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fear of God in the midst of his sufferings, though those sufferings are an insoluble mystery, cannot be a רשׁע. This design of the conformation, and that connection of thought, which should be well noted, prove that Job 28:1 stands in its original position. And if we ponder the fact, that Job has depicted the ungodly as a covetous rich man who is snatched away by sudden death from his immense possession of silver and other costly treasures, we see that Job 28:1 confirms the preceding picture of punitive judgment in the following manner: silver and other precious metals come out of the earth, but wisdom, whose value exceeds all these earthly treasures, is to be found nowhere within the province of the creature; God alone possesses it, and from God alone it comes; and so as man can and is to attain to it, it consists in the fear of the Lord, and the forsaking of evil. This is the close connection of Job 28:1 with what immediately precedes, which most expositors since Schultens have missed, by transferring the central point to the unsearchableness of the divine wisdom which rules in the world; whereas Bouiller correctly observes that the whole of Job 28:1 treats not so much of the wisdom of God as of the wisdom of man, which God, the sole possessor of wisdom, imparts to him: omnibus divitiis, fluxis et evanidis illis possessio praeponderat sapientiae, quae in pio Dei cultu et fuga mali est posita. The view of von Hofmann (Schriftbeweis, i. 96, 2nd edit.) accords with this: ”If Job 28:1, where a confirmatory or explanatory כי forms the transition, is taken together with Job 28:12, where another part of the speech is introduced with a Waw, and finally with Job 28:28, where this is rounded off, as forming the unity of one thought: it thus proves that the final destruction of the godless, who is happy and prosperous in worldly things, is explained by the fact that man can obtain every kind of hidden riches by his own exertion and courage, but not the wisdom which is not indigenous to this outward world, but is known to God alone, and is to be learned from Him only; and the teaching concerning it is: behold, the fear of God, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.”
Before we now pass on to the detailed exposition of Job 28:1, we may perhaps here, without anticipating, put the question. Whence has the poet obtained the knowledge of the different modes of mining operations which is displayed in Job 28:1, and which has every appearance of being the result of personal observation? Since, as we have often remarked already, he is well acquainted with Egypt, it is most natural that he derived this his knowledge from Egypt and the Sinaitic peninsula. The ruins of mines found there show that the Sinaitic peninsula has been worked as a mining district from the earliest times. The first of these mining districts is the Wadi Nasb, where Lepsius (Briefe, S. 338) found traces of old smelting-places, and where also Graul and his companions,