and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:

26 And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: 27 Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed "within me.

10.

28 But ye should say, Why persecute we him, "seeing the root of the matter is found in me?

29 Be ye afraid of the sword: for wrath bringeth the punishments of the sword, that ye may know there is a judgment.

10 Heb. a stranger.

Verse 6. God hath overthrown me, and hath compassed me with his net.'-It admits of a conjecture that this may allude to a very ancient mode of combat, which was preserved by the Romans in their public shows, in which men fought with each other. In this mode of combat, a gladiator, called a retiarius, was matched with another, called a secutor. The latter was armed with a helmet, buckler, and sword; while the retiarius wore only a short coat or tunic, and went bareheaded. He carried in his left hand a three-pointed lance or trident, and in his right a net. He pursued his adversary, endeavouring to entangle his head in the net, that he might the more easily despatch him with his trident. But if he missed his aim, by either throwing his net short of his mark or beyond it, he turned round and fled, till he should be able to get his net ready for a second throw, but was meanwhile pursued by his opponent (thence called secutor, or follower), who endeavoured to overtake and slay him before he could be ready for his next attempt. Similar methods of entangling an adversary were long before and often used in actual warfare, either as a regular practice or as a stratagem. There is an instance in history, about six hundred years before Christ, in a single combat between the commanders of the Athenian and Mitylenean forces. The latter (Pittacus, one of the famous seven sages) concealed behind his shield a net, which throwing suddenly, he entangled the Athenian general, and easily slew him.

20. I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.-There is

| scarcely,' says Good, any verse in the whole poem that has more puzzled commentators, and excited a greater variety of renderings, than this.' This is true, and we fear that his own rendering only extends the range of uncertainty. It is, In the skin of my teeth I am dissolved.' It is undoubtedly a proverbial expression; and we must confess that we cannot understand it, unless it refers to the gums, which might, in the Oriental style, not improperly be called the skin of the teeth,' since they do enclose and cover the lower part of the teeth. And as it is one form of Oriental oppression to knock out the teeth, and since the teeth are lost through disease or age, the loss might well be referred to proverbially, as expressing a last stage of bodily desolation and decay, from whatever cause proceeding. Under this view the text would signify, 'I am escaped with my gums only,' forming a degree in the kind of comparison used by ourselves when we say that such a person escaped only with life. And further, as so many comparisons in this book are derived from the various conditions of animal life, may there not be here a sort of reference to the helpless hopeless condition of a beast of prey when deprived of its teeth by accident or age?

23. Oh that my words... were printed in a book.'This is an interpretation well adapted to mislead the uninstructed reader, printing being but a recent invention. It meaus inscribed in a register-written in some permanent record.

ever. This and the preceding verse have been most unfortunately rendered in our own and many other versions, so as not only to confound the sense, but to destroy the force and beauty with which the ideas rise over each other to the marked climax with which they close. To avoid critical details, we shall quote Dr. Good's translation of both verses, as it preserves the meaning and force of the original better than any other we have consulted, though the Vulgate approaches it :

'O! that my words were even now written down;
O! that they were engraven upon a table;
With a pen of iron upon lead!-

That they were sculptured in a rock for ever!'

Of writing upon lead we have already written in the general note under Deut. xxxi. In the same note we have also mentioned the pens of iron and other metals which were used for inscribing the characters on lead, wax, and other substances, of which the ancient writing-tablets were formed. Some of the forms which they bore are represented in the cut we now give; and which also represents the mode in which they were employed, according to the substances on which they operated.

Concerning the ancient custom of inscribing memorials intended to be permanent on rocks and stones, we have also spoken rather fully in the note to Exod. xxxii. 15.

Job's allusion to this mode of writing is the more interesting when we become aware of the existence of rocks so engraven in the very region which is supposed to have been the scene of the poem. It is not necessary to argue that these inscriptions were so old as the time of Job; but the text shews that the custom which these rocks evince existed in his time. These sculptured rocks are found on the routes which lead from Egypt to the Sinai mountains, although the greatest number of them occur together in the Wady Mokatteb. This is a valley, about seven miles long, stretching out from the Wady Sheikh to the Sinai mountains, the sides of which present for the most part

