Job 10:21 - Exposition

Before I go whence I shall not return (comp. Job 7:9 ; and see 2 Samuel 12:23 ). Even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death . Job's idea of the receptacle of the dead, while it has some analogies with the Egyptian under-world, and even more with the Greek and Roman conceptions of Hades or Orcus, was probably derived from Babylonia, or Chaldea, on which the land that he inhabited bordered ( Job 1:17 ). It was within the earth, consequently dark and sunless (compare the Umbrae of the Romans, and Euripides's νέκρων κευθμῶνα καὶ σκότου πύλας ), deep ( Job 11:8 ), dreary, fastened with belts and bars ( Job 17:16 ). The Babylonians spoke of it as "the abode of darkness and famine, where earth was men's food, and their nourishment clay; where light was not seen, but in darkness they dwelt; where ghosts, like birds, fluttered their wings; and where, on the doors and on the door-posts, the dust lay undisturbed".