for he sprang from el-'Ais, and the Damascene province of Batanaea was his property.”
The κοπρία of the lxx, at Job 2:8, leads to the same result; that it is also found again as mezbele in the later legend, is a further proof how thoroughly this accords with the lxx, and how it has understood its statement of the position of Ausitis. It may also be maintained here, that it was only possible to translate the words בתוך־חאפר by ἐπὶ τῆς κοπρίας ἔξω τῆς πόλεως when “heap of ashes” and “dunghill” were synonymous notions. This, however, is the case only in Hauran, where the dung, as being useless for agricultural purposes, is burnt from time to time in an appointed place before the town (vid., p. 573),[1] while in every other part of Syria it is as valuable and as much stored up as among us. If the lxx accordingly placed the kopri'a of Job in Hauran, it could hardly represent Ausitis as Edom.
But how has the Ausitis of the lxx been transferred hither? Certainly not as the “land of ‘Us” (in the sense of the land of Basan, land of Haurân), for without wasting a word about it, there has never been such an one in the country east of the Jordan: but as “the land of the Usites” in the sense of the Arabic diâr 'Us (dwelling-place of the Usites) or ard benî 'Us. A land receives designations of
- ↑ Comp. p. 576, note, of the foregoing Commentary. The Arabic version of Walton's Polyglot translates after the Peschito in accordance with the Hebr. text: “on the ashes (er-remâd),” whereas the Arabic translation, of which Tischendorf brought back fifteen leaves with him from the East, and which Fleischer, in the Deutsch. Morgenl. Zeitschr. 1864, S. 288ff., has first described as an important memorial in reference to the history of MSS, translates after the Hexapla in accordance with the lxx: “on the dunghill (mezbele) outside the city.”-Del.
