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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 6:5 - 6:5
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5 Doth the wild ass bray at fresh grass?
Or loweth an ox over good fodder?
6 Is that which is tasteless eaten unsalted?
Or is there flavour in the white of an egg?
7 That which my soul refused to touch,
The same is as my loathsome food.
The meaning of the first two figures is: He would not complain, if there were really no cause for it; of the two others: It is not to be expected that he should smile at his suffering, and enjoy it as delicate food. עַל־בְּלִילֹו I have translated “over good fodder,” for בְּלִיל is mixed fodder of different kinds of grain, farrago. “Without salt” is virtually adjective to תָּפֵל, insipid, tasteless. What is without salt one does not relish, and there is no flavour in the slime of the yolk of an egg, i.e., the white of an egg (Targ.),
(Note: Saadia compares b. Aboda zara, 40, a, where it is given as a mark of the purity of the eggs in the roe of fish: מבפנים וחלמון מב מבחוץ חלבון, when the white is outside and the yellow within.)
or in the slime of purslain (according to Chalmetho in the Peschito, Arab. ḥamqâ), fatua = purslain), which is less probable on account of רִיר (slime, not: broth): there is no flavour so that it can be enjoyed. Thus is it with his sufferings. Those things which he before inwardly detested (dirt and dust of leprosy) are now sicut fastidiosa cibi mei, i.e., as loathsome food which he must eat. The first clause, Job 6:7, must be taken as an elliptic relative clause forming the subject: vid., Ges. §123, 3, c. Such disagreeable counsel is now like his unclean, disgusting diet. Eliphaz desires him to take them as agreeable. דְּוֵי in כִּדְרֵי is taken by Ges. Ew., Hahn, Schlottm., Olsh. (§165, b), as constr. from דְּוַי, sickness, filth; but דְּוֵי, as plur. from דָּוֶה, sick, unclean (especially of female menstruation, Isa 30:22), as Heiligst. among modern commentators explains it, is far more suitable. Hitz. (as anonym. reviewer of Ewald's Job in the liter. Centralblatt) translates: they (my sufferings) are the morsels of my food; but the explanation of הֵמָּה is not correct, nor is it necessary to go to the Arabic for an explanation of כִּדְרֵי. It is also unnecessary, with Böttcher, to read כִּדְוַי (such is my food in accordance with my disease); Job does not here speak of his diet as an invalid.