The strong, guttural sounds in this hemistich are exceedingly expressive: hmjlm jyry qwjrmw jah Heach! umerachok yariach milchamah; "Heach, for from afar he scenteth the battle." The reader will perceive that Mr. Good has given a very different meaning to ver. 20 from that in the present text, Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? by translating the Hebrew thus: - "Hast thou given him to launch forth as an arrow?" The word hbra arbeh, which we translate locust or grasshopper, and which he derives from hbr rabah, the a aleph being merely formative, he says, "may as well mean an arrow as it does in chap. xvi. 13, wybr rabbaiv, 'His arrows fly around me.'" The verb �[r raash in the word wn�y[wth hatharishennu, "Canst thou make him afraid?' he contends, "signifies to tremble, quiver, rush, launch, dart forth; and, taken in this sense, it seems to unite the two ideas of rapidity and coruscation." This is the principal alteration which this learned man has made in the text. I shall conclude on this subject by giving Coverdale's translation: Hast thou geven the horse his strength, or lerned him how to bow down his neck with feare; that he letteth himself be dryven forth like a greshopper, where as the stout neyenge that he maketh is fearfull? He breaketh the grounde with the hoffes of his fete chearfully in his strength, and runneth to mete the harnest men. He layeth aside all feare, his stomach is not abated, neither starteth he aback for eny swerde. Though the qyvers rattle upon him, though the speare and shilde glistre: yet russheth he in fearsley, and beateth upon the grounde. He feareth not the noise of the trompettes, but as soone as he heareth the shawmes blowe, Tush (sayeth he) for he smelleth the batell afarre of, the noyse, the captaynes, and the shoutinge.

This is wonderfully nervous, and at the same time accurate.

Matthew Henry Commentary

--In these questions the Lord continued to humble Job. In this chapte several animals are spoken of, whose nature or situation particularl show the power, wisdom, and manifold works of God. The wild ass. It is better to labour and be good for something, than to ramble and be goo for nothing. From the untameableness of this and other creatures, we may see, how unfit we are to give law to Providence, who cannot giv law even to a wild ass's colt. The unicorn, a strong, stately, prou creature. He is able to serve, but not willing; and God challenges Jo to force him to it. It is a great mercy if, where God gives strengt for service, he gives a heart; it is what we should pray for, an reason ourselves into, which the brutes cannot do. Those gifts are no always the most valuable that make the finest show. Who would no rather have the voice of the nightingale, than the tail of the peacock the eye of the eagle and her soaring wing, and the natural affection of the stork, than the beautiful feathers of the ostrich, which can neve rise above the earth, and is without natural affection? The descriptio of the war-horse helps to explain the character of presumptuou sinners. Every one turneth to his course, as the horse rushes into the battle. When a man's heart is fully set in him to do evil, and he is carried on in a wicked way, by the violence of his appetites an passions, there is no making him fear the wrath of God, and the fata consequences of sin. Secure sinners think themselves as safe in their sins as the eagle in her nest on high, in the clefts of the rocks; but I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord, Jer 49:16. All these beautiful references to the works of nature, should teach us right view of the riches of the wisdom of Him who made and sustains all things. The want of right views concerning the wisdom of God, which i ever present in all things, led Job to think and speak unworthily of Providence __________________________________________________________________

Original Hebrew