perhaps none in Arabia: most of those streams which figure in the maps are merely the beds of winter-torrents. These temporary streams are first formed by the autumnal rains; they are kept up by the occasional rains of winter, and in spring are increased by the rains of that season and by the melting of the snows in the mountains. They rush down the valleys in a large body of turbid water, and assume the appearance of deep rivers. Their increase, and still more their decrease, is often sudden and rapid, beyond anything of which we can in this country form a conception; and in summer they become perfectly dry. It will from this be seen that the description is not only exceed

ingly beautiful, but is a description of a scene of nature in the country where the residence of Job is placed. But its principal beauty lies in the exact correspondence of all its parts to the thing it is intended to represent. The fulness, strength, and noise of these temporary streams in carly spring answer to the large professions made to Job in his prosperity by his friends. The drying up of the waters at the approach of summer resembles the failure of their friendship in his affliction; and the confusion of the thirsty caravans in finding the streams vanished, strongly illustrates his feelings, disappointed as he was of the relief he expected in these men's friendly counsel.

9 As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more.

10 He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more.

11 Therefore I will not refrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

12 Am I a sea, or a whale, that thou settest a watch over me?

13 When I say, My bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint;

14 Then thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions:

15 So that my soul chooseth strangling, and death rather than my life.

16 I loathe it; I would not live alway: let me alone; for my days are vanity.

8 Heb. than my bones.

17 What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him? and that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him?

18 And that thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every moment?

19 How long wilt thou not depart from me, nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle?

20 I have sinned; what shall I do unto thee, O thou preserver of men? why hast thou set me as a mark against thee, so that I am a burden to myself?

21 And why dost thou not pardon my transgression, and take away mine iniquity? for now shall I sleep in the dust; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not

be.

9 Psal. 8. 4, and 144. 3. Heb. 2. 6.

Verse 2. As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow.'This is one of the many passages of Scripture which indicate how precious was the shade to one who in labour or travel has borne the burden and heat of the day. We think we can say that, next to water, the greatest and deepest enjoyment we could ever realize in the hot climates of the East was, when, on a journey, any circumstance of the road brought us for a few minutes under some shade. Its reviving influence upon the bodily frame, and, consequently, upon the spirits, is inconceivable by one who has not had some experience of the kind. Often also during the halt of a caravan in the open air, when the writer has been enabled to secure a station for repose under the shelter of a rock or an old wall-has his own exultation and strong sense of luxurious enjoyment reminded him of this and other passages of Scripture, in which shade is mentioned as a thing panted for with intense desire. If this be so with a mere traveller, how much more to a bond-slave, engaged under the hot sun in the fatiguing labours of agriculture ?-how must he 'pant after the shade ?'-It is possible, however, that the present text refers to the shades of evening, which would bring equally to the bond-slave and hireling a cessation of labour: if so, these observations apply to the illustration of other texts, in which the reference to a sheltering shade from the sun's rays is more definitely expressed.

5. My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust,' etc. or rather of dirt.' This, with the succeeding clause, 'My skin is broken, and become loathsome,' clearly corroborates the impression already conveyed, that Job's disease was a species of leprosy. Maundrell, in describing the lepers he saw at Nabulus, the ancient Shechem, draws a picture in entire conformity with Job's description of his own case: The distemper, as I saw it, was very different from what I have seen it in England, for it not only defiles the whole surface of the body with a foul scurf, but it also deforms the joints of the body, particularly those of the wrists and ancles, making them swell with a gouty scrofulous substance, very loathsome to look upon. I thought their legs resembled those of old battered horses, such as are often seen in drays in England.'

Job undoubtedly refers to his then diseased state. The following is Dr. Good's translation of the verse, which is important, as from the same person whose medical view of Job's case we have already stated:

'Worms and the imprisoning dust already clothe my flesh; My skin is become stiff and corrupt.'

6. My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle.'-This is not now usually understood of the shuttle. Dr. Lee, who understands it of the web, translates the verse thus: 'My days are filled up more speedily than the web, and close without hope;' and refers to ch. vi. 9, 'where Job's cutting off is said to be like the cutting away of a web from the loom, thread by thread. So here the filling up of the number of his days is said to occupy less time than that in which the web is completed by the operation of the weaver. Under this view the figure is illustrated by that in Isa. xxxviii. 12:

'My life is cut off as by the weaver, He shall sever me from his loom;

Within a day and a night thou shalt finish my web.'

