Job 19:23

23. Written So ancient is the knowledge of writing that Pliny says “it appears to have been in use from all eternity.” It is now conceded that to the parent Semitic tribe belongs the honour to have been first in possession of this invaluable invention. The knowledge of letters comes into history through the Hebrews and Phoenicians, who, it will be remembered, are classed among the Semitic nations. These letters appear vastly more perfect than the hieroglyphic system of Egypt or the cuneiform one of Assyria. (EWALD, Hist. of Israel, 1:51; RENAN, Les Langues Sem., 1:105; WINER, Rwb. 2:421.) In remote times papyrus, (see note Job 8:11,) the skins of animals, and Egyptian linen cloth, furnished the materials on which writing was made with the pen. Books, in the ancient sense of the term, consisted of sheets of papyrus, etc., with writing on one side, and rolled around a staff. Papyrus rolls are now in existence written more than two thousand years B.C. The Turin copy of “The Book of the Dead,” written, probably, in the time of the Ptolemies, is more than a hundred feet long.

Printed in a book Inscribed in the book. Septuagint, “a book” which Merx prefers. Schultens thinks some public book is meant, in which illustrious deeds were written. Exodus 17:14 speaks of writing a memorial in the book, הספר . Taking one of the root meanings of this word, sepher, to scrape or shave off, Havernick insists that the word is used of no other writing materials than skins of animals. There would be, however, no more reason for pressing the prime meaning of the Hebrew for “book” than that of חקק , printed; which signifying to cut into, hew into, would demand some more solid material than that of parchment. The book of which Job speaks may have been of wood or of some kind of metal. Very recently there has been discovered a copy of an extraditionary treaty between Rameses II., king of Egypt, and a prince of the Hittites. This is described as having been engraved by the latter upon an oblong tablet of silver, of which the Egyptian text gives the figure. It was surmounted by a ring which must have been used for suspending it. (M. CHABAS, Voyage, etc., p. 345.) Among the early Canaanites there was a very important city called “the Book City,” Kirjath-sepher, Joshua 15:15. This was, probably, a city of the Hittites. Pliny (xiii, 21) speaks of the preservation of public documents in leaden volumes. Folding wooden tablets were employed for the same purpose even before the time of the Trojan war. (Iliad, 6:169.) The native city of Hesiod honoured his memory by engraving one of his poems on tablets of lead. (Pausanias, Job 9:31.) Very possibly Job refers to clay tablets or cylinders, such as have been discovered in modern times at Nineveh, on which the work is so minute and exquisitely wrought that the aid of a magnifying-glass is requisite to ascertain the terms of the letters. See LAYARD, Nineveh, 2:186; 3:345.