Armenia in comments -- Book: Job (tJob) Յոբ
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tJob 40:10 10 Deck thyself then with pomp and dignity,
And in glory and majesty clothe thyself!
11 Let the overflowings of thy wrath pour forth,
And behold all pride, and abase it!
12 Behold all pride, bring it low,
And cast down the evil-doers in their place;
13 Hide them in the dust together,
Bind their faces in secret:
14 Then I also will praise thee,
That thy right hand obtaineth thee help.
He is for once to put on the robes of the King of kings (עדה, comp. עטח, to wrap round, Psa 104:2), and send forth his wrath over pride and evil-doing, for their complete removal. הפיץ, effundere, diffundere, as Arab. afâda, vid., Job 37:11. עברות, or rather, according to the reading of Ben-Ascher, עברות ,rehcsA, in its prop. signif. oversteppings, i.e., overflowings. In connection with Job 40:11, one is directly reminded of the judgment on everything that is high and exalted in Isa 2, where beטמנם בּעפר also has its parallel (Isa 2:10). Not less, however, does Job 40:14 recall Isa 59:16; Isa 63:5 (comp. Psa 98:1); Isaiah I and II have similar descriptions to the book of Job. The ἁπ. λεγ. הדך is Hebraeo-Arab.; hadaka signifies, like hadama, to tear, pull to the ground. In connection with תמוּן (from טמן; Aram., Arab., טמר), the lower world, including the grave, is thought of (comp. Arab. mat-murât, subterranean places); חבשׁ signifies, like Arab. ḥbs IV, to chain and to imprison. Try it only for once - this is the collective thought - to act like Me in the execution of penal justice, I would praise thee. That he cannot do it, and yet venture with his short-sightedness and feebleness to charge God's rule with injustice, the following pictures of foreign animals are now further intended to make evident to him: - Job 40:15 tJob 40:15 15 Behold now the behmth,
Which I have made with thee:
He eateth grass like an ox.
16 Behold now, his strength is in his loins,
And his force in the sinews of his belly.
17 He bendeth his tail like a cedar branch,
The sinews of his legs are firmly interwoven.
18 His bones are like tubes of brass,
His bones like bars of iron.
בּהמות (after the manner of the intensive plur. הוללות, חכמות, which play the part of the abstract termination), which sounds like a plur., but without the numerical plural signification, considered as Hebrew, denotes the beast κατ ̓ ἐξοχήν, or the giant of beasts, is however Hebraized from the Egyptian p-ehe-mau, (muau), i.e., the (p) ox (ehe) of the water (mau as in the Hebraized proper name משׁה). It is, as Bochart has first of all shown, the so-called river or Nile horse, Hippopotamus amphibius (in Isa 30:6, בּהמות נגב, as emblem of Egypt, which extends its power, and still is active in the interest of others), found in the rivers of Africa, but no longer found in the Nile, which is not inappropriately called a horse; the Arab. water-hog is better, Italian bomarino, Eng. sea-cow ?, like the Egyptian p-ehe-mau. The change of p and b in the exchange of Egyptian and Semitic words occurs also elsewhere, e.g., pug' and בּוּץ, harpu and חרב (ἅρπη), Apriu and עברים (according to Lauth). Nevertheless p-ehe-mau (not mau-t, for what should the post-positive fem. art. do here?) is first of all only the בהמות translated back again into the Egyptian by Jablonsky; an instance in favour of this is still wanting. In Hieroglyph the Nile-horse is called apet; it was honoured as divine. Brugsch dwelt in Thebes in the temple of the Apet.
(Note: In the astronomical representations the hippopotamus is in the neighbourhood of the North Pole in the place of the dragon of the present day, and bears the name of hes-mut, in which mut = t. mau, "the mother." Hes however is obscure; Birch explains it by: raging.)
In Job 40:15 עמּך signifies nothing but "with thee," so that thou hast it before thee. This water-ox eats חציר, green grass, like an ox. That it prefers to plunder the produce of the fields - in Arab. chadı̂r signifies, in particular, green barley - is accordingly self-evident. Nevertheless, it has gigantic strength, viz., in its plump loins and in the sinews (שׁרירי, properly the firm constituent parts,
(Note: Staring from its primary signification (made firm, fast), Arab. srı̂r, שׁרירא can signify e.g., also things put together from wood: a throne, a hand-barrow, bedstead and cradle, metaphor. the foundation. Wetzst. otherwise: "The שׂרירי הבטן are not the sinews and muscles, still less 'the private parts' of others, but the four bearers of the animal body = arkân el-batn, viz., the bones of the מתנים, Job 40:16, together with the two shoulder-blades. The Arab. sarı̂r is that on which a thing is supported or rests, on which it stands firmly, or moves about. Neshwn (i. 280) says: ‛sarı̂r is the substratum on which a thing rests,' and the sarı̂r er-ra's, says the same, is the place where the head rests upon the nape of the neck. The Kms gives the same signification primo loco, which shows that it is general; then follows in gen. Arab. muḍṭaja‛, "the support of a thing.")