Many, however, think that the allusion here is rather to the slightness and tenuity, and consequent brittleness, of the thread or yarn which the weaver employs; the authorities for which interpretation may be seen in Poole's Synopsis, and in Rosenmüller's Scholia. So, Good, Wemyss, and some other English translators, have: Slighter than yarn are my days: they are finished like the breaking of a thread. These interpretations are essentially the same, and are almost equally supported by authorities and probabilities, so that it is not easy to say which should be preferred.

Most commentators suppose that the fine allegory of the thread of life being previously woven by the Fates, and tissued for every individual, was coeval with the author of the present poem, and is alluded to in the present passage. The allegory has all the marks of an Oriental origin; and similes of the kind are still frequent among the Oriental poets and historians. Thus in the opening of the history of Timur, Praise be to God! who hath woven the web of human affairs in the web of his will and of his wisdom, and hath made the waves of times and of seasons flow from the fountain of his providence into the ocean of his power." The present text will remind many readers of the fine passage in Lycidas:

'Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble minds)

To scorn delights and live laborious days:
But the fair guerdon, when we hope to find,
And think to burst forth into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life.'

It will not escape notice that Job, in describing the thread of his life as being spun out with great rapidity and tenuity, and about to be cut off, affords an interesting, although incidental, illustration of early weaving. Many persons have doubted whether the shuttle was of so early a date as the era of Job; and this may be another reason for declining to recognize that instrument in the present text. The Egyptians do not appear to have had a shuttle, but to have put in the thread by means of a rod with a hook at either end. If the shuttle was not in use among a people so advanced in the manufacture of cloth as the Egyptians, it seems but little likely that it should be known to the people among whom Job lived, or to the author of the book which bears his name.

and reciprocation of those inanimate objects which called them forth. Now this cognizance and reciprocation of feeling the Oriental does not, as we do, hesitate to assign in plain terms to inanimate objects. Hence, houses, fields, gardens, trees, are said to know their owner-to forget him, to be glad to see him-to be grateful or ungrateful for his care, and so on. This appropriation of consciousness to inanimate objects, which we reserve for poetry, has a pleasing and sometimes touching effect as used, orientally, in the language of common life.

19. Let me alone till I swallow down my spittle.'--That is, for a very short pause, the briefest interval. The expression answers to our 'twinkling of an eye,' or 'till one can fetch one's breath.' In this sense the expression is still proverbial in Arabia. Schultens adduces from Arabian authors various examples of its continued use. One of them (from Tehlebi) is contained in the following repartee addressed to a person who, before he answered, said to his companion, Allow me to swallow my spittle:' to which the other smartly replied, Ay-swallow the Tigris and Euphrates, if you will.'

CHAPTER VIII.

1 Bildad sheweth God's justice in dealing with men according to their works. 8 He allegeth antiquity to prove the certain destruction of the hypocrite. 20 He applieth God's just dealing to Job. THEN answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said, 2 How long wilt thou speak these things? and how long shall the words of thy mouth be like a strong wind?

3 'Doth God pervert judgment? or doth the Almighty pervert justice?

4 If thy children have sinned against him, and he have cast them away 'for their transgression;

5 If thou wouldest seek unto God betimes, and make thy supplication to the Almighty;

6 If thou wert pure and upright; surely now he would awake for thee, and make the habitation of thy righteousness prosperous.

7 Though thy beginning was small, yet thy latter end should greatly increase.

8 For enquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers:

9 (For 'we are but of yesterday, and know "nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow :)

10 Shall not they teach thee, and tell thee, and utter words out of their heart?

1 Deut. 32. 4. 2 Chron. 19. 7. Dan. 9.14.

11 Can the rush grow up without mire? can the flag grow without water?

12 'Whilst it is yet in his greenness, and not cut down, it withereth before any other herb.

13 So are the paths of all that forget God; and the "hypocrite's hope shall perish: 14 Whose hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be 'a spider's web.

15 He shall lean upon his house, but it shall not stand: he shall hold it fast, but it shall not endure.

16 He is green before the sun, and his branch shooteth forth in his garden.

17 His roots are wrapped about the heap, and seeth the place of stones.

18 If he destroy him from his place, then it shall deny him, saying, I have not seen thee.

19 Behold, this is the joy of his way, and out of the earth shall others grow.

20 Behold, God will not cast away a perfect man, neither will he "help the evil doers:

21 Till he fill thy mouth with laughing, and thy lips with "rejoicing.

22 They that hate thee shall be clothed with shame; and the dwelling place of the wicked ''shall come to nought.

11 Heb. shouting for joy.

6 Heb. not. 12 Heb. shall not be.

mence as he proceeds. In the end, however, he is reduced to a mere repetition of his former arguments.' He certainly reproves Job with more acrimony and less disguise than Eliphaz, and Dr. Hales properly characterizes the

present speech as unkind.' This particularly appears in verse 4, where, without any ceremony, he takes it for granted that Job's children were cut off on account of their sins. This must have touched the suffering patriarch to the quick. The force of Bildad's meaning in that verse is weakened by the If,' with which it commences: it should be As,' or 'Since '-assuming, not supposing, that Job's children had been cast away for their transgression.'

