Job 26:13

13. Garnished the heavens Literally, By his breath the heavens are bright. At the root of Shiphra, bright, (a woman’s name in Exodus 1:15,) lies the idea of beauty. “The word is used,” says Scott, “by the elegant Hariri of a beautiful woman unveiling and shining out to her admirers.”

Formed חללה , pierced through. So the Syriac, Arabic, Furst, Hirtzel, Dillmann, Ewald, Hitzig, etc. The same word in the participial form is used in Isaiah 51:9, where it unquestionably signifies the piercing of the dragon. Some, however, give to the word a different root form, and make it to signify, as in the Authorized Version, to “form,” or “create:” Welte, Renan, Conant, etc.

Crooked serpent Better, the fleeing serpent. The Septuagint renders the phrase, “he destroyed the apostate serpent,” which reduced Tyndale to translate it, “With his hand hath he wounded the rebellyous serpent.” In the opinion of some there is a reference to a mythological legend, as in Job 3:8, (see note.). On the contrary, as the mention of the sea suggested its Rahab, so that of the sky suggests its Serpent, a constellation that from the remotest ages has borne either this or kindred names. This constellation, (Draco, the Dragon,) with its nearly a hundred stars and its head beneath the foot of Hercules, winds its way between the greater and lesser Bears, almost half around the polar circle. Popular imagination conceived that the hand of God pierced it through as it strove to escape, and thus transfixed it in its course. The tragical story of the garden is seemingly transferred to the skies. Hitzig links “the fleeing serpent” with “the host of the height,” (Isaiah 24:21,) and regards it as a veil of a πνευματικον του πονηρου , or, evil intelligences, kindred to Ephesians 6:12. Prof. Lee and Wordsworth see in the passage a transition from the works of creation to that of redemption. The wounding of the serpent, also paraphrased in Isaiah 27:1, where this very “fleeing serpent” is said to be pierced with the sword, may harbinger the triumph of the cross, in which Christ bruised the head of the serpent. If so, the sublime description of the works of creation culminates in the vastly greater work of redemption. The two verses, 12 and 13, are thus linked in the one common thought the final subjugation of evil. Bildad speaks of the uncleanness and hopelessness of man, (Job 26:4;) Job’s reply, far reaching and in shadowy vision, embraces the cross.