penis et testiculi ejus, vid., Aruch s.v. שׁעבז.)
has פַּֽחֲדִין in Lev 21:20 for אֶשֶׁךְ, a testicle, prop. inguina, the groins; we interpret: the sinews of its thighs or legs
(Note: According to Fleischer, fachidh signifies properly the thick-leg (= thigh), from the root fach, with the general signification of being puffed out, swollen, thick.)
are intertwined after the manner of intertwined vine branches, שׂריגים.
(Note: In the choice of the word ישׂרגו, the mushâgarat ed-dawâlı̂ (from שׁגר = שׂרג), “the interweaving of the vine branches” was undoubtedly before the poet's eye; comp. Deutsch. Morgenl. Zeitschr. xi. 477: “On all sides in this delightful corner of the earth (the Ghûta) the vine left to itself, in diversified ramifications, often a dozen branches resembling so many huge snakes entangled together, swings to and fro upon the shining stem of the lofty white poplar.” And ib. S. 491: “a twisted vine almost the thickness of a man, as though formed of rods of iron (comp. Job 40:18).”)
But why is פַֽחֲדָיו pointed thus, and not פְחָדָיו (as e.g., שְׁעָרָיו)? It is either an Aramaizing (with אַשְׁרָיו it has another relationship) pointing of the plur., or rather, as Köhler has perceived, a regularly-pointed dual (like רַגְלָיו), from פַּֽחֲדַיִם (like פַּֽעֲמַיִם), which is equally suitable in connection with the signification femora as testiculi. מְטִיל, Job 40:18, is also Hebraeo-Arab.; for Arab. mṭl signifies to forge, or properly to extend by forging (hammering), and to lengthen, undoubtedly a secondary formation of טוּל, tâla, to be long, as makuna of kâna, madana of dâna, massara (to found a fortified city) of sâra, chiefly (if not always) by the intervention of such nouns as makân, medı̂ne, misr (= מָצֹור), therefore in the present instance by the intervention of this metı̂l (= memtûl)
(Note: The noun מָטִיל is also found in the Lexicon of Neshwân, i. 63: “מָטִיל is equivalent to מַמְטוּל, viz., that which is hammered out in length, used of iron and other metals; and one says חֲדִידָה מְטִילָה of a piece of iron that has been hammered for the purpose of stretching it.” The verb Neshwân explains: “מָטַל said of iron signifies to stretch it that it may become long.” The verb מטל can be regarded as a fusion of the root מדד (מטט, טוּט, comp. מוֹטָה, and Arab. mûṭ Beduin: to take long steps) with the root טוּל, to be long. - Wetzst. The above explanation of the origin of the verb מטל seems to us more probable.)
whence probably μέταλλον (metal), properly iron in bars or rods, therefore metal in a wrought state, although not yet finished.
(Note: Ibn-Koreisch in Pinsker, Likkute, p. קנא, explains it without exactness by sebikat hadı̂d, which signifies a smelted and formed piece of iron.)
Its bones are like tubes of brass, its bones (גְּרָמָיו, the more Aram. word) like forged rods of iron - what an appropriate description of the comparatively thin but firm as iron skeleton by which the plump mass of flesh of the gigantic boar-like grass-eater is carried!