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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 8:11 - 8:11
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
11 Doth papyrus grow up without mire?
Doth the reed shoot up without water?
12 It is still in luxuriant verdure, when it is not cut off,
Then before all other grass it with
13 So is the way of all forgetters of God,
And the hope of the ungodly perisheth,
14 Because his hope is cut off,
And his trust is a spider's house:
15 He leaneth upon his house and it standeth not,
He holdeth fast to it and it endureth not.
Bildad likens the deceitful ground on which the prosperity of the godless stands to the dry ground on which, only for a time, the papyrus or reed finds water, and grows up rapidly: shooting up quickly, it withers as quickly; as the papyrus plant,
(Note: Vid., Champollion-Figeac, Aegypten, German translation, pp. 47f.)
if it has no perpetual water, though the finest of grasses, withers off when most luxuriantly green, before it attains maturity. גֹּמֶא, which, excepting here, is found only in connection with Egypt (Exo 2:3; Isa 18:2; and Isa 35:7, with the general קָנֶה as specific name for reed), is the proper papyrus plant (Cypeerus papyyrus, L.): this name for it is suitably derived in the Hebrew from גָּמָא, to suck up (comp. Lucan, iv. 136: conseritur bibulâ Memphytis cymba papyro); but is at the same time Egyptian, since Coptic kam, cham, signifies the reed, and 'gôm, 'gōme, a book (like liber, from the bark of a tree).
(Note: Comp. the Book of the Dead (Todtenbuch), ch. 162: “Chapter on the creation of warmth at the back of the head of the deceased. Words over a young cow finished in pure gold. Put them on the neck of the dead, and paint them also on a new papyrus,” etc. Papyrus is here cama: the word is determined by papyrus-roll, fastening and writing, and its first consonant corresponds to the Coptic aspirated g. Moreover, we cannot omit to mention that this cama = gôme also signifies a garment, as in a prayer: “O my mother Isis, come and veil me in thy cama.” Perhaps both ideas are represented in volumen, involucrum; it is, however, also possible that goome is to be etymologically separated from kam, cham = גמא.)
אָחוּ, occurring only in the book of Job and in the history of Joseph, as Jerome (Opp. ed. Vallarsi, iv. 291) learned from the Egyptians, signifies in their language, omne quod in palude virem nascitur: the word is transferred by the lxx into their translation in the form ἄχι (ἄχει), and became really incorporated into the Alexandrian Greek, as is evident from Isa 19:7 (ערות, lxx καὶ τὸ ἄχι τὸ χλωρόν) and Sir. 40:16 (ἄχι ἐπὶ παντὸς ὕδατος καὶ χείλους ποταμοῦ πρὸ παντὸς χόρτου ἐκτιλήσεται); the Coptic translates pi-akhi, and moreover ake, oke signify in Coptic calamus, juncus.
(Note: The tradition of Jerome, that אחו originally signifies viride, is supported by the corresponding use of the verb in the signification to be green. So in the Papyr. Anastas. No. 3 (in Brugsch, Aeg. Geographic, S. 20, No. 115): naif hesbu achach em sim, his fields are green with herbs; and in a passage in Young, Hieroglyphics, ii. 69: achechut uoi aas em senem.t, the beautiful field is green with senem. The second radical is doubled in achech, as in uot-uet, which certainly signifies viriditas. The substantive is also found represented by three leaf-stalks on one basis; its radical form is ah, plural, weaker or stronger aspirated, ahu or akhu, greenness: comp. Salvolini, Campagne dè Rhamsès le Grand, p. 117; and Brugsch, above, S. 25.)
יִקָּטֵף לֹא describes its condition: in a condition in which it is not ready for being gathered. By אֲשֶׁר, quippe, quoniam, this end of the man who forgets God, and of the חָנֵף, i.e., the secretly wicked, is more particularly described. His hope יָקֹוט, from קָטַט, or from קֹוט, med. o,
(Note: Both are possible; for even from קָטַט, the mode of writing, יָקֹוט, is not without numerous examples, as Dan 11:12; Psa 94:21; Psa 107:27.)
in neuter signification succiditur. One would indeed expect a figure corresponding to the spider's web earlier; and accordingly Hahn, after Reiske, translates: whose hope is a gourd, - an absurd figure, and linguistically impossible, since the gourd or cucumber is קִשּׁוּא, which has its cognates in Arabic and Syriac. Saadia
(Note: Vid., Ewald-Dukes' Beiträge zur Gesch. der ältesten Auslegung, i. 89.)
translates: whose hope is the thread of the sun. The “thread of the sun” is what we call the fliegender Sommer or Altweibersommer, i.e., the sunny days in the latter months of the year: certainly a suitable figure, but unsupportable by any parallel in language.
(Note: Saadia's interpretation cannot be supported from the Arabic, for the Arabs call the “Altweibersommer” the deceitful thread (el-chaitt el-bâttil), or “sunslime or spittle” (lu‛âb es-schems), or chayta‛ûr (a word which Ewald, Jahrb. ix. 38, derives from Arab. chayt = יָקֹוט, a word which does not exist, and ‛ûr, chaff, a word which is not Arabic), from chat‛ara, to roam about, to be dispersed, to perish, vanish. From this radical signification, chaita‛ûr, like many similar old Arabic words with a fulness of figurative and related meaning, is become an expression for a number of different things, which may be referred to the notion of roaming about and dispersion. Among others, as the Turkish Kamus says, “That thing which on extremely hot days, in the form of a spider's web, looks as though single threads came down from the atmosphere, which is caused by the thickness of the air,” etc. The form brought forward by Ew., written with Arab. t or t̬, is, moreover, a fabrication of our lexicons (Fl.).)
We must therefore suppose that יָקֹוט, succiditur, first gave rise to the figure which follows: as easily as a spider's web is cut through, without offering any resistance, by the lightest touch, or a breath of wind, so that on which he depends and trusts is cut asunder. The name for spider's web, עַכָּבִישׁ בֵּית,
(Note: The spider is called עכבישׁ, for ענכבישׁ, Arabic ‛ancabuth, for which they say ‛accabuth in Saida, on ancient Phoenician ground, as atta (thou) for anta (communicated by Wetzstein).)
leads to the description of the prosperity of the ungodly by בַּיִת (Job 8:15): His house, the spider's house, is not firm to him. Another figure follows: the wicked in his prosperity is like a climbing plant, which grows luxuriantly for a time, but suddenly perishes.