12. It withereth before any other herb.'-'The application of this beautiful similitude is easy, and its moral exquisitely correct and pertinent. As the most succulent plants are dependent upon foreign support for a continuance of that succulence, and in the midst of their vigour are sooner parched up than plants of less humidity; so the prosperous sinner does not derive his prosperity from himself, and is often destroyed in the heighday of his enjoyments, more signally and abruptly than those who are less favoured, and appear to stand less securely.' Good.

14. Spider's web.-Literally, the spider's house,' or 'building,' which perhaps it would have been better to retain, as giving more force to the application-' He shall lean upon his house, but it shall not stand,' etc. Too

WEB OF GEOMETRIC SPIDER.

evident an allusion is expressed to the fragility of the spider's web to allow us to suppose that it refers to the houses or nests of the mason-spiders, whose ingenious contrivances are detailed in the volume of Insect Architecture; but the idea does evidently refer to the web, not merely, or not at all, as a snare, but as the house of the spider, that house being involved in the construction and fragility of the web. The most expressive illustration would therefore be from the webs of some of those diadem spiders, which besides extending their meshes to entrap unwary insects, spread an awning or canopy of exquisite fineness over their own heads, under which they remain, waiting in patient ambush, to surprise their prey.

17. His roots are wrapped about the heap, and seeth the place of stones.'-The word rendered heap is gal, the leading idea of which, from galal, is that of things rolled together. It has in some places the signification of a heap, particularly a heap of stones, as in Josh. vii. 26; but it more commonly refers to the ruins of walls or cities, as in Jer. ix. 11; li. 37; Isa. xxv. 2. It also means a fountain or spring, so called from the rolling or welling up of the waters, as in Lam. iv. 12; Ps. xlii. 8; lxxxix. 10; cvii. 25, 29. The parallelism of the passage however that is the mention of 'stones' in the last 632

clause-seems to require that the passage should bear the primary signification of a heap of stones or ruins. Then comes out the sense, that the prosperous wicked man, or the hypocrite, is like a plant which stands in the midst of rocks, rubbish, or old ruins, and not like one standing in a fertile soil, where it may strike its roots deep. The reference is therefore to the fact, that a tree or plant which springs up among ruins, or upon rocks, or in the midst of rocks, will send its roots afar for nourishment, or will wrap them around the projecting points of the rocks or ruins in order to obtain support. Travellers have noticed signal instances of this among the ruins of Greece, as in the instance of a plane-tree growing upon the high wall of a ruin, which sent its root down along the wall to the ground. Some examples of the same kind, although less remarkable, have been seen in our own country, as in the old walls of Silchester. As to examples occurring among rocks, we remember to have seen many curious examples among the passes of the Caucasus, but none so remarkable as that which is described in Silliman's (American) Journal of Science for January, 1840.

'About fifteen years ago, upon the top of an immense boulder of limestone some ten or twelve feet in diameter, a sapling was found growing. The stone was but slightly embedded in the earth; several of its sides were raised from four to six feet above its surface; but the top of the rock was rough with crevices, and its surface, which was sloping off on one side to the earth, was covered with a thin mould. From this mould the tree had sprung up, and having thrust its roots into the crevices of the rock, it had succeeded in reaching the height of some twelve or fifteen feet. But about this period the roots on one side became loosened from their attachment, and the tree gradually declined to the opposite side, until its body was in a parallel line with the earth. The roots on the opposite side, having obtained a firmer hold, afforded sufficient nourishment to sustain the plant, although they could not, alone, retain it in its vertical position. In this condition of things, the tree, as if "conscious of its wants," adopted (if the term may be used) an ingenious process, in order to regain its former upright position. One of the most vigorous of the detached roots sent out a branch from its side, which, passing round a projection of the rock, again united with the parent stalk, and thus formed a perfect loop around this projection, which gave to the root an unmovable attachment.

