Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament · 욥기 2장

1 Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before Jehovah, and Satan came also among them, to present himself before Jehovah.

The clause expressive of the purpose of their appearing is here repeated in connection with Satan (comp. on the contrary, Job 1:6), for this time he appears with a most definite object. Jehovah addresses Satan as He had done on the former occasion.

return to '

2 And Jehovah said to Satan, Whence comest thou? And Satan answered Jehovah, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and wandering up and down in it.

Instead of מאין , Job 1:7, we have here the similar expression מזּה אי (Ges. §150, extra). Such slight variations are also frequent in the repetitions in the Psalms, and we have had an example in Job 1 in the interchange of עוד and עד . After the general answer which Satan givers, Jehovah inquires more particularly.

return to '

3 Then Jehovah said to Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job? for there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, fearing God and eschewing evil; and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou hast moved me against him, to injure him without cause.

From the foregoing fact, that amidst all his sufferings hitherto Job has preserved and proved his תּמּה (except in the book of Job, only Proverbs 11:3), the fut. consec. draws the conclusion: there was no previous reason for the injury which Satan had urged God to decree for Job. הסית does not signify, as Umbreit thinks, to lead astray, in which case it were an almost blasphemous anthropomorphism: it signifies instigare , and indeed generally, to evil, as e.g., 1 Chronicles 21:1; but not always, e.g., Joshua 15:18: here it is certainly in a strongly anthropopathical sense of the impulse given by Satan to Jehovah to prove Job in so hurtful a manner. The writer purposely chooses these strong expressions, הסית and בּלּע . Satan's aim, since he suspected Job still, went beyond the limited power which was given him over Job. Satan even now again denies what Jehovah affirms.

return to '

The Grant of New Power:

6 And Jehovah said to Satan, Behold, he is in thy hand; only take care of his life.

Job has not forfeited his life; permission is given to place it in extreme peril, and nothing more, in order to see whether or not, in the face of death, he will deny the God who has decreed such heavy affliction for him. נפשׁ does not signify the same as חיּים ; it is the soul producing the spirit-life of man. We must, however, translate “life,” because we do not use “soul” in the sense of ψυχή , anima .

return to '

First Job's Wife (who is only mentioned in one other passage (Job 19:17), where Job complains that his breath is offensive to her) Comes to Him:

9 Then his wife said to him, Dost thou still hold fast thine integrity? renounce God, and die.

In the lxx the words of his wife are unskilfully extended. The few words as they stand are sufficiently characteristic. They are not to be explained, Call on God for the last time, and then die (von Gerl.); or, Call on Him that thou die (according to Ges. §130, 2); but בּרך signifies, as Job's answer shows, to take leave of. She therefore counsels Job to do that which Satan has boasted to accomplish. And notwithstanding, Hengstenberg, in his Lecture on the Book of Job (1860),

(Note: Clark's Foreign Theological Library.)

defends her against the too severe judgment of expositors. Her desperation, says he, proceeds from her strong love for her husband; and if she had to suffer the same herself, she would probably have struggled against despair. But love hopeth all things; love keeps its despondency hidden even when it desponds; love has no such godless utterance, as to say, Renounce God; and none so unloving, as to say, Die. No, indeed! this woman is truly diaboli adjutrix (August.); a tool of the temper (Ebrard); impiae carnis praeco (Brentius). And though Calvin goes too far when he calls her not only organum Satanae , but even Proserpinam et Furiam infernalem, the title of another Xantippe, against which Hengstenberg defends her, is indeed rather flattery than slander. Tobias' Anna is her copy.

(Note: She says to the blind Tobias, when she is obliged to work for the support of the family, and does not act straightforwardly towards him: ποῦ εἰσὶν αἱ ἐλεημοσύναι σου καὶ αἱ δικαιοσύναι σου, ἰδοὺ γνωστὰ πάντα μετὰ σοῦ , i.e., (as Sengelmann, Book of Tobit, 1857, and O. F. Fritzsche, Handbuch zu d. Apokr. Lief. ii. S. 36, correctly explain) one sees from thy misfortunes that thy virtue is not of much avail to thee. She appears still more like Job in the revised text: manifeste vana facta est spes tua et eleemosynae tuae modo apparuerunt , i.e., thy benevolence has obviously brought us to poverty. In the text of Jerome a parallel between Tobias and Job precedes this utterance of Tobias' wife.)

What experience of life and insight the writer manifests in introducing Job's wife as the mocking opposer of his constant piety! Job has lost his children, but this wife he has retained, for he needed not to be tried by losing her: he was proved sufficiently by having her. She is further on once referred to, but even then not to her advantage. Why, asks Chrysostom, did the devil leave him this wife? Because he thought her a good scourge, by which to plague him more acutely than by any other means. Moreover, the thought is not far distant, that God left her to him in order that when, in the glorious issue of his sufferings, he receives everything doubled, he might not have this thorn in the flesh also doubled.

