usually of disturbance of spirit), but the breath is generally meant, which is become short (Job 7:15) and offensive (Job 19:17), announcing suffocation and decay as no longer far distant. In Job 17:1 the ἅπ. γεγρ. נזעכוׁ is equivalent to נדעכו, found elsewhere. In Job 17:1 קברים is used as if the dead were called, Arab. ssâchib el-kubûr, grave-companions. He is indeed one who is dying, from whom the grave is but a step distant, and still the friends promise him long life if he will only repent! This is the mockery which is with him, i.e., surrounds him, as he affirms, Job 17:1. A secondary verb, התל, is formed from the Hiph. התל (of which we had the non-syncopated form of the fut. in Job 13:9), the Piel of which occurs in 1Ki 18:27 of Elijah's derision of the priests of Baal, and from this is formed the pluralet. התלים (or, according to another reading, התלּים, with the same doubling of the ל as in מהתלּות, deceitful things, Isa 30:10; comp. the same thing in Job 33:7, אראלּם, their lions of God = heroes), which has the meaning foolery, - a meaning questioned by Hirz. without right, - in which the idea of deceit and mockery are united. Gecatilia and Ralbag take it as a part.: mockers; Stick., Wolfson, Hahn: deluded; but the analogy of שׁעשׁעים, תעלולים, and the like, speaks in favour of taking it as a substantive. אם־לא is affirmative (Ges. §155, 2, f). Ewald renders it as expressive of desire: if only not (Hlgst.: dummodo ne); but this signification (Ew. §329, b) cannot be supported. On the other hand, it might be intended interrogatively (as Job 30:25): annon illusiones mecum (Rosenm.); but this אם־לא, corresponding to the second member of a disjunctive question, has no right connection in the preceding. We therefore prefer the affirmative meaning, and explain it like Job 22:20; Job 31:36, comp. Job 2:5. Truly what he continually hears, i.e., from the side of the friends, is only false and delusive utterances, which consequently sound to him like jesting and mockery. The suff. in Job 17:2 refers to
