Job 1:21

21. Return thither The Chaldee paraphrast interprets thither by “the house of burial.” In the Apocrypha is an evident paraphrase of this verse. “A heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam from the day that they go out of their mother’s womb till the day that they return to the mother of all things.” Sir 40:1 . Cyprian thus quotes the passage: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I go under the earth.” Comp. Ecclesiastes 5:15. The classics, in like manner, speak of the earth as the mother of all mortals. (LIVY, Hist., 1:56; SUETONIUS, Julius Cesar, chap. 7.) J.D. Michaelis and others erroneously adduce this passage in proof of the pre-existence of souls in the depth of the earth.

Lord gave… Lord… taken… blessed be… Lord In this remarkable passage, which Dr. Chalmers calls “one of the most precious memorabilia of the Scriptures,” and Hitzig “the epilogue of a prayer,” the word Jehovah is used three times with marked significance. Under the sanction of an oath Satan had declared Job would renounce (curse) יברךְ , God, (Job 1:11;) on the contrary, the coincidence is notable that with the same word, מֶברךְ he “blesses” and worships God. The Septuagint adds after the second clause, “As it seemed good to the Lord so it has come to pass.” In the subsequent dialogues of the book the name Jehovah is used by the speakers but once, and then by Job himself, Job 12:9.

1. The word Jehovah is a personal proper name, intended to express the personality of Deity. It is from the verb היה , hayah, to be, and indicates independent and underived existence. Self-existence necessarily implies eternity and unchangeableness, (Malachi 3:6,) and this, and this only, furnishes a proper basis for the moral attributes of Deity. The word struggles to convey the idea of the innermost being of God, the very essence of his personality. The word Elohim, on the contrary, with its root idea of power, sets forth God as creator, and partakes more of the character of a common noun, being quite generally used with the article or some other qualification, etc., while Jehovah, as a proper name, dispenses with the article. The frequent recurrence in Job of the older names for God, such as Shaddai, El, and Eloah, is in keeping with the earlier usage of the Pentateuch, and points to a remote antiquity for the authorship of this book. (See Hengstenberg, “Genuineness of the Pentateuch,” 1:231-308.)

2. The word Jehovah, whether pointed יהוה , or יהוה , as others would read, is believed by many to indicate futurity, and to contain a prophecy of the incarnation, which is also supposed by some to be implied in its radical meaning of life, which was the pre-eminent attribute of Christ. Delitzsch ( Symb., p. 29) finds the interpretation of the meaning of Elohim in the mystery of the trinity that of Jehovah in the incarnation. The one name would then be the exponent of creation, preservation, and government; the other of salvation and of grace.