explained by the Jewish expositors, e.g., Ralbag), as though the human organism could be called עדה. Hahn: Thou hast destroyed all my testimony, which must have been אדתי (from עוּד, whereas עדה, from ועד, has a changeable Ssere). He means to say that he stands entirely alone, and neither sees nor hears anything consolatory, for he does not count his wife. He is therefore completely shut up to himself; God has shrivelled him up; and this suffering form to which God has reduced him, is become an evidence, i.e., for himself and for others, as the three friends, an accusation de facto, which puts him down as a sinner, although his self-consciousness testifies the opposite to him.
Verse 8
The verb קמט (Aram. קמט), which occurs only once beside (Job 22:16), has, like Arab. qmṭ (in Gecatilia's transl.), the primary meaning of binding and grasping firmly (lxx ἐπελάβου, Symm. κατέδησας, Targ. for לכד, תּמך, lengthened to a quadriliteral in Arab. qmṭr, cogn. קמץ),[1]constringere, from which the significations comprehendere and corrugare have branched off; the signification, to wrinkle (make wrinkled), to shrivel up, is the most common, and the reference which follows, to his emaciation, and the lines which occur further on from the picture of one sick with elephantiasis, show that the poet here has this in his mind. Ewald's conjecture, which changes היה into היּה, Job 6:2; Job 30:13 = הוּה, as subject to ותקמטני (calamity seizes me as a witness), deprives the thought contained in לעד, which renders the inferential clause לעד היה prominent, of much of its force and emphasis. In Job 16:8 this thought is continued: כּחשׁ signifies here, according to Psa 109:24 (which see), a wasting away; the verb-group כחשׁ, כחד, Arab. jḥd,kḥt, qḥṭ, etc., has the primary meaning
- ↑ On the other hand, קטם, Arab. qṭm, abscindere, praemordere, has no connection with קמט, with which Kimchi and Reiske confuse it. This is readily seen from the opposite primary distinction of the two roots, קם and קט, of which the former expresses union, the latter separation.
