*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
O earth - Passionate appeals to the earth are not uncommon in the Scriptures; see the notes at Isaiah 1:2. Such appeals indicate deep emotion, and are among the most animated forms of personification.
Cover not thou my blood - Blood here seems to denote the wrong done to him. He compares his situation with that of one who had been murdered, and calls on the earth not to conceal the crime, and prays that his injuries may not be hidden, or pass unavenged. Aben Ezra, Dr. Good, and some others, however, suppose that he refers to blood shed "by" him, and that the idea is, that he would have the earth reveal any blood if he had ever shed any; or in other words, that it is a strong protestation of his innocence. But the former interpretation seems to accord best with the connection. It is the exclamation of deep feeling. He speaks as a man about to die, but he says that he would die as an innocent and a much injured man, and he passionately prays that his death may not pass unavenged. God had crushed him, and his friends had wronged him, and he now earnestly implores that his character may yet be vindicated. "According to the saying of the Arabs, the blood of one who was unjustly slain remained upon the earth without sinking into it; until the avenger of blood came up. It was regarded as a proof of innocence." Eichhorn, "in loc" That there is much of irreverence in all this must, I think, be conceded. It is not language for us to imitate. But it is not more irreverent and unbecoming than what often occurs, and it is designed to show what the human heart "will" express when it is allowed to give utterance to its real feelings.
And let my cry have no place - Let it not be hid or concealed. Let there be nothing to hinder my cry from ascending to heaven. The meaning is, that Job wished his solemn protestations of his innocence to go abroad. He desired that all might hear him. He called on the nations and heaven to hear. He appealed to the universe. He desired that the earth would not conceal the proof of his wrongs, and that his cry might not be confined or limited by any bounds, but that it might go abroad so that all worlds might hear.
O earth, cover not thou my blood - This is evidently an allusion to the murder of Abel, and the verse has been understood in two different ways:
1. Job here calls for justice against his destroyers. His blood is his life, which he considers as taken away by violence, and therefore calls for vengeance. Let my blood cry against my murderers, as the blood of Abel cried against Cain. My innocent life is taken away by violence, as his innocent life was; as therefore the earth was not permitted to cover his blood, so that his murderer should be concealed, let my death be avenged in the same way.
2. It has been supposed that the passage means that Job considered himself accused of shedding innocent blood; and, conscious of his own perfect innocence, he prays that the earth may not cover any blood shed by him. Thus Mr. Scott: -
"O earth, the blood accusing me reveal;
Its piercing voice in no recess conceal."
And this notion is followed by Mr. Good. But, with all deference to these learned men, I do not see that this meaning can be supported by the Hebrew text; nor was the passage so understood by any of the ancient versions. I therefore prefer the first sense, which is sufficiently natural, and quite in the manner of Job in his impassioned querulousness.
O earth, cover not thou my (s) blood, and let my cry have no place.
(s) Let my sin be known if I am such a sinner as my adversaries accuse me, and let me find no favour.
O earth, cover not thou my blood,.... This is an imprecation, wishing that if; he had been guilty of any capital crime, of such acts of injustice that he ought to be punished by the judge, and even to die for them, that his blood when spilt might not be received into the earth, but be licked up by dogs, or that he might have no burial or interment in the earth; and if he had committed such sins as might come under the name of blood, either the shedding of innocent blood, though that is so gross a crime that it can hardly be thought that Job's friends even suspected this of him; or rather other foul sins, as injustice and oppression of the poor; the Tigurine version is, "my capital sins", see Isaiah 1:15; then he wishes they might never be covered and concealed, but disclosed and spread abroad everywhere, that all might know them, and he suffer shame for them; even as the earth discloses the blood of the slain, when inquisition is made for it, Isaiah 26:21;
and let my cry have no place; meaning if he was the wicked man and the hypocrite he was said to be, or if his prayer was not pure, sincere, and upright, as he said it was, then he desired that when he cried to God, or to man, in his distress, he might be regarded by neither; that his cry might not enter into the ears of the Lord of hosts, but that it might be shut out, and he cover himself with a cloud, that it might not pass through, and have any place with him; land that he might not meet with any pity and compassion from the heart, nor help and relief from the hand of any man.
my blood--that is, my undeserved suffering. He compares himself to one murdered, whose blood the earth refuses to drink up until he is avenged (Genesis 4:10-11; Ezekiel 24:1, Ezekiel 24:8; Isaiah 26:21). The Arabs say that the dew of heaven will not descend on a spot watered with innocent blood (compare 2-Samuel 1:21).
no place--no resting-place. "May my cry never stop!" May it go abroad! "Earth" in this verse in antithesis to "heaven" (Job 16:19). May my innocence be as well-known to man as it is even now to God!