therefore: ligaments and muscles) of its clumsy belly. The brush of a tail, short in comparison with the monster itself, is compared to a cedar (a branch of it), ratione glabritiei, rotunditatis, spissitudinis et firmitatis (Bochart); since the beast is in general almost without hair, it looks like a stiff, naked bone, and yet it can bend it like an elastic cedar branch; חפץ is Hebraeo-Arab., ḥfḍ
(Note: Wetzst. otherwise: One may compare the Arab. chafaḍa, fut. i, to hold, sit, lie motionless (in any place), from which the signification of desiring, longing, has been developed, since in the Semitic languages the figure of fixing (ta‛alluq) the heard and the eye on any desired object is at the basis of this notion (wherefore such verbs are joined with the praep. בּ). According to this, it is to be explained, "his tail is motionless like (the short and thick stem of) The cedar," for the stunted tail of an animal is a mark of its strength to a Semite. In 1860, as I was visiting the neighbouring mountain fortress of el-Hosn with the octogenarian Fjd, the sheikh of Fk in Gln, we rode past Fjd's ploughmen; and as one of them was letting his team go slowly along, the sheikh cried out to him from a distance: Faster! faster! They (the steers, which thou ploughest) are not oxen weak with age, nor are they the dower of a widow (who at her second marriage receives only a pair of weak wretched oxen from her father or brother); but they are heifers (3-4 year-old steers) with stiffly raised tails (wadhujûluhin muqashmare, מקשׁמר an intensive קשׁוּר or שׁלאנן comp. שׁלאנן, Job 21:23).)
is a word used directly of the bending of wood (el-‛ûd).
Since this description, like the whole book of Job, is so strongly Arabized, פחד, Job 40:17, will also be one word with the Arab. fachidh, the thigh; as the Arabic version also translates: ‛urûku afchâdhihi (the veins or strings of its thigh). The Targ., retaining the word of the text here,
(Note: Another Targ., which translates גבריה ושׁעבוזוהי, penis et testiculi ejus, vid., Aruch s.v. שׁעבז.)
has פּחדין in Lev 21:20 for אשׁך, a testicle, prop. inguina, the groins; we interpret: the sinews of its thighs or legs
(Note: According to Fleischer, fachidh signifies properly the thick-leg (= thigh), from the root fach, with the general signification of being puffed out, swollen, thick.)
are intertwined after the manner of intertwined vine branches, שׂריגים.
(Note: In the choice of the word ישׂרגו, the mushâgarat ed-dawâlı̂ (from שׁגר = שׂרג), "the interweaving of the vine branches" was undoubtedly before the poet's eye; comp. Deutsch. Morgenl. Zeitschr. xi. 477: "On all sides in this delightful corner of the earth (the Ghta) the vine left to itself, in diversified ramifications, often a dozen branches resembling so many huge snakes entangled together, swings to and fro upon the shining stem of the lofty white poplar." And ib. S. 491: "a twisted vine almost the thickness of a man, as though formed of rods of iron (comp. Job 40:18).")
But why is פחדיו pointed thus, and not פחדיו (as e.g., שׁעריו)? It is either an Aramaizing (with אשׁריו it has another relationship) pointing of the plur., or rather, as Khler has perceived, a regularly-pointed dual (like רגליו), from פּחדים (like פּעמים), which is equally suitable in connection with the signification femora as testiculi. מטיל, Job 40:18, is also Hebraeo-Arab.; for Arab. mṭl signifies to forge, or properly to extend by forging (hammering), and to lengthen, undoubtedly a secondary formation of טוּל, tâla, to be long, as makuna of kâna, madana of dâna, massara (to found a fortified city) of sâra, chiefly (if not always) by the intervention of such nouns as makân, medı̂ne, misr (= מצור), therefore in the present instance by the intervention of this metı̂l (= memtûl)
(Note: The noun מטיל is also found in the Lexicon of Neshwn, i. 63: "מטיל is equivalent to ממטוּל, viz., that which is hammered out in length, used of iron and other metals; and one says חדידה מטילה of a piece of iron that has been hammered for the purpose of stretching it." The verb Neshwn explains: "מטל said of iron signifies to stretch it that it may become long." The verb מטל can be regarded as a fusion of the root מדד (מטט, טוּט, comp. מוטה, and Arab. mûṭ Beduin: to take long steps) with the root טוּל, to be long. - Wetzst. The above explanation of the origin of the verb מטל seems to us more probable.)
whence probably μέταλλον (metal), properly iron in bars or rods, therefore metal in a wrought state, although not yet finished.
(Note: Ibn-Koreisch in Pinsker, Likkute, p. קנא, explains it without exactness by sebikat hadı̂d, which signifies a smelted and formed piece of iron.)
Its bones are like tubes of brass, its bones (גּרמיו, the more Aram. word) like forged rods of iron - what an appropriate description of the comparatively thin but firm as iron skeleton by which the plump mass of flesh of the gigantic boar-like grass-eater is carried! Job 40:19