The Bishop has rightly said, that the translation, which he has here given, "has escaped all the interpreters:" at the same time, as he has himself informed us that his acquaintance with the interpreters of this book has been studiously contracted to a very narrow range, it remains to be explained how his Lordship came to ascertain this fact. True however it is, that none of the commentators on Job, either ancient or modern, had ever proposed such a version of the passage. Yet possibly, from this circumstance, an inference, differing widely from that which the translator would approve, might suggest itself to the reader.

But, what are the grounds, on which this unexampled signification of the passage has been adopted by the R. R. translator? There is but one pretended; namely, that the word, which occurs in this place, has been rendered quail in the book of Numbers. When this has been stated, the only reason that can be assigned for this translation has been given. The phrase itself, as it is here proposed, receives no justification from any parallel passage or similarity of expression, throughout the entire body of the scriptures. No proverbial form such as, "not acknowledging the quail," has ever been heard of as in use amongst the Jews: and, even though there had been such a phrase derived from the translation recorded in the book of Numbers, it VOL. II.

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would have been peculiarly inapplicable here, where the food, with which the wicked oppressor is said to gorge himself, is not the gift of God, like the quails showered down for the Israelites, but on the contrary the fruit of his own fraud and violence. Besides, the phrase itself is as inconsistent with the history in Numbers, as it is inapplicable to the reasoning in Job. For we do not find, that the Israelites were cut off, because of their not acknowledging the quail, (by which, if it has any meaning, must be understood, their not receiving that food as a gift sent from God,-and in this sense it is that the Bishop has actually applied it,) but because, as both Moses and the Psalmist (Ps. lxxxvii.) inform us, they had, antecedently to the grant of the quails, wantonly lusted for food different from that which God had already allotted to them; and were desirous, from their want of confidence in God's power to give them flesh for food, to return to the flesh-pots of Egypt. For these reasons it was, that punishment was inflicted: and inflicted too, (so far from having been caused by their not acknowledging the quail,) before the food was actually swallowed; whilst, as we are

The very name of Kibroth-hataava was given to the place, to mark the nature of the crime: the signification of these words being sepulchra concupiscentiæ, " because there they buried the people that lusted." Numb. xi. 31. See on this particularly Bochart, vol. iii. pp. 92. 108, 109.

told, "it was yet between the teeth and not yet chewed." See Numb. xi. 33.

To the new version, then, here recommended, there lie these three objections: 1, That we find no instance of the phrase which it introduces, throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, or amongst the traditions of the Jews: 2, That such a phrase could not have grown out of the transaction to which it is traced: and 3, that if it could, it would be totally inapplicable to the passage in question. With how little reason, upon the whole, the Bishop has departed from the commonly received sense of the text, which requires the word to be rendered in the sense of quietness,* there needs but a slight inspection of the

*The word bw, which Bishop Stock here renders quail, is, as has been noticed above, so employed in speaking of the food miraculously afforded to the Israelites at Kibrothhataavah, and occurs in that sense in four places, namely in Exod. xvi. 13. Numb. xi. 31, 32. and Ps. cv. 40. In the various other parts of Scripture, in which the word is to be found, it is used in the sense of quiet and tranquil enjoy ment: and from this, as its radical meaning, even its appli cation to the bird above named is commonly explained: inasmuch as quails are conceived to be a species of birds, that seek quiet and undisturbed enjoyment in the fields of corn, where they conceal themselves in large flocks, and if allowed to enjoy rest, fatten prodigiously. See Kircher's Concordance and Parkhurst on the word. Abbé Pluche tells us, in his Histoire du Ciel, tom. i. p. 247, that the quail was, amongst the ancient Egyptians, the emblem of peace and security: and Hasselquist and Bochart both in

original to discover. And with how much less reason he has pretended to find in the version which he has substituted, a proof (as he is

form us, that they come into Egypt in great multitudes, in the spring, at the ripening of the wheat. Bochart, the whole of whose observations upon the nature and history of this bird are extremely curious, derives the name from w, pacate vivere, and thence abundare. They, however, who may wish to see the various meanings of the word w accu rately detailed, and carefully deduced from the primary sense of the root, will be rewarded by an examination of Schultens's discussion of the signification of the term, in his Origines Hebrææ, tom. ii. p. 52-76. The true meaning of this root is the more important, as from it is supposed by some to be derived the Hebrew word for Shilo, denoting the Messiah, in the well known prophecy of Jacob.

Of the various translations which have been given of this verse in Job, perhaps that of Dathe conveys the best

sense.

"Quia venter ejus expleri non poterat

Nec quidquam cupiditatibus suis evasit."

Schnurrer, also, has in a like sense rendered this verse, (and,-with the one which immediately precedes, and the one which immediately follows it, all of which have occasioned much perplexity amongst the commentators, extremely well,)

"Quoniam haud sensit quietem in ventre suo,

Et nihil eorum, quæ appetiit, passus est evadere." See Schnurrer's Dissertationes Philologico Critica, p. 256. The same sense has been given by the Vulgate.

The rendering of the Greek is a striking instance of the liberty, which that version has so frequently taken with this book. Ουκ εσιν αυτό σωτηρία τοις υπαρχεσιν, is the trans. lation of the first clause. I know not well how to account

pleased to call it,) that the book of Job was composed subsequently to the transaction at Kibroth-hataavah, will probably, after what has been said, appear no less clear.

The next passage to which the Bishop refers us for a mark of time, is ch, xxvi. 5. which he thus translates,

for this rendering, unless by supposing that the Greek in. terpreters, instead of, read in their MS. 1: for it is remarkable, that the word 2, which they here render Ta Unagxovтa, they have in the 15th verse rendered oxia: now, τα υπαρχοντα and οσα υπαρχει they have occasionally used, as well as gixos, for n, as see Gen. xlv. 18. Esth. viii. 1. 7; and in Esther vii. 8. they translate in' by ons: therefore it seems not unreasonable to suppose, that they have read the word ' here; that is, th for t, and a › inserted.

It is to be remarked, however, that amongst the various meanings ascribed to the passage by commentators, there is not one that gives the smallest countenance to the rendering of the word proposed by the Bishop, and on which the whole force of his argument concerning the date of the book depends; (even the pointing of the Masora opposes him): nor is there one that gives to that word any other sense than that of quietness, safety, abundance, enjoyment, all of which spring from the same primary idea; the Syriac only (with its copy the Arabic) excepted; which renders the word by a signifying, his judgment, his condemna. tion, or his punishment, see Schaaf's Lex. Syr. And how to reconcile any of these senses to the original bw, I confess myself totally at a loss.

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