Job 41:6

6. The companions חברים . There can be but little question that the word refers to partners in trade. Compare Luke 5:7-10. Fishermen in ancient Egypt were banded together in fraternities or guilds. Ruppell ( Reisen, 1:254) speaks of the existence of such fraternities in Abyssinia, even at the present day.

Make a banquet of him? (Septuagint, Targum, Schultens;) but better, traffic in him, (Ewald, Delitzsch, Zockler,) a meaning for karah which corresponds with the Arabic kara, “to buy,” also with the Sanscrit kri, ( kara;) and at the same time helps to confirm the rendering of the same word in Job 6:27, on which see note. The mention of “merchants” in the next clause substantiates such an interpretation, notwithstanding it is against the view of Gesenius and Conant, who, with Winer, ( Lex., s.v.,) hold to the radical meaning of the word “to dig,” and read: “Will partners dig a pit for him?” But this substantially repeats what had been said before about catching the crocodile with a hook; and while it does violence to the parallelism, it gives an incongruous meaning. Carey follows Schultens in the speculation “that originally passing the contract of a purchase was signified or ratified by some such act as digging, as being perhaps significant that payment of a purchase was originally made in manual labor or tillage.”

Merchants כנענים , literally, Canaanites; unquestionably Phoenicians, who were pre-eminently the merchants of the ancient world. Isaiah, (Isaiah 23:8,) speaking of the merchants of Tyre, calls them, in the Hebrew, “Canaanites.” In Hosea 12:7, Canaan stands as the synonyme of merchant. Homer also speaks of the arrival of a Phoenician merchant, ( Φοινιξ ,) “skilled in wiles, a greedy knave, working much ill to men.” Odys., 14:288, 289. These merchants were notorious in the ancient world as slave dealers and kidnappers. The Phoenicians called their primogenitor כנע , ( Χνα ,) chna, which, according to Sanchoniatho, was changed into Phoenix, thence “Phoenicians.” See Cory’s Anc. Frag., p. 16. A Phoenician coin is still extant bearing the inscription, “Laodicea, Mother in Canaan.” The Septuagint here, as well as frequently elsewhere, renders the word Canaanite, Phoenicians, Φοινικων εθνη . The reference in the text is to caravans like that of the Midianites, which in patriarchal times visited Egypt, bringing back with them various commodities taken in barter. “It is an evidence of the antiquity of this book, unless there is interposed the objection, which grows weaker the more it is studied, that the writer cunningly adapts every thing to the patriarchal times, without ever forgetting himself, or failing in any part of his picture.” Tayler Lewis.