Verse 4
4. The flood “Cimmerian darkness,” to use the words of Schultens, surrounds this verse. The reading most accepted at present is, literally, He sinketh a shaft away from where men dwell: forgotten of the foot, they hang far from men, they string to and fro.
The flood breaketh נחל , which commonly signifies a stream of water, and sometimes a valley or gorge, Genesis 26:17; Genesis 26:19; 2 Kings 3:16, is here used in the unusual sense of shaft, and objectively to the verb “breaketh,” or “sinketh.”
They are dried up It is now admitted that the Arabic signification of dalal, “hang suspended,” is the proper meaning of the Hebrew here. Job’s description of the dizzy and dangerous descent into a mine strikingly agrees with that of Pliny, who represents the men as “suspended by ropes and swinging,” even while they cut the rocks. “The course taken,” he says, “is where there is no footing for men.” Pliny thus best interprets forgotten of the foot, a phrase which is used like that of the psalmist, “let my right hand forget,” etc., Psalms 137:5, to express temporary disability for performing its ordinary offices.
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