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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 9:8 - 9:8
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
8 Who alone spreadeth out the heavens,
And walketh upon the heights of the sea;
9 Who made the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades,
And the chambers of the south;
10 Who doeth great things past finding out,
And wondrous things without number.
Ewald, Hirzel, and others, understand נֹטֶה (Job 9:8) according to Psa 18:10 : He letteth down the clouds of heaven, and walketh on the heights of the sea of clouds, i.e., high above the towering thunder-clouds. But parallel passages, such as Isa 40:22; Psa 104:2, and especially Isa 44:24, show that Job 9:8 is to be understood as referring to the creation of the firmament of heaven; and consequently נטה is to be taken in the sense of expandere, and is a form of expression naturally occurring in connection with the mention of the waters which are separated by means of the רקיע. The question arises, whether יָם here means the sea of waters above the firmament or upon the earth. According to the idea of the ancients, the waters which descend as rain have their habitation far away in the infinite expanse of the sky; the ocean of the sky (Egyptian Nun-pa), through which the sun-god Ra sails every day, is there. It is possible that ”the heights of the sea” here, and perhaps also “the roots of the sea” (Job 36:30), may mean this ocean of the sky, as Hahn and Schlottmann suppose. But it is not necessary to adopt such an explanation, and it is moreover hazardous, since this conception of the celestial θάλασσα is not found elsewhere (apart from Rev 4:6; Rev 15:2; Rev 22:1). Why may not בָּֽמֳתֵי, which is used of the heights of the clouds (Isa 14:14), be used also of the waves of the sea which mount up towards heaven (Psa 107:26)? God walks over them as man walks on level ground (lxx περιπατῶν ἐπὶ θαλάσσης ὡς ἐπ ̓ ἐδάφους); they rise or lie calmly beneath His feel according to His almighty will (comp. Hab 3:15).
Job next describes God as the Creator of the stars, by introducing a constellation of the northern (the Bear), one of the southern (Orion), and one of the eastern sky (the Pleiades). עָשׁ, contracted from נְעָשׁ, Arabic na‛š, a bier, is the constellation of seven stars (septentrio or septentriones) in the northern sky. The Greater and the Lesser Bear form a square, which the Arabs regarded as a bier; the three other stars, benâth n‛asch, i.e., daughters of the bier (comp. Job 38:32), seem to be the mourners. כְּסִיל is Orion chained to the sky, which the ancients regarded as a powerful giant, and also as an insolent, foolish fellow
(Note: The Arabic jâhil is similar, which combines the significations, an ignorant, foolhardy, and passionate man (vid., Fleischer, Ali's hundert Sprûche, S. 115f.).)
(K. O. Müller, Kleine deutsche Schriften, ii. 125). כִּימָה is the Pleiades, a constellation consisting of seven large and other smaller stars, Arabic turayyâ, which, like the Hebrew (comp. Arab. kûmat, cumulus), signifies the heap, cluster (vid., Job 38:31), and is compared by the Persian poets to a bouquet formed of jewels. It is the constellation of seven stars, whose rising and setting determined the commencement and end of their voyages (πλειάς, probably = constellation of navigation), and is to be distinguished from the northern septentriones. תֵּימָן חַדְרֵי are, according to the Targ., the chambers of the constellations on the south side of the heavens, as also most expositors explain them (Mercier: sidera quae sunt in altero hemisphaerio versus alterum polum antarcticum), according to which תֵּימָן, or written defectively תֵּמָן, would therefore be equivalent to תמן כוכבי; or perhaps, in a more general meaning, the regions of the southern sky (penetralia), which are veiled, or altogether lost to view (Hirzel). In v. 10, Job says, almost verbatim, what Eliphaz had said (Job 5:10). Job agrees with the friends in the recognition of the power of God, and intentionally describes those phases of it which display its terrible majesty. But while the friends deduce from this doctrine the duty of a humble deportment on the part of the sufferer, Job uses it to support the cheerless truth that human right can never be maintained in opposition to the absolute God.