Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/1169

adjective closely allied to the idea of the verb, exutus, not however mente (deprived of sense), but vestibus; not merely barefooted (Hirz., Oehler, with lxx, Mic 1:8, ἀνυπόδετος), which is the meaning of יחף, but: stripped of their clothes with violence (vid., Isa 20:4), stripped in particular of the insignia of their power. He leads them half-naked into captivity, and takes away the judges as fools (יהולל, vid., Psychol. S. 292), by destroying not only their power, but the prestige of their position also. We find echoes of this utterance respecting God's paradoxical rule in the world in Isa 40:23; Isa 44:25; and Isaiah's oracle on Egypt, Job 19:11-15, furnishes an illustration in the reality.
It is but too natural to translate Job 12:18 : the bands of kings He looses (after Psa 116:16, למוסרי פתחת, Thou hast loosed my bands); but the relation of the two parts of the verse can then not be this: He unchains and chains kings (Hirz., Ew., Heiligst. Schlottm.), for the fut. consec. ויּאסר requires a contrast that is intimately connected with the context, and not of mere outward form: fetters in which kings have bound others (מלכים, gen. subjectivus) He looses, and binds them in fetters (Raschi), - an explanation which much commends itself, if מוּסר could only be justified as the construct of מוּסר by the remark that “the o sinks into u” (Ewald, §213, c). מוּסר does not once occur in the signification vinculum; but only the plur. מוסרים and מוסרות, vincula, accord with the usage of the language, so that even the pointing מוסר proposed by Hirzel is a venture. מוּסר, however, as constr. of מוּסר, correction, discipline, rule (i.e., as the domination of punishment, from יסר, castigare), is an equally suitable sense, and is probably connected by the poet with פּתּח (a word very familiar to him, Job 30:11; Job 39:5; Job 41:6) on account of its relation both in sound and sense to מוסרים (comp. Psa 105:22). The English translation is correct: He looseth