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, Ezekiel 24:7.; so also blood still unavenged is laid bare that it may find vengeance, Isaiah 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 Genesis 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. 1-Kings 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, Psalm 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, Isaiah 38:14), that He may decide (ויוכח voluntative in a final signification, as Job 9:33) for man (ל here, as Isaiah 11:4; Isaiah 2:4, of the client) against (עם, as Psalm 55:19; Psalm 94:16, of an opponent) Eloah, and for the son of man (ל to be supplied here in a similar sense to Job 16:21, comp. Job 15:3) in relation to (ל as it is used in ל בּין, e.g., Ezekiel 34:22) his friend. Job longs and hopes for two things from God: (1) that He would finally decide in favour of גבר, i.e., just himself, the patient sufferer, in opposition to God, that therefore God would acknowledge that Job is not a criminal, nor his suffering a merited punishment; (2) that He would decide in favour of בן־אדם, i.e., himself, who is become an Ecce homo, in relation to his human opponent (רעהוּ, not collective, but individualizing or distributive instead of רעיו), who regards him as a sinner undergoing punishment, and preaches to him the penitence that becomes one who has fallen. ויוכח is purposely only used once, and the expression Job 16:21 is contracted in comparison with 21a: the one decision includes the other; for when God himself destroys the idea of his lot being merited punishment, He also at the same time delivers judgment against the friends who have zealously defended Him against Job as a just judge.
Olsh. approves Ewald's translation: "That He allows man to be in the right rather than God, and that He judges man against his friend:" but granted even that הוכיח, like שׁפט followed by an acc., may be used in the signification: to grant any one to be in the right (although, with such a construction, it everywhere signifies ἐλέγχειν), this rendering would still not commend itself, on account of the specific gravity of the hope which is here struggling through the darkness of conflict. Job appeals from God to God; he hopes that truth and love will finally decide against wrath. The meaning of הוכיח has reference to the duty of an arbitrator, as in Job 9:33. Schlottm. aptly recalls the saying of the philosophers, which applies here in a different sense from that in which it is meant, nemo contra Deum, nisi Deus ipse. In Job 16:22 Job now establishes the fact that the heavenly witness will not allow him to die a death that he and others would regard as the death of a sinner, from the brevity of the term of life yet granted him, and the hopelessness of man when he is once dead. מספּר שׁנות are years of number = few years (lxx ἔτη ἀριθμητά); comp. the position of the words as they are to be differently understood, Job 15:20. On the inflexion jeethâju, vid., on Job 12:6. Jerome transl. transeunt, but אתה cannot signify this in any Semitic dialect. But even that Job (though certainly the course of elephantiasis can continue for years) is intended to refer to the prospect of some, although few, years of life (Hirz. and others: the few years which I can still look forward to, are drawing on), does not altogether suit the tragic picture. The approach of the years that can be numbered is rather thought of as the approach of their end; and the few years are not those which still remain, but in general the but short span of life allotted to him (Hahn). The arrangement of the words in Job 16:22 also agrees with this, as not having the form of a conclusion (then shall I go, etc.), but that of an independent co-ordinate clause: and a path, there (whence) I come not back (an attributive relative clause according to Ges. 123, 3, b) I shall go (אהלך poetic, and in order to gain a rhythmical fall at the close, for אלך). Now follow, in the next strophe, short ejaculatory clauses: as Oetinger observes, Job chants his own requiem while living.
Earth - The earth is said to cover that blood, which lies undiscovered and unrevenged: but saith Job, if I be guilty of destroying any man, let the earth disclose it; let it be brought to light. Cry - Let the cry of my complaints to men, or prayers to God, find no place in the ears or hearts of God or men, if this be true.
*More commentary available at chapter level.