Job 13:15

15. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him “This is one of the highest among the notabilia of Scripture,” (Chalmers,) and yet its interpretation is disputed. The question is whether the Hebrew word לֶו lo, translated in him, should not be לא , lo, signifying not. The manuscripts favour the לא , not; but the Masoretes regarded it as an error, and have put into the margin a note called keri. This reforms the reader that the copyists have erred in this one word, and that it should be read as our version has it, in him. There are fourteen other passages in the entire Bible in which the keri substitutes lo, ( for him,) for lo, not. See Delitzsch on Isaiah 13:9. Similar to these clerical errors is that one in our own version of the New Testament where at is printed for out: “Strain at a gnat.” (Matthew 23:24.) The old versions, as well as the old Jewish critics, Latin and English commentators, (among those to be excepted are Noyes, Davidson, and Conant,) adopt the reading of in him. On the contrary, lo, not, is defended by most German commentators, yet with such exceptions as Arnheim and Delitzsch. If it be read lo, not, the sense is not necessarily changed. “Whichever way you read it, the sense is the same. For if it is read not, it will be pronounced interrogatively although he kill me shall I not hope?” Calvin. The Germans, however, prefer to read it as an affirmation. Thus Ewald, “Yet he will slay me! I hope not.” (A feeble platitude!) With Job, here as elsewhere, (Job 14:14-15; Job 19:25,) the deeper the night of gloom and despair the more vivid the lightning gleams of faith and hope. In his Titanic struggles he resembles the ancient giant who, when he touched the earth, is fabled to have gathered new life and hope. The word איחל , translated “trust,” signifies also hope. Death and hope here join hand in hand. Death has no power to slay hope; “Job’s hope almost enlivened his death. He had more life in death than most men have in their lives.” Caryl. “It is the sign of a great soul always to hope,” said the heathen historian, Florus, (iv, 8;) the child of God goes beyond and plains his standard of faith on the other side of the brink of death. The last movement of the wasted fingers of Grace Aguilar, a Jewess, was to spell the words, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.”