Job Chapter 10 verse 21 Holy Bible
Before I go whence I shall not return, `Even' to the land of darkness and of the shadow of death;
read chapter 10 in ASV
Before I go to the place from which I will not come back, to the land where all is dark and black,
read chapter 10 in BBE
Before I go, and never to return, -- to the land of darkness and the shadow of death;
read chapter 10 in DARBY
Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death;
read chapter 10 in KJV
Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness, and the shades of death;
read chapter 10 in WBT
Before I go where I shall not return from, To the land of darkness and of the shadow of death;
read chapter 10 in WEB
Before I go, and return not, Unto a land of darkness and death-shade,
read chapter 10 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 21. - Before I go whence I shall not return (comp. Job 7:9; and see 2 Samuel 12:23). Even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death. Job's idea of the receptacle of the dead, while it has some analogies with the Egyptian under-world, and even more with the Greek and Roman conceptions of Hades or Orcus, was probably derived from Babylonia, or Chaldea, on which the land that he inhabited bordered (Job 1:17). It was within the earth, consequently dark and sunless (compare the Umbrae of the Romans, and Euripides's νέκρων κευθμῶνα καὶ σκότου πύλας), deep (Job 11:8), dreary, fastened with belts and bars (Job 17:16). The Babylonians spoke of it as "the abode of darkness and famine, where earth was men's food, and their nourishment clay; where light was not seen, but in darkness they dwelt; where ghosts, like birds, fluttered their wings; and where, on the doors and on the door-posts, the dust lay undisturbed" (Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, vol. 1. p. 118).
