Page:06.CBOT.KD.PropheticalBooks.B.vol.6.LesserProphets.djvu/1276

Job 40:5 (cf. Ewald, §269, b).  מעט היא , a little, i.e., a short time is it, equivalent to “soon,” in a short time will it occur (cf. Hos 8:10; Psa 37:10). The lxx have rendered it correctly ἔτι ἅπαξ, only they have left out מעט היא. The words, “once more and indeed in a short time I shake,” etc., have not the meaning which Koehl. attaches to the correct rendering, viz., “Once, and only once, will Jehovah henceforth shake heaven and earth,” in which the עוד standing at the head is both moved from its place, and taken, not in the sense of repetition or of continuance from the present to the future, but simply in the sense of an allusion to the future; in other words, it is completely deprived of its true meaning. For עוד never loses its primary sense of repetition or return any more than the German noch (still or yet), so as to denote an occurrence in the future without any allusion whatever to an event that has already happened or is in existence still, not even in 2Sa 19:36 and 2Ch 17:6, with which Koehler endeavours to support his views, without observing that in these passages עוד is used in a very different sense, signifying in 2 Sam. praeterea, and in 2 Chronicles “moreover.” In the verse before us it is used with reference to the previous shaking of the world at the descent of Jehovah upon Sinai to establish the covenant with Israel, to which the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has quite correctly taken it as referring (Heb 12:26).
On the other hand, the objection offered by Koehler, that that shaking did not extend beyond Sinai and the Sinaitic region, either according to the historical account in Exo 19:16-18, or the poetical descriptions in Jdg 5:4-5, and Psa 68:8-9, is incorrect. For not only in the two poetical descriptions referred to, but also in Hab 3:6, the manifestation of God upon Sinai is represented as a trembling or shaking of the earth, whereby the powers of the heaven were set in motion, and the heavens dropped down water. The approaching shaking of the world will be much more violent; it will affect the heaven and the earth in all their parts, the sea and the solid ground, and also the nations. Then will the condition of the whole of the visible creation and of the whole of the world of nations be altered. The shaking of the heaven and the earth, i.e., of the universe, is closely connected with the shaking of all nations. It is not merely a figurative representation of symbol,