CHAPTER XXVII.

1 Job protesteth his sincerity. 8 The hypocrite is without hope. 11 The blessings which the wicked have are turned into curses.

MOREOVER Job 'continued his parable, and said,

2 As God liveth, who hath taken away my judgment; and the Almighty, who hath 'vexed my soul;

3 All the while my breath is in me, and "the spirit of God is in my nostrils ;

4 My lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit.

5 God forbid that I should justify you: till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me. 6 My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go: my heart shall not reproach me 'so long as I live.

7 Let mine enemy be as the wicked, and he that riseth up against me as the unrighteous.

8 For what is the hope of the hypocrite, though he hath gained, when God taketh away

his soul?

12 Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it; why then are ye thus altogether vain?

13 This is the portion of a wicked man with God, and the heritage of oppressors, which they shall receive of the Almighty.

14 If his children be multiplied, it is for the sword and his offspring shall not be satisfied with bread.

15 Those that remain of him shall be buried in death: and "his widows shall not weep.

16 Though he heap up silver as the dust, and prepare raiment as the clay;

17 He may prepare it, but the just shall put it on, and the innocent shall divide the

silver.

18 He buildeth his house as a moth, and as a booth that the keeper maketh.

19 The rich man shall lie down, but he shall not be gathered: he openeth his eyes, and he is not.

20 "Terrors take hold on him as waters, a tempest stealeth him away in the night.

21 The east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth: and as a storm hurleth him out of his place.

22 For God shall cast upon him, and not spare: 1ohe would fain flee out of his hand. 23 Men shall clap their hands at him, and shall hiss him out of his place.

Verse 16. Prepare raiment as the clay.'-Lay up' would be better than 'prepare.' That it was a custom in the patriarchal age to accumulate dresses, is a circum. stance which we should scarcely have conjectured, though in strict conformity with existing usages in the East. If the custom of giving dresses, in order to confer distinction or testify esteem, existed so early, as it seems to have done from the intimations in Genesis, it would be giving a greater force to the passage to understand that this guilty but prosperous man was held in such honour by his superiors or equals as to have received his ample store of raiment in the way of presents. D'Herbelot (as quoted by Harmer, for we cannot find the passage in the edition of 1776) mentions that the poet Bokhteri of Cufah, in the ninth century, received so many presents of dresses in his lifetime, that at his death he was found possessed of a hundred complete suits, with two hundred shirts and five hundred turbans. But even, without this supposition, the Orientals have generally a sort of passion for collecting great quantities of clothing, and of whatever belongs to personal equipment: a custom which, as observed by Chardin, is encouraged by the unchangeable character of eastern fashions, which precludes the apprehension that the collected raiment will be unsuitable for wear at any future time.

18. Buildeth his house as a moth.'-It is well known that the genus Phalana, or moth, is divided into plantmoths and cloth-moths. It is generally supposed that the latter is here intended: but this is doubted by Dr. Good,

Or, a mine.

2 Or, dust.

14 "The depth saith, It is not in me and the sea saith, It is not with me.

15 It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.

16 It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire.

17 The gold and the crystal cannot equal it and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold.

18 No mention shall be made of 1ocoral, or of pearls for the price of wisdom is above rubies.

19 The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with pure gold. 20 "Whence then cometh wisdom? and where is the place of understanding?

21 Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the 12air.

22 Destruction and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears.

23 God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof.

24 For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven;

25 To make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure.

26 When he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder: 27 Then did he see it, and declare it; he prepared it, yea, and searched it out.

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28 And unto man he said, Behold, "the fear of the LORD, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.

Verse 1. A vein for the silver.'-It is generally conceived that the first portion of this chapter refers to the processes of mining, as conducted in the time of Job. It is interesting to know that there were then any such processes; but this almost necessarily follows from the very nature of some of the metals mentioned, a tolerable supply of which could only be obtained by mining or excavations of some kind or other. Our version loses some of the points on which the connection of this interesting description depends. We will therefore give the version of Dr. Noyes, in which its general force more clearly appears. Truly there is a vein for silver,

And a place for gold which meu refine.

Iron is obtained from earth,

And stone is melted into copper.

Man putteth an end to darkness;

He searcheth, to the lowest depths,

For the store of darkness and the shadow of death:
From the place where they dwell they open a shaft;
Unsupported by the feet

They are suspended, they swing away from man.
The earth, out of which cometh bread,

Is torn up underneath, as it were by fire.

