by a parching heat. Thus, then, his harp became mournful, and his pipe (ועגבי with ג raphatum) the cry of the weepers; the cheerful music (comp. Job 21:12) has been turned into gloomy weeping and sobbing (comp. Lam 5:15). Thus the second part of the monologue closes. It is somewhat lengthened and tedious; it is Job's last sorrowful lament before the catastrophe. What a delicate touch of the poet is it that he makes this lament, Job 30:31, die away so melodiously! One hears the prolonged vibration of its elegiac strains. The festive and joyous music is hushed; the only tones are tones of sadness and lament, mesto, flebile.
Chap. 31
Verses 1-4
Job 31:1-4 1 I have made a covenant with mine eyes,
And how should I fix my gaze upon a maiden! 2 What then would be the dispensation of Eloah from above,
And the inheritance of the Almighty from the heights - 3 Doth not calamity overtake the wicked,
And misfortune the workers of evil? 4 Doth He not see my ways
And count all my steps?
After Job has described and bewailed the harsh contrast between the former days and the present, he gives us a picture of his moral life and endeavour, in connection with the character of which the explanation of his present affliction as a divinely decreed punishment becomes impossible, and the sudden overthrow of his prosperity into this abyss of suffering becomes to him, for the same reason, the most painful mystery. Job is not an Israelite, he is without the pale of the positive, Sinaitic revelation; his religion is the old patriarchal religion, which even in the present day is called dı̂n Ibrâhı̂m (the religion of Abraham), or dı̂n el-bedu (the
