The Pulpit Commentary — Job — Section 108

la to oomp11esionnte hie afflicted friend, to summer it is dried up. Nor is it merely condole with him, 1md show his sympathy useless; it deceives, alluring the tre.veller with hia sufferings. This is what every one by the e.ppeare.nce of verdure, promising re- looks for and expects as II me.tter of course. freshment, 11,ncl giving none." But Job baa looked in vain. Ho has received Ver. 16.-Which are blackiah by reann no pity, no sympathy. Nothing he.a been of tbe ioe. Job seems to have seen we.dye offered him but arguments. And what argu• where, in the winter-time, the water was ments I How do they touch the polnt? How actually frozen in to hard black ice. This are they anything more than a venting of scarcely occurs now in the countries horder- the speaker's own self-righteousness? Let ing on Palestine; but me.y he.,·e occurre<l them fairly consider his cBSe, ancl point out in the region where Job dwelt, formerly. to him where he has been blamable. :But he "DMk, turbid water" can sce.rcely be in- forsBketh the fear of the Almighty; rather, tended. And wherein the snow is hid. el7en tlioug1, he.forsake the fear of the.Almighty, Some suppose m,lted snow to be meant; but or else might he forsaJ,e the fear of the Almighty. the deep we.dies in the Ho.nran and elsewhere Job certo.inly does not mell.Il to admit that would easily conceo.l snowdrifts. he has renounced the fear of God, and become Ver. 17.-What time they wax warm, an apostate from religion; but only to assert, they vanish: when it is hot, they &re con- either, that, even had he done so, his friends sumed out of their place (see the pBSsage ouaht still to have shown him kindness, or quoted from Dr. Geikie in the comment on els~ that their not showing him kindness is ver. 15). the very way to drive him to apostasy. Ver. 18.-The paths of theirway are turned Ver. 15.-:M:y brethren; i.e. " my three aside; rather, as in the Revised Version, friends," Eliphaz, who has spoken; Bildad the caravan, that traTJel by the way of them and Zophar, . who by their silence have tum aside. It seems impossible that the shown their agreement with him. Have streams can be intended, since their paths dealt deceitfully as a brook; i.e. "a winter are never "turned aside" -they simply torrent" -a " we.dy ," to use the modem shrink, fail, and dry up. But nothing is Arab expression. These watercourses are commoner the.n for caravans short of we.ter characteristic of Palestine and the adje.cent to go out of their way in order to reach a regions. "During tbe. winter mouths," says wady, where they expect to be e.ble to re- Dr. Cunningham Geikie, "they are often plenish their water-skins. If they are dis- foaming rivers; but in the hot summer, when appointed, if the wady is dry, they ma.y be t.hey would be of priceless value, their dry brought into great straits, and may even bed is genere.lly the road from one point to possibly perish. (For a probable instance, another. 'rhe water rushes over the sheets where dependence on a wa.dy would, but of rock as it would from the roof of a house, for a miraclP, have led to a great disaster, and couverging, as it descends, into minor see 2 Kings iii. 9-20.) They go to nothing, streams in the higher wadies. these sweep a.nd perish; rather, they go up into the icaste, on to a common chnnnel in some central and peTish. Having vainly sought we.ter iu valley, and, thus united, swell in an in- the dry we.dy, they ascend out of it, and credibly short time into a deep, troubled, enter the broad waste of the desert, where ronring flood, which fills the whole bottom they too often miserably perish. of the wady with an irresistible torrent . . . Ver.19.-The troops of Temalooked. Tbe The streams from Lebanon, and e.lso from Tema were an Arab tribe descended from the high mountains of the Hauran,sencl down Ishmael (Gen. xxv. 15). They are generally great :floods of dark and troubled waters in conjoined with Dedan (IBB. xxi. 13, 14; Jer. spring, when the ice e.nd snow of their :uv. 23), another Arab tribe, noteJ for carry- summ~ts are melted; but they dry up under ing on a caravan trade. Both tribes pro- the heat of summer, and the track of the bably wandered, and occupieJ e.t Jitferent torrent, with its chaos of boulders, stones, periods different portions or the desert. The and gravel, seems as if it had not known 11, name, Tema, may linger in the modern city stream for ages. So Job's friends had in and district of Tayma, on the confiues of former times seemed as if they would be true Syrie., and upon the pilgrim-route between to him for ever; but their frinndship hnd Damascus and Me~. The "troops of vanished, like the rush of the torrent that Temo." probably looked for the "co.ravans" had pnssed e.way" (' The Holy Land and of ver. 18 to arrive iu their country; but the Bible,' vol. i. pp. 123-125). And as they lookeJ in vain. The desert had the stream of brooks they pass away; or, swe.llowed them up. The oompanies of the channel; i.e. the wady iteelf. Canon Cook Sheba waited for them. (On " Sb.eba," see well says on this, "The simile is remark- the comment upon eh. i. 15.) ably complete. Wheu little needed, the Yer. 20.-They were confounded because torrent overflows; when needetl, it disap- they had hoped, Shame and confusion of pears. In winter it does not fertilize ; in f11,ce oame upon them inoonaequence of theix  Tllll 1\()()tr OJI' .fflB. (cm. v:r. 1-30.