For the arrows of the Almighty are within me - That is, it is not a light affliction that I endure. I am wounded in a manner which could not be caused by man - called to endure a severity of suffering which shows that it proceeds from the Almighty. Thus called to suffer what man could not cause, he maintains that it is right for him to complain, and that the words which he employed were not an improper expression of the extent of the grief.
The poison whereof drinketh up my spirit - Takes away my rigor, my comfort, my life. He here compares his afflictions with being wounded with poisoned arrows. Such arrows were not unfrequently used among the ancients. The object was to secure certain death, even where the wound caused by the arrow itself would not produce it. Poison was made so concentrated, that the smallest quantity conveyed by the point of an arrow would render death inevitable. This practice contributed much to the barbarity of savage war. Thus, Virgil speaks of poisoned arrows:
Ungere tela manu, ferrumque armare veneno.
Aeneid ix. 773
And again, Aen x. 140:
Vulnera dirigere, et calamos armare veneno.
So Ovid, Lib. 1. de Ponto, Eleg. ii. of the Scythians:
Qui mortis saevo geminent ut vulnere causas,
Omnia vipereo spicula felle linunt.
Compare Justin, Lib. ii. c. 10. section 2; Grotius, de Jure Belli et Pacis; and Virgil, En. xii. 857. In the Odyssey, i. 260ff we read of Ulysses that he went to Ephyra, a city of Thessaly, to obtain from Ilus, the son of Mermer, deadly poison, that he might smear it over the iron point of his arrows. The pestilence which produced so great a destruction in the Grecian camp is also said by Homer (Iliad i. 48) to have been caused by arrows shot from the bow of Apollo. The phrase "drinketh up the spirit" is very expressive. We speak now of the sword thirsting for blood; but this language is more expressive and striking. The figure is not uncommon in the poetry of the East and of the ancients. In the poem of Zohair, the third of the Moallakat, or those transcribed in golden letters, and suspended in the temple of Mecca, the same image occurs. It is thus rendered by Sir William Jones:
Their javelins had no share in drinking the blood of Naufel.
A similar expression occurs in Sophocles in Trachinn, verse 1061, as quoted by Schultens, when describing the pestilence in which Hercules suffered:
ἐκ δὲ χλωρὸν αἵμα μου Πέπωκεν ἤδη -
ek de chlōron haima mou Pepōken ēdē -
This has been imitated by Cicero in Tusculan. Disp. ii. 8:
Haec me irretivit veste furiali inscium,
Quae lateri inhaerens morsu lacerat viscera,
Urgensque graviter, pulmonum haurit spiritus,
Jam decolorem sanguinem omnem exsorbuit.
So Lucan, Pharsa. ix. 741ff gives a similar description:
Ecce subit virus taciturn, carpitque medullas
Ignis edax calidaque iacendit viscera tabe.
Ebibit humorem circa vitalia fusum
Pestis, et in sicco linguan torrere palato Coepit.
Far more beautiful, however, than the expressions of any of the ancient Classics - more tender, more delicate, more full of pathos - is the description which the Christian poet Cowper gives of the arrow that pierces the side of the sinner. It is the account of his own conversion:
I was a stricken deer that left the herd
Long since. With many an artery deep infix'd
My panting side was charged when I withdrew
To seek a tranquil death in distant shades.
There I was found by one, who had himself
Been hurt by the archers. In his side he bore,
And in his hands and feet, the cruel scars.
Task, b. iii.
Of such wounding he did not complain. The arrow was extracted by the tender hand of him who alone had power to do it. Had Job known of him; had he been fully acquainted with the plan of mercy through him, and the comfort which a wounded sinner may find there, we should not have heard the bitter complaints which he uttered in his trials. Let us not judge him with the severity which we may use of one who is afflicted and complains under the full light of the gospel.
The terrors of God do set themselves in array against me - Those things which God uses to excite terror. The word which is rendered "set in array" (ערך ‛ârak) properly denotes the drawing up of a line for battle; and the sense is here, that all these terrors seem to be drawn up in battle array, as if on purpose to destroy him. No expression could more strikingly describe the condition of an awakened sinner, though it is not certain that Job used it precisely in this sense. The idea as he used it is, that all that God commonly employed to produce alarm seemed to be drawn up as in a line of battle against him. |