Her stones are the place of sapphires,
And she hath dust of gold for man;
The path thereto no bird knoweth,
And the vulture's eye hath not seen it;
The fierce wild beast hath not trodden it;
The lion hath not passed over it.
Man layeth his hand upon the rock;
He upturneth mountains from their roots;
He causeth streams to break out among the rocks,
And his eye seeth every precious thing;
He stoppeth the dropping of the streams,
And bringeth hidden things to light.

This version does not essentially differ from the Authorized one, but it is more distinct and connected; for which reason we have cited it here, without undertaking to say that all its phrases are such as we should have chosen. There can scarcely be a question as to the reference which the passage bears; and the information which it offers is in the highest degree interesting, and might form the nucleus of a large dissertation. The passage, taken as a whole, shews that even at this early period a much greater advance had been made in the metallurgic arts than is usually supposed: yet not greater than is intimated in

various passages of the Pentateuch and in the inferences which necessarily result from them. Yet here, in a connected description, the effect seems greater than that furnished by the brief intimations dispersed through the early books of Scripture.

We cannot undertake a detailed illustration of this remarkable text; nor does such an explanation seem necessary. We apprehend that the best illustration which this most ancient Scriptural account can receive, will be from the most ancient account which heathen writers have furnished. This is the description which Agatharchides has given of the manner in which the gold mines of the Red Sea were worked by the ancient Egyptians. Agatharchides lived in the first century before Christ, and the mines had then been worked as he describes at a very remote period. The present text is well illustrated by some parts of the description, the translation of which we give from Long's Egyptian Antiquities, ii. ix.

The kings of Egypt compelled many poor people, together with their wives and children, to labour in the mines, wherein they underwent more suffering than can well be imagined. The hard rocks of the gold mountains being cleft by heating them with burning wood, the workmen then apply their iron implements. The young and active, with iron hammers, break the rock in pieces, and form a number of narrow passages, not running in straight lines, but following the direction of the vein of gold, which is as irregular in its course as the roots of a tree. The workmen have lights fastened on their forehead, by the aid of which they cut their way through the rock, always following the white veins of stone. To keep them to their task, an overseer stands by, ready to inflict a blow on the lazy. The material that is thus loosened is carried out of the galleries by boys, and received at the mouth of the mine by old men and the weaker labourers, who then carry it to the epoptæ or inspectors. These are young men, under thirty years of age, strong and vigorous, who pound the broken fragments in iron mortars with a stone pestle till there is no piece larger than a pea. It is then placed on grinding-stones, or a kind of mill-stones, and women, three on each side, work at it till it is reduced to fine powder. . . . . The fine powder is then passed on to a set of workmen called sellangeis (nλayyeis), who place it on a finely-polished board, not lying in a flat position but sloping a little. The sellangeus, after pouring some water on the board, rubs it with his hand, at first gently, but afterwards more vigorously, by which process the lighter earthy particles slide off along the slope of the board, and the heavier parts are left behind. He then takes soft sponges, with which he presses on the board rather gently, which causes the lighter particles to adhere to the sponge, while the heavy shining grains still keep their place on the board, owing to their weight. From the sellangeis the gold particles are transferred to the roasters (ra), who measure and weigh all that they receive, before putting it into an earthen jar. With the gold particles they mix lead in a certain proportion, lumps of salt, a little tin, and barley bran, and putting a cover on the jar that fits tight, and smearing it all over, they burn it in a furnace for five days and nights without intermission. On the sixth day they cool the vessel and take out the gold, which they find somewhat diminished in quantity: all the other substances entirely disappear. These mines were worked under the ancient kings of Egypt, but abandoned during the occupation of the country by the Ethiopians, and afterwards by the Medes and Persians. Even at the present day we may find copper chisels or implements in the galleries (the use of iron not having been known at that time),† and innumerable skeletons of the wretched beings who lost their lives in the passages of the mine. The excavations are of great extent and reach down to the sea-coast.'

Does this help to explain the allusion in v. 3 of the following chapter? When his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness."

He therefore means copper in the early part of this extract, though he uses a word that signifies iron.

Beyond the immediate purpose for which we have quoted this passage, it may be observed that probably all the gold mentioned in Scripture underwent more or less such processes as those here described; it being, however, only necessary that the gold found in brooks and rivers should be subjected to the later operations, or some like them. We may add to this description of the misery of working in these mines, that, after the final desolation of Judæa, great numbers of the Jews were sent to work in the Egyptian mines.

