Job 6:18

Third strophe Job draws a picture of caravans perishing miserably for the want of water, Job 6:18-20.

18. The paths of their way Delitzsch, Barnes, Wordsworth, and Zockler, substantially adopt our authorized version. They understand Job still to speak of the streams, that “they wind about;” (are turned aside;) “they go up into the waste ( tohu) and vanish.” Others, (Ewald, Dillmann, Noyes, Renan, etc.) more satisfactorily, read, caravans turn aside their course, they go up into the wastes and perish, making a slight change in the pointing of the Hebrew thus, ארחות , orhhoth, caravans, as in Isaiah 21:13, instead of ארחות , orhhoth, ways. Delitzsch pertinently puts the argument for the rendering “ways,” by asking “if it be likely that the poet would let the caravans perish in Job 6:18, and in Job 6:19, sq., still live? If so, the feebler figure follows the stronger.” On the other hand it may be replied, 1) That the same objection holds against the rendering of “ways.” The streams have been consumed, “extinguished,” and if they reappear here on their winding way it must be at the creative touch of the poetic wand. 2) Two different and entirely inapposite meanings must be given to substantially the same word, orhhoth, in two successive verses, the 18th and 19th. 3) To say of torrents, even though they wind about, that they go up ( עלה ) into the waste, is quite absurd, and can here apply only to caravans. Zockler’s conceit, (in Lange,) that they go up in vapours and clouds, does not relieve the difficulty, as tohu does not justify such rendering. 4) The objection of tautology Evans thus happily answers: that the chief motive of the description just given is not to excite pity for the fate of such a caravan, but to justify Job’s resentment at the treachery of which the dry wady is the type. Hence in the verses following, Job emphasizes the disappointment which the caravans of Tema and Sheba (named by way of vivid individualization) would feel in such a plight. See note on next verse.