NET (first ed) notes to Job 6:4
10
sn Job uses an implied comparison here to describe his misfortune—it is as if
God had shot poisoned arrows into him (see E. Dhorme, Job, 76–77 for a
treatment of poisoned arrows in the ancient world).
12
tn Most commentators take “my spirit” as the subject of the participle “drinks”
(except the NEB, which follows the older versions to say that the poison
“drinks up [or “soaks in”] the spirit.”) The image of the poisoned arrow
represents the calamity or misfortune from God, which is taken in by Job’s
spirit and enervates him.
===============================================
Sir
Richard C. Jebb, Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with Critical Notes,
Commentary, and Translation in English Prose Part V: The Trachiniae
(Medford, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1902).
LINE
716
ἐκ
… σφαγῶν τοῦδε διελθὼν, having passed out from the wounds of Nessus.
ἰὸς
αἵματος, a poison consisting (or contained) in blood, because the poison from
the arrow had become mixed with the blood; and it was in the form of blood (572
“ἀμφίθρεπτον α<*>μα”) that the poison had been applied. For the
‘defining’ gen., cp. El.682 “πρόσχημʼ ἀγῶνος”,=“πρόσχ. ἀγωνιστικόν”.
τόνδε,
Heracles. “τοῦδε—ὅδε—τόνδε”: this repetition of the pron., in different
relations, has been thought strange. Yet cp. O. T.948 “καὶ νῦν ὅδε” | “πρὸς τῆς
τύχης ὄλωλεν, οὐδὲ τοῦδʼ ὕπο”: where “ὅδε” is Polybus, and “τοῦδ̓”, Oedipus.
She reasons from past to present:—‘the same poison, coming from this source,
will kill this man.’ The reiterated pronoun really marks the stress of the
inductive argument.
Others
take ἐκ … τοῦδε as=‘from this arrow’: then “σφαγῶν” must go either with
“διελθών”, ‘having come through (from) the wounds’; or with “αἵματος”, ‘poison
contained in the blood of the wounds.’ But the point is that the poison, though
it comes to Heracles from the wound of Nessus, and not (as to its former
victims) directly from the arrow, is still the same. And, since ὅδε expresses
this, τοῦδ̓, if it referred to the arrow, would be superfluous.
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Ovid,
Epistulae 9.144
Tunicae
tabe; the shirt poisoned with the blood of the Lernaean Hydra, and Nessus the
Centaur. For Hercules, after overcoming the Hydra, dipped some arrows in its
blood, that with them he might always would mortally. It was with one of these
poisoned arrows that he shot Nessus, who, finding himself on the point of
expiration, and wishing that his death might not pass unrevenged, called
Deianira, and desired her, if she hoped to secure her husband’s love, to dip a
shirt in the blood that flowed from the wound he had received by the arrow.
Deianira, weakly credulous, obeyed him, without giving the least hint to
Hercules upon the subject. Hearing afterwards that he loved Iole, she sent him
this shirt; which he had no sooner put on, than, quite inflamed by the strength
of the poison, and bereft of his reason, he threw himself upon a funeral pile,
and caused fire to be set to it.
P.
Ovidius Naso, The Epistles of Ovid, Translated into English Prose, as near the
Original as the Different Idioms of the Latin and English Languages Will
Allow; with the Latin Text and Order of Construction on the Same
Page; and Critical, Historical, Geographical, and Classical Notes in
English, from the Very Best Commentators Both Ancient and Modern; beside
a Very Great Number of Notes Entirely New. (Medford, MA: J. Nunn,
Great-Queen-Street; R. Priestly, 143, High-Holborn; R. Lea,
Greek-Street, Soho; and J. Rodwell, New-Bond-Street, 1813).
====================================================
Belinuncia,
in Gallic mythology, was a poisonous plant, possessing a magic effect, sacred
to Belenus or Belinus, from whom its name. The Gauls poisoned their arrows and
lances with it. It was also said to produce rain and stormy weather, if dug up
by a virgin at midnight during the new-moon, while if gathered during the
full-moon it produced aridity.
John
M’Clintock and James Strong, “Belinuncia,” Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological,
and Ecclesiastical Literature, Supplement—A–Z (New York: Harper & Brothers,
Publishers, 1894), 412.
============================================================
on
Psa 64:3(Heb. 4)
4.a.
Literally “they tread their arrow.” For the use of דרך with bow and arrow, see
BDB, 202; e.g., 58:8. For the translation above see J. A. Emerton (JTS 27
[1976] 391–92), who argues that דרך refers to using the foot to string a bow
and that there is an ellipse of קַשְׁתָּם, “their bows,” after the verb,
followed by an asyndetous nominal clause (or a circumstantial clause).
4.b.
See Dahood (II, 104) for the argument for מר (“bitter/poison”). He translates
the expression דבר מר as “poisonous substance.” JB has “shooting bitter words
like arrows.”
Marvin
E. Tate, Psalms 51–100 (vol. 20; Word Biblical Commentary; Dallas: Word,
Incorporated, 1998), 131.
Elsewhere
Tate would write of Psa 64:
This
psalm of complaint and judgment sets forth the demonic nature of much human
behavior and the profound depths of human nature from which it stems. The
speaker in the psalm has encountered treacherous and destructive actions by
other people in society. These evildoers act with contempt for others and are
Bound
together in klaverns of the wicked, where they encourage one another to persist
in their evil designs. The evildoers work with no superficial wit but with the
sagacity of practice and well-honed animosity. They are devious and often
attack without warning. The blameless are often not “able to discover the
quarter from which the weapon was shot, nor detect the hand which forged the
arrowhead, or tinged it with the poison” (C. H. Spurgeon, II, 83).
As
noted in the Comment above, there is an uncanny and sinister nature about the
evildoers which involves an ambience of superhuman destructive forces and
agents. The psalm communicates a sense of anxiety and perplexity about the
nature of human society that is at home in every generation. The supposed
sophistication of modern society is not immune to deep awareness of destructive
forces which threaten to reduce our semi-ordered world to chaos. The power of
viral disease, resistant to all known drugs, is an example from the area of
medicine. Political and economic forces which seem to paralyze leaders and
elude the grasp of government in the face of the threat of war or internal
disorder are others. The demonic is a part of our way of life, and we are all subject
to the danger of the poison arrow shot from hiding places.
Marvin
E. Tate, Psalms 51–100 (vol. 20; Word Biblical Commentary; Dallas: Word,
Incorporated, 1998), 134–135.
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Sophocles,
Trachiniae, Line 1098:
δράκοντα
μήλων φύλακ̓. The garden was in the far west, where Atlas supports the sky,
beyond the stream of the Oceanus (Hes. Th.215). When Zeus espoused Hera there,
a wondrous apple-tree (“μηλέα”) sprang up. This tree was committed to the care
of maidens called Hesperides, daughters of Night (Hes. Th.211), sweet singers;
and it was guarded by a terrible dragon, coiled round the stem (Eur. H. F.397,
Paus.6. 19. 8). Heracles slew this dragon with poisoned arrows (Apoll. Rh.
4.1396 ff., where the monster is named “Λάδων”).
Sir
Richard C. Jebb, Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with Critical Notes,
Commentary, and Translation in English Prose Part V: The Trachiniae
(Medford, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1902).
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