'The tree now began to recover from its bent position. Obeying the natural tendency of all plants to grow erect, and sustained by this root, which increased with unwonted vigour, in a few years it had entirely regained its vertical position, elevated, as no one could doubt who saw it, by the aid of the root which had formed this singular attachment. But this was not the only power exhibited by this remarkable tree.

'After its elevation it flourished vigorously for several years. Some of its roots had traced the sloping side of the rock to the earth, and were buried in the soil below. Others, having embedded themselves in its furrows, had completely filled these crevices with vegetable matter. The tree still continuing to grow, concentric layers of vegetable matter were annually deposited between the alburnum and liber, until, by the force of vegetable growth alone, the rock was split from the top to the bottom into three nearly equal divisions, and branches of the roots were soon found extending down, through the divisions, into the earth below. On visiting the tree a few months since to take a drawing of it, we found that it had attained an altitude of fifty feet, and was four feet and a-half in circumference at its base.'

18. His place.....shall deny him, saying, I have not seen thee.'-This is a very striking and beautiful illustration of the remarks we offered under ch. vii. 10.

CHAPTER IX.

1 Job, acknowledging God's justice, sheweth there is no contending with him. 22 Man's innocency is not to be condemned by afflictions.

THEN Job answered and said,

2 I know it is so of a truth: but how should 'man be just with God?

3 If he will contend with him, he cannot answer him one of a thousand.

4 He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength who hath hardened himself against him, and hath prospered?

5 Which removeth the mountains, and they know not which overturneth them in his anger. 6 Which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble.

7 Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not; and sealeth up the stars.

8 Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the 'waves of the

sea.

9 Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south. 10 'Which doeth great things past finding out; yea, and wonders without number.

11 Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not: he passeth on also, but I perceive him not.

12 Behold, he taketh away, 'who can hinder him? who will say unto him, What doest thou?

13 If God will not withdraw his anger, the 10proud helpers do stoop under him.

14 How much less shall I answer him, and choose out my words to reason with him?

15 Whom, though I were righteous, yet would I not answer, but I would make supplication to my judge.

16 If I had called, and he had answered me; yet would I not believe that he had hearkened unto my voice.

17 For he breaketh me with a tempest, and multiplieth my wounds without cause.

18 He will not suffer me to take my breath, but filleth me with bitterness.

19 If I speak of strength, lo, he is strong: and if of judgment, who shall set me a time to plead?

20 If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me: if I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse.

21 Though I were perfect, yet would I not know my soul: I would despise my life.

22 This is one thing, therefore I said it, He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked. 23 If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent.

24 The earth is given into the hand of the wicked: he covereth the faces of the judges thereof; if not, where, and who is he?

25 Now my days are swifter than a post; they flee away, they see no good.

26 They are passed away as the "swift ships: as the eagle that hasteth to the prey.

27 If I say, I will forget my complaint, I will leave off my heaviness, and comfort myself:

28 I am afraid of all my sorrows, I know that thou wilt not hold me innocent. 29 If I be wicked, why then labour I in vain?

30 If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean;

31 Yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall 13abhor me.

13

32 For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment.

14

15

33 Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both.

34 Let him take his rod away from me, and let not his fear terrify me:

35 Then would I speak, and not fear him; 16but it is not so with me.

Verse 5. Which removeth the mountains,' etc.-Some commentators think, with probability, that the whole of this passage, from verse 5 to 8, refers to an earthquake,

with all its awful circumstances.

9. Arcturus, Orion,' etc.-See the notes to chap. xxxvii. and xxxviii.

26. They are passed away as the swift ships: as the eagle that hasteth to the prey.'-In this there is a connection of ideas which seems to have escaped the notice of the commentators-the analogy between the motion in a ship sailing upon the waters and that of an eagle sailing through the air. It is a kind of connection of images

4 Heb. heights. 5 Chap. 38. 31, &c. Amos 5. 8. Jer. 18. 6. Rom. 9. 20. 9 Heb. who can turn him away? 12 Or, ships of Ebeh. 13 Or, make me to be abhorred. 16 Heb. but I am not so with myself.

which would occur to a person who had been in the habit of witnessing both kinds of motion, but not to others.

Swift ships.-(1728 1728 aniyoth ebeh.) Ships are doubtless intended, and that swift ships is the ulterior signification is evident from the context. But the rationale of this is by no means clear, if we may judge from the variety of interpretations which have been adduced. This uncertainty is expressed in our two marginal readings, ships of desire or ships of Ebeh.' The former is founded on the idea of ships longing for their destined port, and crowding all their sail to reach it: and the latter is the resource of doubt, leaving the uncertain word