Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on Job 16:18
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
18 Oh earth, cover thou not my blood, And let my cry find no resting-place!! - 19 Even now behold in heaven is my Witness, And One who acknowledgeth me is in the heights! 20 Though the mockers of me are my friends - To Eloah mine eyes pour forth tears, 21 That He may decide for man against Eloah, And for the son of man against his friend. 22 For the years that may be numbered are coming on, And I shall go a way without return. Blood that is not covered up cries for vengeance, Eze 24:7.; so also blood still unavenged is laid bare that it may find vengeance, Isa 26:21. According to this idea, in the lofty consciousness of his innocence, Job calls upon the earth not to suck in his blood as of one innocently slain, but to let it lie bare, thereby showing that it must be first of all avenged ere the earth can take it up; (Note: As, according to the tradition, it is said to have been impossible to remove the stain of the blood of Zachariah the son of Jehoiada, who was murdered in the court of the temple, until it was removed by the destruction of the temple itself.) and for his cry, i.e., the cry (זעקתי to be explained according to Gen 4:10) proceeding from his blood as from his poured-out soul, he desires that it may urge its way unhindered and unstilled towards heaven without finding a place of rest (Symm. στάσις). Therefore, in the very God who appears to him to be a blood-thirsty enemy in pursuit of him, Job nevertheless hopes to find a witness of his innocence: He will acknowledge his blood, like that of Abel, to be the blood of an innocent man. It is an inward irresistible demand made by his faith which here brings together two opposite principles - principles which the understanding cannot unite - with bewildering boldness. Job believes that God will even finally avenge the blood which His wrath has shed, as blood that has been innocently shed. This faith, which sends forth beyond death itself the word of absolute command contained in Job 16:18, in Job 16:19 brightens and becomes a certain confidence, which draws from the future into the present that acknowledgment which God afterwards makes of him as innocent. The thought of what is unmerited in that decree of wrath which delivers him over to death, is here forced into the background, and in the front stands only the thought of the exaltation of the God in heaven above human short-sightedness, and the thought that no one else but He is the final refuge of the oppressed: even now (i.e., this side of death) (Note: Comp. Kg1 14:14, where it is probably to be explained: Jehovah shall raise up for himself a king over Israel who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam that day, but what? even now (גם עתה), i.e., He hath raised him up (= but no, even now).) behold in heaven is my witness (הנּה an expression of the actus directus fidei) and my confessor (שׂהר a poetic Aramaism, similar in meaning to עד, lxx ὁ συνίστωπ μου) in the heights. To whom should he flee from the mockery of his friends, who consider his appeal to the testimony of his conscience as the stratagem of a hypocrite! מליצי from הליץ, Psa 119:51, my mockers, i.e., those mocking me, lascivientes in me (vid., Gesch. der jd. Poesie, S. 200. The short clause, Job 16:20, is, logically at least, like a disjunctive clause with כי or גם־כי, Ewald, 362, b: if his friends mock him - to Eloah, who is after all the best of friends, his eyes pour forth tears (דּלפה, stillat, comp. דּלּוּ of languishing, Isa 38:14), that He may decide (וי…
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