[23]. This rendering is based on the reading of the Hebrew margin. The Hebrew text has, ‘Behold, should he slay me, for him would I wait,’ implying an expectation of a Divine interposition in Job’s favour after his death. But this idea is against the connection; besides which the restrictive particle ‘only’ (nearly = still) agrees better with the other reading and rendering. ‘Wait’ means ‘wait for a change for the better,’ as in vi. 11, which occurs in a similar context.
[24]. He admits that he is not without sins (comp. ver. 26).
[25]. Comp. the well-known lamentation of Moschus (iii. 106-111).
[26]. See the notices from Wetzstein in Delitzsch.
[27]. Miss E. Smith’s rendering, ‘irksome,’ Renan’s ‘insupportable,’ are not definite enough. Job means that his would-be comforters do but aggravate his unease.
[28]. Notice the expressions in xvi. 10, and comp. Ps. xxii. 7, 12, 13. (Ps. xxii., like the Book of Job, has some features which belong to an individual and some to a collection of sufferers.) Job would never have spoken of his friends in the terms used in xvi. 10, 11.
[29]. Sur. ix. 119.
[30]. Comp. Ps. xxii. 6, Isa. xlix. 7, Joel ii. 17 (where we should render ‘make a byword upon them’).
[31]. The Argument of the Book of Job (1881), p. 200.
[32]. Dr. Hermann Schultz is an unexceptionable witness, because his tastes lead him more to Biblical and dogmatic theology than to minute textual studies. He is convinced, he says, after each fresh examination, of ‘the baffling intricacy and obscurity and the probable corruption of the text’ (Alttestamentliche Theologie, ed. 2 [1878], pp. 661-2).