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7. Vulture.'-We have concluded that the Racham (translated gier-eagle') of Lev. xi. 18, was the Vultur percnopterus, so common in Egypt and Syria. The present word ( ayyah) is different, and is the same which is rendered kite' in Lev. xi. 14. So also, both the Septuagint and the Vulgate translate the word indifferently into kite' or 'vulture.' 6 This shews that the ancient translators did not well know which it meant; and the matter still remains doubtful. In the one case we should be disposed to regard it as a general name for the hawk or falcon tribe, and not of a particular species; but, if a vulture, of which the species are numerous, it is probably represented by the Vultur fulvus, or Griffon -Vulture.

about three feet six inches, with an expanse of wings reaching to eight or nine. The colour of the full-grown bird is a deep rufous grey, becoming black on the quillfeathers and tail. The head and neck are not entirely bare, but are covered with a short close down, and the beautiful ruff is of a pure white. The powers of wing possessed by this bird are very great; and it often soars so high as to become invisible to human sight, notwithstanding its size. Travellers, astonished at the extraordinary distance from which these birds can descry a carcase, have debated whether they were guided by sight or by scent; but the beautiful and picturesque accuracy of the book of Job, on many points of natural history, seems here to afford us its high authority in ascribing it to the eye.

17. Crystal.'-The original word n zekukith, is found only here. The notion that it means the crystal is founded upon the fact that the word denotes purity, and hence transparency. This quality is as applicable to the diamond as to the crystal.

are disposed to rest in the conclusion thus authorized. We shall therefore take it to be represented by the coral of commerce. This valuable substance is well known as a marine production, bearing some resemblance to the stem of a plant divided into branches. The bark is composed of numerous minute creatures, closely united into one family, so to speak. Each individual seems to consist of a sac, serving for a stomach, and eight tentacula or arms disposed around the orifice, or mouth, and which are employed in conveying food to the mouth. They form, together, a most perfect community, since that which is

eaten by one contributes to the nourishment of the whole. The calcareous substance with which these animals are associated is formed with them, until at last, with succeeding generations of their countless multitudes, enormous masses are formed, which, rising near the surface of the water, endanger navigation; or, rising above it form islands, which ultimately acquire soil and vegetable produce, and become fit for the abode of men. But it is not correct to describe these masses as formed by the animals, since this substance is no more their work than the shell is the work of the oyster. The soft gelatinous polypus and its calcareous dwelling are equally the result of those plastic and unfolding energies which the Creator has impressed upon this department of nature. We have the rather mentioned these particulars, because much of this was probably known to Job, as the Red Sea abounds, in a remarkable degree, with coral masses, reefs of which extend throughout, and in some places rise ten fathoms above the water, as already mentioned in the note to Exod. xiii. 18. One of the largest islands in the Gulf, that of Kameran, is formed entirely of coral rock, which rises, without any inequality of surface, to the height of twenty feet above the level of the sea. As the coral rock is soft, and easily cut, most of the houses on the south-western coast of Arabia are built entirely with it. The Gulf has indeed been in all ages celebrated for its coral, which strengthens the probability that it is here intended by Job, as it could scarcely fail to have been known to him. As this substance was anciently held in very high esteem, we need not wonder to find it mentioned along with the onyx and sapphire.

-Pearls.-The word here is a gabish, which occurs nowhere else. It is more generally conceived that this word denotes the crystal rather than the word so rendered in v. 17; but our translators, having rendered zekukith by crystal' there, were obliged to choose something here. The word gabish primarily denotes ice;' as does the other word kerach, rendered 'crystal' in Ezek. | i. 22; which strengthens the opinion that crystal is really intended, as crystal was anciently held to be only pure water, congealed by great length of time into ice harder than the common; and hence the Greek word for it, KOUσTaλλos, in its more proper signification also means ice. From this opinion it necessarily followed that crystal could only be produced in the regions of perpetual ice, and this also was the ancient belief, although we now know that it is produced in the warmest regions. Theophrastus reckons crystal among the pellucid stones used for engraved seals. In common parlance we apply the term crystal, as the ancients apparently did, to a glass-like transparent stone, commonly of a hexagonal form, which, from being found in rocks, is called by mineralogists 'rock crystal.' It is a stone of the flint family, the most refined kind of quartz.

-Rubies,' ' peninim.-The ruby is considered by mineralogists as a variety of the sapphire. It is, with the exception of the sapphire or blue variety, next to the diamond in hardness. The oriental ruby is of a beautiful red or crimson. The form in which the crystals often present themselves is that of a six-sided pyramid or a six-sided prism, with very acute angles; these angles seem to be alluded to in the Hebrew word peninim, which signifies angles or corners.