Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/1618

 crimen et crimen quidem judicum (however, on the form of connection intentionally avoided here, where the genitival relation might easily give an erroneous sense, vid., Ges. §116, rem.), signifies a crime which falls within the province of the penal code, for which in Job 31:28 it is less harshly עון פּלילי: a judicial, i.e., criminal offence. פּלילים is, moreover, not the plur. of פּלילי (Kimchi), but of פּליל, an arbitrator (root פל, findere, dirimere). The confirmatory clause, Job 31:12, is co-ordinate with the preceding: for it (this criminal, adulterous enterprise) is a fire, a fire consuming him who allows the sparks of sinful desire to rise up within him (Pro 6:27.; Sir. 9:8), which devours even to the bottom of the abyss, not resting before it has dragged him whom it has seized down with it into the deepest depth of ruin, and as it were melted him away, and which ought to root out all my produce (all the fruit of my labour). The function of ב is questionable. Ew. (§217, f) explains it as local: in my whole revenue, i.e., throughout my whole domain. But it can also be Beth objecti, whether it be that the obj. is conceived as the means of the action (vid., on Job 16:4-5, Job 16:10; Job 20:20), or that, “corresponding to the Greek genitive, it does not express an entire full coincidence, but an action about and upon the object” (Ew. §217, S. 557). We take it as Beth obj. in the latter sense, after the analogy of the so-called pleonastic Arab. b (e.g., qaraa bi-suwari, he has practised the act of reading upon the Suras of the Koran); and which ought to undertake the act of outrooting upon my whole produce.