[434] שְׁבֻעוֹת מַטּוֹת אֹמֶר, literally _sworn are staves_ or _rods of speech_. A.V.: according _to the oaths of the tribes_, even Thy _word_. LXX. (omitting שְׁבֻעוֹת and adding יהוה) ἐπὶ σκῆπτρα, λέγει κύριος. These words “form a riddle which all the ingenuity of scholars has not been able to solve. Delitzsch calculates that a hundred translations of them have been offered” (Davidson). In parallel to previous clause about a _bow_, we ought to expect מטות, _staves_, though it is not elsewhere used for _shafts_ or _arrows_. שׁבעות may have been שַׂבֵּעְתָּ, _Thou satest_. The Cod. Barb. reads: ἐχόρτασας βολίδας τῆς φαρέτρης αὐτοῦ, _Thou hast satiated the shafts of his quiver_. Sinker: _sworn are the punishments of the solemn decree_, and relevantly compares Isa. xi. 4, _the rod of His mouth_; xxx. 32, _rod of doom_. Ewald: _sevenfold shafts of war_. But cf. Psalm cxviii. 12.
[435] Uncertain, but a more natural result of cleaving than _the rivers Thou cleavest into dry land_ (Davidson and Wellhausen).
[436] But Ewald takes this as of the Red Sea floods sweeping on the Egyptians.
[437] רום ידיהו נשא = _he lifts up his hands on high_. But the LXX. read מריהו, φαντασίας αὐτῆς, and took נשא with the next verse. The reading מריהו (for מראיהו) is indeed nonsense, but suggests an emendation to מרזחו, _his shout or wail_: cf. Amos vi. 7, Jer. xvi. 5.
[438] Reading for הושיע ישע, required by the acc. following. _Thine anointed_, lit. _Thy Messiah_, according to Isa. xl. ff. the whole people.
[439] Heb. יסוד, _foundation_. LXX. _bonds_. Some suggest laying bare from the foundation to the neck, but this is mixed unless _neck_ happened to be a technical name for a part of a building: cf. Isa. viii. 8, xxx. 28.
[440] Heb. _his spears_ or _staves_; _his own_ (Von Orelli). LXX. ἐν ἐκστάσει: see Sinker, pp. 56 ff. _Princes_: פְרָזָו only here. Hitzig: _his brave ones_. Ewald, Wellhausen, Davidson: _his princes_. Delitzsch: _his hosts_. LXX. κεφαλὰς δυναστῶν.
[441] So Heb. literally. A very difficult line. On LXX. see Sinker, pp. 60 f.
[442] For חֹמֶר, _heap_ (so A.V.), read some part of חמר, _to foam_. LXX. ταράσσοντας: cf. Psalm xlvi. 4.
[443] So LXX. א (some codd.), softening the original _belly_.
[444] Or _my lips quiver aloud_—לקול, _vocally_ (Von Orelli).
[445] By the Hebrew the bones were felt, as a modern man feels his nerves: Psalms xxxii., li.; Job.
[446] For אשר, for which LXX. gives ἡ ἔξις μου, read אשרי, _my steps_; and for ארגז, LXX. ἑταράχθη, ירגזו.
[447] אָנוּחַ. LXX. ἀναπαύσομαι, _I will rest_. A.V.: _that I might rest in the day of trouble_. Others: _I will wait for_. Wellhausen suggests אִנָּחֵם (Isa. l. 24), _I will take comfort_. Sinker takes אשר as the simple relative: _I who will wait patiently for the day of doom_. Von Orelli takes it as the conjunction _because_.
[448] יְגֻדֶנּוּ, _it invades_, _brings up troops on them_, only in Gen. xlix. 19 and here. Wellhausen: _which invades us_. Sinker: _for the coming up against the people of him who shall assail it_.
[449] תפרח; but LXX. תפרה, οὐ καρποφορήσει, _bear no fruit_.
[450] For גזר Wellhausen reads נִגזר. LXX. ἐξελιπεν.
[451] _De Civitate Dei_, XVIII. 32.
[452] So he paraphrases _in the midst of the years_.
[453] From the prayer with which Calvin concludes his exposition of Habakkuk.