abrupt cliffs twenty or thirty feet high. These cliffs are thickly covered with the inscriptions, which are continued at intervals for the distance of at least five miles. Many attempts have been made to decipher these inscriptions, which are in an alphabetic character not, otherwise than from them, known to palæographists. They were first mentioned by the traveller Cosmos in A.D. 535, and the character was even then unknown. He supposed them the work of the ancient Hebrews; and says that certain Jews who had read them explained them to him as noting 'the journey of such a one out of such a tribe, in such a year and month,' much in the manner of modern travellers. Further than this the most recent decipherer has hardly advanced. When the attention of European scholars was again turned to these inscriptions, almost a century since, by Bishop Clayton, they were still supposed by him and others to have been the work of the Hebrews on their journey to Sinai. More recently they have been regarded as the work of Christian pilgrims, on their way from Egypt to Sinai, during the fourth century. But the contents of them were unknown in the time of Cosmos, and no tradition seems to have then existed respecting their origin. As to the character itself, Gesenius thought that they belonged to that species of the Phoenician, or rather Syrian, which in the first centuries of the Christian era was extensively employed throughout Syria, and partly in Egypt; having most affinity to the Palmyrene inscriptions. But Professor Beer, of Leipzig, who has quite recently deciphered these inscriptions for the first time, regards them as exhibiting the only remains of the language and character once peculiar to the Nabathæans of Arabia Petræa; and supposes that if, at any future time, stones with the writing of the country should be found among the ruins of Petra, the character would prove to be the same with that of the inscriptions of Sinai. And this had already proved to have been the fact, although he knew it not; for, in the then unpublished travels of Irby and Mangles, mention is made of a tomb at Petra with an oblong tablet

containing an inscription in five long lines, and immediately underneath a single figure,' on a large scale, probably the date. The characters were such as none of the party had seen before, excepting Mr. Bankes, who, on comparing them, stated them to be precisely similar to those which he had seen scratched on the rocks in the Wady Mokatteb, and about the foot of Sinai.' According to this view, the inscriptions may not improbably turn out to have been made by the native inhabitants of the mountains. Still,' says Professor Robinson, it cannot but be regarded as a most singular fact, that here, in these lone mountains, an alphabet should be found upon the rocks, which is shewn by the thousands of inscriptions to have been once a very current one, but of which perhaps elsewhere not a trace remains.'

The contents of the inscriptions, so far as Professor Beer

has proceeded, consists only of proper names, preceded sometimes by a word signifying peace,' but sometimes 'memoriatus sit,' and a few times blessed.' Before the names the word bar or ben, son,' sometimes occurs; and they are sometimes followed by one or two words at the end-thus the word 'priest' occurs twice as a title. In one or two instances the name is followed by a phrase or sentence which has not yet been deciphered. Among the names, none Jewish or Christian have been found; and the words which are not proper names seem to belong to an Aramæan dialect. A language of this kind Professor Beer supposes to have been spoken by the Nabathæans, before the present Arabic language spread itself over those parts; and of that language and writing he regards these as the only monuments now known to exist.

CHAPTER XX.

Zophar sheweth the state and portion of the wicked. THEN answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said,

2 Therefore do my thoughts cause me to answer, and for this 'I make haste.

3 I have heard the check of my reproach, and the spirit of my understanding causeth

me to answer.

4 Knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon earth,

5 That the triumphing of the wicked is 'short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment?

6 Though his excellency mount up to the heavens, and his head reach unto the clouds;

7 Yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung: they which have seen him shall say, Where is he?

8 He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found: yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night.

9 The eye also which saw him shall see him no more; neither shall his place any more behold him.

10 His children shall seek to please the poor, and his hands shall restore their goods.

11 His bones are full of the sin of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust.

12 Though wickedness be sweet in his mouth, though he hide it under his tongue; 13 Though he spare it, and forsake it not; but keep it still within his mouth :

14 Yet his meat in his bowels is turned, it is the gall of asps within him.

15 He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again: God shall cast them out of his belly.

16 He shall suck the poison of asps: the viper's tongue shall slay him.

17 He shall not see the rivers, 'the floods, the brooks of honey and butter.

18 That which he laboured for shall he restore, and shall not swallow it down: according to his substance shall the restitution be, and he shall not rejoice therein.

19 Because he hath 'oppressed and hath forsaken the poor; because he hath violently taken away an house which he builded not;

20 Surely he shall not "feel quietness in his belly, he shall not save of that which he desired.

21 There shall none of his meat be left; therefore shall no man look for his goods.

13

22 In the fulness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits every hand of the wicked shall come upon him.

23 When he is about to fill his belly, God shall cast the fury of his wrath upon him, and shall rain it upon him while he is eating.

24 He shall flee from the iron weapon, and the bow of steel shall strike him through.

25 It is drawn, and cometh out of the body; yea, the glittering sword cometh out of his gall: terrors are upon him.

26 All darkness shall be hid in his secret places: a fire not blown shall consume him; it shall go ill with him that is left in his tabernacle.

