Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/1757



Verses 22-27
Job 38:22-27 22 Hast thou reached the treasures of the snow, And didst thou see the treasures of the hail, 23 Which I have reserved for a time of trouble, For the day of battle and war? 24 Which is the way where the light is divided, Where the east wind is scattered over the earth? 25 Who divideth a course for the rain-flood And the way of the lightning of thunder, 26 That it raineth on the land where no one dwelleth, On the tenantless steppe, 27 To satisfy the desolate and the waste, And to cause the tender shoot of the grass to spring forth? The idea in Job 38:22 is not that - as for instance the peasants of Menîn, four hours' journey from Damascus, garner up the winter snow in a cleft of the rock, in order to convey it to Damascus and the towns of the coast in the hot months - God treasures up the snow and hail above to cause it to descend according to opportunity. אצרות (comp. Psa 135:7) are the final causes of these phenomena which God has created - the form of the question, the design of which (which must not be forgotten) is ethical, not scientific, is regulated according to the infancy of the perception of natural phenomena among the ancients; but at the same time in accordance with the poet's task, and even, as here, in the choice of the agents of destruction, not merely hail, but also snow, according to the scene of the incident. Wetzstein has in his possession a writing of Muhammed el-Chatîb el-Bosrâwi, in which he describes a fearful fall of snow in Hauran, by which, in February 1860, innumerable herds of sheep, goats, and camels, and also many human beings perished. עת־צר might, according to Job 24:1;