Job Chapter 20 verse 17 Holy Bible
He shall not look upon the rivers, The flowing streams of honey and butter.
read chapter 20 in ASV
Let him not see the rivers of oil, the streams of honey and milk.
read chapter 20 in BBE
He shall not see streams, rivers, brooks of honey and butter.
read chapter 20 in DARBY
He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter.
read chapter 20 in KJV
He shall not see the river, the floods, the brooks of honey and buttermilk.
read chapter 20 in WBT
He shall not look at the rivers, The flowing streams of honey and butter.
read chapter 20 in WEB
He looketh not on rivulets, Flowing of brooks of honey and butter.
read chapter 20 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 17. - He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks. The wicked man shall suffer, not only positive pains, but what casuists call the peens damni, or "penalty of loss" - deprivation, in other words, of blessings which he would naturally have enjoyed but for his wickedness. Zophar here threatens him with the Joss of those paradisiacal delights which the Orientals associated with water in all its forms, whether as פּלגות, or "rills derived from larger streams," or as כהרי, "rivers," or as כחלי, "brooks" or "torrents," now strong and impetuous, now reduced to a mere thread These are said poetically to flow with honey and butter, not, of course, in any literal sense, such as Ovid may have meant, when, in describing the golden age, he said - "Flumina jam lactis, jam fiumina nectaris ibant;"(Metaph.,' 1:111.) but as fertilizing the land through which they ran, and so causing it to abound with bees and cattle, whence would be derived butter and honey. Compare the terms in which Canaan was described to the Israelites (Exodus 3:8, 17; Exodus 13:5; Deuteronomy 26:9, 15, etc.).
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(17) The brooks of honey and butter.--He uses language which might lead one to suppose he was familiar with the promise of Canaan, except that, as the phrase is not precisely identical it may perhaps rather show a community of proverbial language, and that the land flowing with milk and honey may have been an expression in use, and not one original with the Pentateuch.
