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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 9:5 - 9:5
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
5 Who removeth mountains without their knowing,
That He hath overturned them in His wrath;
6 Who causeth the earth to shake out of its place,
And its pillars to tremble;
7 Who commandeth the sun, and it riseth not,
And sealeth up the stars.
יָדָעוּ וְלֹא (Job 9:5) may also be translated: without one's perceiving it or knowing why; but it is more natural to take the mountains as the subject. אֲשֶׁר, quod, that (not “as,” Ewald, §333, a), after יָדַע, as Eze 20:26; Ecc 8:12. Even the lofty mountains are quite unconscious of the change which He effects on them in a moment. Before they are aware that it is being done, it is over, as the praet. implies; the destructive power of His anger is irresistible, and effects its purpose suddenly. He causes the earth to start up from its place (comp. Isa 13:13) which it occupies in space (Job 26:7); and by being thus set in motion by Him, its pillars tremble, i.e., its internal foundations (Psa 104:5), which are removed from human perception (Job 38:6). It is not the highest mountains, which are rather called the pillars, as it were the supports, of heaven (Job 26:11), that are meant. By the same almighty will He disposes of the sun and stars. The sun is here called חֶרֶס (as in Jdg 14:18 חַרְסָה with unaccented ah, and as Isa 19:18 ‛Ir ha-Heres is a play upon הַחֶרֶס עִיר, Ἡλιούπολις), perhaps from the same root as חָרוּץ, one of the poetical names of gold. At His command the sun rises not, and He seals up the stars, i.e., conceals them behind thick clouds, so that the day becomes dark, and the night is not made bright. One may with Schultens think of the Flood, or with Warburton of the Egyptian darkness, and the standing still of the sun at the word of Joshua; but these are only single historical instances of a fact here affirmed as a universal experience of the divine power.