Verse 40
40. Thistles Translated elsewhere thorns.
Cockle The Hebrew root points to some kind of noxious, ill-smelling weed. The word is also the last in the Hebrew text, and forms a surprising climax to the discourse, and possibly an unsavory reflection on the friends. Among the calamities Sennacherib declares himself to have entailed upon a conquered race was the sowing of thistles over their corn fields. Inscription 30. The words of Job are ended The poetical accents with which this sentence is marked express the very ancient opinion that these closing words are the words of Job. Hitzig, however, regards them as “a boundary set up by the revisers of Job!” A boundary stone they may be, but, by whomsoever set up, they serve to mark the line between Job’s darkness and despair on the one side, and the rich dawning light of a divine solution on the other, first through Elihu, God’s servant, and then from God himself. “All words,” observes Hengstenberg, “spoken against God come, after a brief season, to an end, either of grace, as in Job’s case, who begs that the folly of his discourses may be forgiven, or of wrath, when the mouth that uttereth great things is closed with violence.”
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