27 The heavens shall reveal his iniquity; and the earth shall rise up against him.

28 The increase of his house shall depart, and his goods shall flow away in the day of his wrath.

29 This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the heritage "appointed unto him by God.

10 Eccles. 5. 13, 14. 13 Or, troublesome.

Verse 14. Asps.'-The word is in pethen, and very probably denotes the famous aspic of antiquity. The ancient writers however make mention of it in so loose and indefinite a manner, that it is perhaps not easy to determine the species with precision. We know something better of the effect of its bite, which has been particularly described by Dioscorides and others. The sight became dim immediately after the wound; a swelling took place, and pain was felt in the stomach, followed by stupor, convulsions, and death. The bite was generally allowed to be incurable, or at least to admit of no other cure than the immediate excision of the wounded part. In name and description, the suake that seems best to agree with the pethen of the Hebrews, if not with the aspic of profane antiquity, is the batan of the Arabians, the Coluber (vipera) Lebatina of Linnæus. It is briefly noticed by Forskal. It is about a foot in length, and two inches in circumference; its colour being black and white. It is poisonous in the highest degree: the body of the sufferer swells, and death almost immediately ensues. The literati of Cyprus regarded it as the ancient aspic; and, whether so or not, the probability of its being the Hebrew pethen will be very considerable. Besides the similarity of name, and other circumstances, it is observable that the common people at Cyprus call this snake kufi (kobon), deaf; and in Ps. lviii. 4, we actually find that deafness is ascribed to the pethen. This deafness,

however, is not want of hearing, but insensibility to the musical notes of the serpent charmers. This is rather a strong circumstance.

16. Viper.-The Hebrew word is nepheh; and there is little reason to question that it denotes the same serpent which the Arabians at the present day call by the same name. There have been several descriptions of it, which vary in some details, but agree on the whole. Our cut is taken from that which is given in Jackson's Marocco (p. 110), the substantial accuracy of which is attested by Riley, as well as by its conformity to written descriptions. It is one of the most common and venomous of the serpent tribe in northern Africa and south-western Asia. It is thus described by Jackson:- El Effah is the name of the other serpent remarkable for its quick and penetrating poison. It is about two feet long' (sometimes much less or much more, according to others) and as thick as a man's arm, beautifully spotted with yellow and brown, and sprinkled over with blackish specks. They have a wide mouth, by which they inhale a great quantity of air, and when inflated therewith they eject it with such force as to be heard to a considerable distance.' These mortal enemies to mankind are described by him as abounding in the desert of Suse, where their holes are so numerous that it is difficult for a horse to pass without stumbling. Captain Riley, in his Authentic Narrative (New York,

1817), confirms this account in substance. He describes the colour as 'the most beautiful in nature;' and observes, that he had seen Jackson's engraving, which was 'a very correct resemblance.' He adds, that these serpents often attack and destroy both men and beasts, and that the poison is so subtile as to occasion death in fifteen minutes. The species is probably the same with the Vipera Egyptiaca of Latreille. The Ephah is also mentioned in Isa. xxx. 6; and it is the same which, in the New Testament, occurs under the name of exidva or 'viper.' Acts xxviii. 3, as well as the present text, illustrates the common belief of antiquity, that the bite of one of these serpents was a punishment directly inflicted by Heaven.

17. The rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter.' -Moses uses similar expressions in describing the fertility and abundance of Canaan, and Bishop Warburton thinks it is here a proverbial speech taken from these descriptions. This would be proving the book of Job later than the Pentateuch; and it is enough to observe that such expressions are in the true spirit of Oriental description in intimating the abundance of the things specified, and is still common in Arabia, where honey, butter, and milk, are as much esteemed as they were by the patriarchs of Scripture. Mohammed describes his paradise after the same style: 'Therein are rivers of incorruptible water; and rivers of milk, the taste whereof changeth not; and rivers of wine,

of chalab, 'milk;' whence the Arabic version has in this place, milk,' not 'butter.' But it is also true that the word not only signifies butter, but thick milk, or cream; and may very well be so understood in the present text.

21. There shall none of his meat be left, etc.-This is reckoned among the difficult passages of the book of Job; and, accordingly, very different renderings and interpretations have been given. We think all the apparent difficulty has arisen from the want of adequate reference to the customs of the East. It is there usual for persons of consideration, and certainly those who make any pretensions to liberality, to maintain a table much beyond the wants of their own household, and the superfluity of which goes to feed a number of poor people and hungry expectants. May not, therefore, this text mean, that the person described was of so mean a disposition that he provided only for his own needs, so that nothing was left for others? This cha