this rendering Job 26:13 and Job 26:13 are severed, as being without connection; in general, however, the course of thought in the description does not favour the reference of the whole of half of Job 26:13 to the creation. Accordingly, חללה is not to be taken as Pilel from חול (ליל), but after Isa 57:9, as Poel from חלל, according to which the idea of Job 26:13 is determined, since both lines of the verse are most closely connected. (בּריח) נחשׁ בּרח is, to wit, the constellation of the Dragon,[1] one of the most straggling constellations, which winds itself between the Greater and Lesser Bears almost half through the polar circle.
“Maximus hic plexu sinuoso elabitur AnguisCircum perque duas in morem fluminis Arctos.” (Virgil, Georg. i. 244f.)
Aratus in Cicero, de nat. Deorum, ii. 42, describes it more graphically, both in general, and in regard to the many stars of different magnitudes which form its body from head to tail. Among the Arabs it is called el-hajje, the serpent, e.g., in Firuzabâdi: the hajje is a constellation between the Lesser Bear (farqadân, the two calves) and the Greater Bear (benât en-na‛sch, the daughters of the bier), “or et-tanı̂n, the dragon, e.g., in one of the authors quoted by Hyde on Ulugh Beigh's Tables of the Stars, p. 18: the tanîn lies round about the north pole in the form of a long serpent, with many bends and windings.” Thus far the testimony of the old expositors is found in Rosenmüller. The Hebrew name תּלי (the quiver) is perhaps to be distinguished from טלי and דּלי, the Zodiac constellations Aries and Aquarius.[2]
It is questionable how בּרח is to be understood. The lxx translates δράκοντα ἀποστάτην in this passage, which is certainly incorrect,
- ↑ Ralbag, without any ground for it, understands it of the milky way (העגול החלבי), which, according to Rapoport, Pref. to Slonimski's Toledoth ha-schamajim (1838), was already known to the Talmud b. Berachoth, 58 b, under the name of נהר דנוד.
- ↑ Vid., Wissenschaft, Kunst, Judenthum (1838), S. 220f.
