Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/1500

These (אלּה retrospective, as in Job 18:21) are only קצות, the extremest end-points or outlines of the ways of God, which Job has depicted; the wondrous fulness of His might, which extends through the whole creation, transcends human comprehension; it is only שׁמץ דּבר therefrom that becomes audible to us men. שׁמץ (שׁמץ) is translated by Symm. here ψιθύρισμα, Job 4:12, ψιτηυρισμός; the Arab. šamiṣa (to speak very quickly, mutter) confirms this idea of the word; Jerome's translation, vix. parvam stillam sermonis ejus (comp. Job 4:12, venas, tropical for parts), is doubly erroneous: the rendering of the שׁמץ has the antithesis of רעם against it, and דּבר is not to be understood here otherwise than in ערות דּבר, Deu 23:15; Deu 24:1 : shame of something = something that excites a feeling of shame, a whisper of something = some whisper. The notion “somewhat,” which the old expositors attribute to שׁמץ, lies therefore in דבר. מה is exclamatory in a similar manner as in Psa 89:48 : how we hear (נשׁמע, not נשׁמע) only some whisper thereof (בּו partitive, as e.g., Isa 10:22), i.e., how little therefrom is audible to us, only as the murmur of a word, not loud and distinct, which reaches us!
As in the speech of Bildad the poet makes the opposition of the friends to fade away and cease altogether, as incapable of any further counsel, and hence as conquered, so in Job's closing speech, which consists of three parts, Job 26:1, Job 27:1, Job 29:1, he shows how Job in every respect, as victor, maintains the field against the friends. The friends have neither been able to loose the knot of Job's lot of suffering, nor the universal distribution of prosperity and misfortune. Instead of loosing the knot of Job's lot of suffering, they have cut it, by adding to Job's heavy affliction the invention of heinous guilt as its ground of explanation; and the knot of the contradictions of human life in general with divine justice they have ignored, in order that they may not