(Note: The delicate design of the writer here must not be overlooked: it has something of the tragi-comic about it, and has furnished acceptable material for epigrammatic writers not first from Kästner, but from early times (vid., das Epigramm vom J. 1696, in Serpilius' Personalia Iobi). Vid., a Jewish proverb relating thereto in Tendlau, Sprüchw. u. Redensarten deutsch-jüd. Vorzeit (1860), S. 11.)

What enmity towards God, what uncharitableness towards her husband, is there in her sarcastic words, which, if they are more than mockery, counsel him to suicide! (Ebrard). But he repels them in a manner becoming himself.

return to '

10 But he said to her, As one of the ungodly would speak, thou speakest. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not also receive evil?

The answer of Job is strong but not harsh, for the אחת (comp. 2 Samuel 13:13) is somewhat soothing. The translation “as one of the foolish women” does not correspond to the Hebrew; נבל is one wxo thinks madly and acts impiously. What follows is a double question, גּם for הגם . The גּם stands at the beginning of the sentence, but logically belongs to the second part, towards which pronunciation and reading must hurry over the first, - a frequent occurrence after interrogative particles, e.g., Numbers 16:22; Isaiah 5:4; after causal particles, e.g., Isaiah 12:1; Proverbs 1:24; after the negative פּן , Deuteronomy 8:12., and often. Hupfeld renders the thought expressed in the double question very correctly: bonum quidem hucusque a Deo accepimus, malum vero jam non item accipiemus ? גּם is found also elsewhere at the beginning of a sentence, although belonging to a later clause, and that indeed not always the one immediately following, e.g., Hosea 6:11; Zechariah 9:11; the same syntax is to be found with אף , אך , and רק . קבּל , like תּמּה , is a word common to the book of Job and Proverbs (Proverbs 19:20); besides these, it is found only in books written after the exile, and is more Aramaic than Hebraic. By this answer which Job gives to his wife, he has repelled the sixth temptation. For 10b In all this Job sinned not with his lips.

Job 2:10

10 b In all this Job sinned not with his lips.

The Targum adds: but in his thoughts he already cherished sinful words. בּשׂפתיו is certainly not undesignedly introduced here and omitted in Job 1:22. The temptation to murmur was now already at work within him, but he was its master, so that no murmur escaped him.

return to '

After the sixth temptation there comes a seventh; and now the real conflict begins, through which the hero of the book passes, not indeed without sinning, but still triumphantly.

11 When Job's three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz from Teman, and Bildad from Shuach, and Zophar from Naama: for they had made an appointment to come together to go and sympathize with him, and comfort him.

אליפז is, according to Gen 36, an old Idumaean name (transposed = Phasaël in the history of the Herodeans; according to Michaelis, Suppl. p. 87; cui Deus aurum est , comp. Job 22:25), and תּימן a district of Idumaea, celebrated for its native wisdom (Jeremiah 49:7; Bar. 3:22f.). But also in East-Hauran a Têmâ is still found (described by Wetzstein in his Bericht über seine Reise in den beiden Trachonen und um das Hauran-Gebirge, Zeitschr. für allg. Erdkunde, 1859), and about fifteen miles south of Têmâ, a Bûzân suggestive of Elihu's surname (comp. Jeremiah 25:23). שׁוּח we know only from Gen 25 as the son of Abraham and Keturah, who settled in the east country. Accordingly it must be a district of Arabia lying not very far from Idumaea: it might be compared with trans-Hauran Schakka, though the sound, however, of the word makes it scarcely admissible, which is undoubtedly one and the same with Dakkai'a, east from Batanaea, mentioned in Ptolem. v. 15. נעמה is a name frequent in Syria and Palestine: there is a town of the Jewish Shephêla (the low ground by the Mediterranean) of this name, Joshua 15:41, which, however, can hardly be intended here. הבּאה is Milel, consequently third pers. with the art. instead of the relative pron. (as, besides here, Genesis 18:21; Genesis 46:27), vid., Ges. §109 ad init. The Niph. נועד is strongly taken by some expositors as the same meaning with נועץ , to confer with, appoint a meeting: it signifies, to assemble themselves, to meet in an appointed place at an appointed time (Nehemiah 6:2). Reports spread among the mounted tribes of the Arabian desert with the rapidity of telegraphic despatches.

return to '

Their Arrival:

12 And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and threw dust upon their heads toward heaven.

They saw a form which seemed to be Job, but in which they were not able to recognise him. Then they weep and rend their outer garments, and catch up dust to throw up towards heaven (1 Samuel 4:12), that it may fall again upon their heads. The casting up of dust on high is the outwards sign of intense suffering, and, as von Gerlach rightly remarks, of that which causes him to cry to heaven.

return to '