an Arabizing Hebrew poet before us, that not a single passage can be brought forward from the Old Testament literature. But מצּפון is against this figurative rendering of the זהב (lxx νέφη χρυσαυγοῦντα). In Eze 1:4 there is good reason for the storm-clouds, which unfold from their midst the glory of the heavenly Judge, who rideth upon the cherubim, coming from the north; but wherefore should Elihu represent the sun's golden light as breaking through from the north? On the other hand, in the conception of the ancients, the north is the proper region for gold: there griffins (grupe's) guard the gold-pits of the Arimaspian mountains (Herod. iii. 116); there, from the narrow pass of the Caucasus along the Gordyaean mountains, gold is dug by barbarous races (Pliny, h. n. vi. 11), and among the Scythians it is brought to light by the ants (ib. xxxiii. 4). Egypt could indeed provide itself with gold from Ethiopia, and the Phoenicians brought the gold of Ophir, already mentioned in the book of Job, from India; but the north was regarded as the fabulously most productive chief mine of gold; to speak more definitely: Northern Asia, with the Altai mountains.[1]
Thus therefore Job 28:1, Job 28:6 is to be compared here.
What Job describes so grandly and minutely in Job 28:1, viz., that man lays bare the hidden treasures of the earth's interior, but that the wisdom of God still transcends him, is here expressed no less grandly and compendiously: From the north cometh gold, which man wrests from the darkness of the gloomy unknown region of the north (צפון, ζόφος, from צפן, cogn. טמן, טמר,[2] upon
- ↑ Vid., the art. Gold, S. 91, 101, in Ersch and Gruber. The Indian traditions concerning Uttaraguru (the “High Mountain”), and concerning the northern seat of the god on wealth Kuvêra, have no connection here; on their origin comp. Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, i. 848.
- ↑ The verb צּפּה, obducere, does not belong here, but to צפח, and signifies properly to flatten (as רקע, to make thin and thick by striking), comp. Arab. ṣfḥ, to strike on something flat (whence el-musâfaha, the salutation by striking the hand), and Arab. ṣf‛, to strike with the flat hand on anything, therefore diducendo obducere.
