Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/1283

 of David and find them pleasant and beneficial (vid., Pro 15:26; Pro 16:24). נשׁמטוּ is to be explained according to 2Ki 9:33. The casting of persons down from the rock was not an unusual mode of execution (2Ch 25:12). ידי־סלע are the sides (Psa 140:6; Jdg 11:26) of the rock, after which the expression ἐχόμενα πέτρας of the lxx, which has been misunderstood by Jerome, is intended to be understood; they are therefore the sides of the rock conceived of as it were as the hands of the body of rock, if we are not rather with Böttcher to compare the expressions בּידי and על־ידי construed with verbs of abandoning and casting down, Lam 1:14; Job 16:11, and frequently. In Psa 141:7 there follows a further statement of the issue on the side of David and his followers: instar findentis et secantis terram (בּקע with Beth, elsewhere in the hostile signification of irrumpere) dispersa sunt ossa nostra ad ostium (לפי as in Pro 8:3) orci; Symmachus: ὥσπερ γεωργὸς ὅταν ῥήσσῃ τὴν τὴν, οὕτως ἐσκορπίσθη τὰ ὀστᾶ ἡμῶν εἰς στόμα ᾅδου; Quinta: ὡς καλλιεργῶν καὶ σκάπτων ἐν τῇ γῇ κ. τ. λ. Assuming the very extreme, it is a look of hope into the future: should his bones and the bones of his followers be even scattered about the mouth of Sheôl (cf. the Syrian picture of Sheôl: “the dust upon its threshold ‛al - escûfteh ,” Deutsche Morgenländ. Zeitschrift, xx. 513), their soul below, their bones above - it would nevertheless be only as when on in ploughing cleaves the earth; i.e., they do not lie there in order that they may continue lying, but that they may rise up anew, as the seed that is sown sprouts up out of the upturned earth. lxx ''Codd. Vat. et Sinait''. τὰ ὀστᾶ ἡμῶν, beside which, however, is found the reading αὐτῶν (Cod. Alex. by a second hand, and the Syriac, Arabic, and Aethiopic versions), as Böttcher also, pro ineptissimo utcunque, thinks עצמינו must be read, understanding this, according to 2Ch 25:12 extrem., of the mangled bodies of those cast down from the rock. We here discern the hope of a resurrection, if not directly, at least (cf. Oehler in Herzog's Real-Encyclopädie, concluding volume, S. 422) as am emblem of victory in spite of having succumbed. That which authorizes this interpretation lies in the figure of