Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/1506

 perfection, in the sense of purity of character) away from me, i.e., I will not cease from asserting it. I will hold fast (as ever) my righteousness, and leave it not, i.e., let it not go or fall away; my heart does not reproach even one of my days. מיּמי is virtually an obj. in a partitive sense: mon coeur ne me reproche pas un seul de mes jours (Renan). The heart is used here as the seat of the conscience, which is the knowledge possessed by the heart, by which it excuses or accuses a man (Psychol. S. 134); חרף (whence חרף, the season in which the fruits are gathered) signifies carpere, to pluck = to pinch, lash, inveigh against. Jos. Kimchi and Ralbag explain: my heart draws not back) from the confession of my innocence) my whole life long (as Maimonides explains נחרפת, Lev 19:20, of the female slave who is inclined to, i.e., stands near to, the position of a free woman), by comparison with the Arabic inḥarafa, deflectere; it is not, however, Arab. ḥrf, but chrf, decerpere, that is to be compared in the tropical sense of the prevailing usage of the Hebrew specified. The old expositors were all misled by the misunderstood partitive מימי, which they translated ex (= inde a) diebus meis. There is in Job 27:7 no ground for taking יהי, with Hahn, as a strong affirmative, as supposed in Job 18:12, and not as expressive of desire; but the meaning is not: let my opponents be evil-doers, I at least am not one (Hirz.). The voluntative expresses far more emotion: the relation must be reversed; he who will brand me as an evil-doer, must by that very act brand himself as such, inasmuch as the מרשׁיע of a צדיק really shows himself to be a רשׁע, and by recklessly judging the righteous, is bringing down upon himself a like well-merited judgment. The כּ is the so-called Caph veritatis, since כּ, instar, signifies not only similarity, but also quality. Instead of קימי, the less manageable, primitive form, which the poet used in Job 22:20 (comp. p. 483),