Job 19:17

17. Though I entreated, etc. Now generally translated, I am offensive to the sons, etc. The Hebrew is equivocal in meaning. (See below.) Job’s disease was no less offensive to the sense of sight than to that of smell. It is to the latter sense he may now refer.

Children Some suppose he refers to his grandchildren, as his own children were believed to be all dead. But as the word rendered body signifies also womb, others think that he speaks of his own full brothers, that is, brothers by the same mother. Tayler Lewis renders the passage thus: “My temper, רוחי , [in the sense of religious faith.] to my wife is strange my yearning for the children that she bare,” and devotes a long note to its defence. This rendering of חנותי agrees with the Arabic version, “My longing is for, or, I yearn after, the children of my body.” Such a sense is justified by the Arabic hhanan, signifying “to be moved by affection, either maternal or paternal,” as in Schultens, (i, 474,) who illustrates by the exceeding fondness of the camel for her young. It establishes a satisfactory parallelism, and removes the difficulty connected with the subsequent words of the verse. It is observable that Job makes no mention of his children except here and in Job 29:5. Their tragical death rendered the subject too painful for speech. In one of the Arabic poems of the Moallakat we have, “The unkindness of relations gives keener anguish to every noble breast than the stroke of an Indian scimitar.” It is said of Job’s great antitype, “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” John 1:11.