Job 9:26

26. Passed away as Literally, Glide along with. חלפו . See note on Job 9:11. The poet, in a figure finely conceived, links his passing days with the gliding of a river, whose silent, insensible current serves only to hasten the motion of the frail, swift craft its bosom bears. The frailty of the skiff Job speaks of images well the frail voyager of life, as he, too, glides among the stream of time.

Swift ships אבה , ebeh, reed, or papyrus. Light in their structure, skiffs made of papyrus shot along the Nile with great swiftness. Compare Isaiah 18:2. Heliodorus ( AEthiop., 10:460) speaks of such boats as having been exceedingly swift. Plutarch describes Isis going in search of the body of Osiris in a bark made of papyrus. The text illustrates the swiftness of time by figures drawn from objects that in Job’s days were swiftest on land, in the water, and in the air. The reader will mark the gradation.