Job Chapter 27 verse 1 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerses 1-23. - This chapter divides itself into three distinct portions. In the first, which extends to the end of ver. 6, Job is engaged in maintaining, with the utmost possible solemnity (ver. 2), both his actual integrity (ver. 6) and his determination to hold fast his integrity as long as he lives (vers. 4-6). In the second (vers. 7-10) he implicates a curse upon his enemies. In the third (vers. 11-23) he returns to the consideration of God's treatment of the wicked, and retracts the view which he had maintained controversially in Job 24:2-24, with respect to their prosperity, impunity, and equalization with the righteous in death. The retractation is so complete, the concessions are so large, that some have been induced to question whether they can possibly have been made by Job, and have been led on to suggest that we have here a third speech of Zophar's, such as "the symmetry of the general form" requires, which by accident or design has been transferred from him to Job. But the improbability of such a transfer, considering how in the Book of Job the speech of each separate interlocutor is introduced, is palpable; the dissimilarity between the speech and the other utterances of Zophar is striking; and (;he judgment of two such liberal critics as Ewald and Renan, that the passage is rightly placed, and rightly assigned to Job, should set all doubt at rest, and make an end of controversy (see Mr. Froude's 'Short Studies on Great Subjects,' vol. 1 pp. 315, 316; and Canon Cook's "Introduction to the Book of Job," in the 'Speaker's Commentary,' vol. 4. p. 7). Verse 1. - Moreover Job continued his parable, and said. The word translated "parable" (משׁל) is only used previously in Numbers 23, and 24. It is thought to "comprehend all discourses in which the results of discursive thought are concisely or figuratively expressed" (Cook). The introduction of a new term seems to imply that the present discourse occupies a position different from that of all the preceding ones. It is not tentative, controversial, or emotional, but expresses the deliberate judgment of the patriarch on the subjects discussed in it. Note the repetition of the term in Job 29:1.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English ReadersXXVII.(1) Job continued his parable.--The remainder of Job's speech--now, for the first time, called his parable--consists of his determination not to renounce his righteousness (Job 27:2-6); his own estimate of the fate of the wicked (Job 27:7-23); his magnificent estimate of the nature of wisdom (Job 28); his comparison of his former life (Job 29) with that of his present experience (Job 30); his final declaration of his innocent and irreproachable conduct (Job 31).