Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 6:15
My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, [and] as the stream of brooks they pass away;
15. they pass away ] Better, that pass away, cf. ch. Job 11:16. The other sense, that overflow (their banks), is improbable.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
My brethren – To wit, the three friends who had come to condole with him. He uses the language of brethren, to intimate what he had a right to expect from them. It is common in all languages to give the name brethren to friends.
Have dealt deceitfully – That is, I have been sadly disappointed. I looked for the language of condolence and compassion; for something to cheer my heart, and to uphold me in my trials – as weary and thirsty travelers look for water and are sadly disappointed when they come to the place where they expected to find it, and find the stream dried up. The simile used here is exquisitely beautiful, considered as a mere description of an actual occurrence in the deserts of Arabia. But its chief beauty consists in its exact adaptation to the case before him, and the point and pith of the reproof which it administers. The fullness, strength, and noise of these temporary streams in winter, answer to the large professions made to Job in his prosperity by his friends. The dryness of the waters at the approach of summer, resembles the failure of their friendship in time of affliction. Scott, as quoted by Noyes.
As a brook – That is, as a stream that is swelled by winter torrents, and that is dry in summer. Such streams abound in Arabia, and in the East generally. The torrents pour down from the hills in time of rain, or when swelled by the melting of the ice; but in summer they are dry, or their waters are lost in the sand. Even large streams are thus absorbed. The river Barrady, which waters Damascus, after passing to a short distance to the southeast of the city toward the Arabian deserts, is lost in the sand, or evaporated by the heat of the sun. The idea here is, that travelers in a caravan would approach the place where water had been found before, but would find the fountain dried up, or the stream lost in the sand; and when they looked for refreshment, they found only disappointment. In Arabia there are not many rivers. In Yemen, indeed, there are a few streams that flow the year round, and on the East the Euphrates has been claimed as belonging to Arabia. But most of the streams are winter torrents that become dry in summer, or rivulets that are swelled by heavy rains.
An illustration of the verse before us occurs in Campbells Travels in Africa. In desert parts of Africa it has afforded much joy to fall in with a brook of water, especially when running in the direction of the journey, expecting it would prove a valuable companion. Perhaps before it accompanied us two miles it became invisible by sinking into the sand; but two miles farther along it would reappear and raise hopes of its continuance; but after running a few hundred yards, would sink finally into the sand, no more again to rise. A comparison of a man who deceives and disappoints one to such a Stream is common in Arabia, and has given rise, according to Schultens, to many proverbs. Thus, they say of a treacherous friend, I put no trust in thy torrent; and, O torrent, thy flowing subsides. So the Scholiast on Moallakat says, a pool or flood was called Gadyr, because travelers when they pass by it find it full of water, but when they return they find nothing there, and it seems to have treacherously betrayed them. So they say of a false man, that he is more deceitful than the appearance of water – referring, perhaps, to the deceitful appearance of the mirage in the sands of the desert; see the notes at Isa 35:7.
And as the stream of brooks they pass away – As the valley stream – the stream that runs along in the valley, that is filled by the mountain torrent. They pass away on the return of summer, or when the rain ceases to fall, and the valley is again dry. So with the consolations of false friends. They cannot be depended on. All their professions are temporary and evanescent.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Job 6:15-20
My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook.
The uses and lessons of disappointment
The meaning of this passage is, that Job had been disappointed. He hoped his friends would have comforted him in his sorrows; but all his expectations from that quarter had failed. He had been like weary and thirsty travellers in a desert, who came to the place where they hoped and expected to find water, but who, when they came, found that the streams were dried up, and had vanished away.
I. The forms in which disappointments occur. They are as numerous and as varied as our hopes. There are two uses of hope. One is to stimulate us to exertion by the prospect of some good to be obtained and enjoyed. The other is to be held in the Divine hand as a means of checking, restraining, humbling, recovering, and controlling us.
1. Disappointments which relate to the acquisition of property. Some desire to be rich; and some desire the reputation of being rich. The majority of those who with such ends in view seek property, are destined to be disappointed.
2. Those who aim at distinction in honour and office are often disappointed.
3. Those who attempt to build up their family name, and obtain distinction in their children. Few hopes are more likely to be disappointed. A blight often rests upon the effort to found a family name. Honours are scattered by a rule that no one can study out.
4. Those who seek for happiness solely in the things of this life. Multitudes seek it; a few profess to find it to an extent that rewards their efforts; the man disappointed in one thing, at one time, hopes to find it in another.
II. The reasons why disappointments occur.
1. Because the plans and expectations which were formed were beyond any reasonable ground of calculation, based on the ordinary course of events, or what ordinarily happens to man. Many illusions play upon the minds and around the hearts of men. They arise from several sources. We are either ignorant of or forgetful of the usual course of events, and do not take that into our calculation; or we anticipate in the future what does not commonly occur; or we trust in our star, or our destiny, and suppose that ours is to be an exception to the common lot; or we are merely presumptuous, relying on what we suppose is our talent, or something in us which will exempt us from the common lot of mankind; or we feel that there is a charm around us and our family. So we engage in the execution of our plans with as sanguine a feeling as if we were certain that they would be all successful. As a law of our nature it is wise that this should be so, if we would only admit the possibility that we might be disappointed, and if we would not murmur when disappointment comes.
2. Because our expectations were such as were improper in themselves. They related to things in which we ought not to have cherished hope.
3. Because disappointments may be for our good. He who sees all things perceives that success may be perilous for us.
III. Lessons which our disappointments should teach.
1. All our plans in life should be formed with the possibility of failure in view. Possibility, not gloomy foreboding. Life would be a burden if fear had the same place in the economy which hope now has.
2. We should form such plans and cherish such hopes as will not be subject to disappointment. Such as relate to religion and are founded on that. Others may be successful, these certainly will be. For evidence of this see that they who become true Christians are not disappointed in what religion promises in this life. The mind has a conviction of its own that religion will not disappoint. And we have Gods promises. Those, therefore, who have felt what disappointment is in regard to worldly hopes and prospects, religion invites to herself, with the assurance that it will never disappoint them; and she points them to heaven as the place where disappointment never comes. (Albert Barnes.)
Brethren as brooks
The figure is derived from the winter brooks which pour down the Arabian wadies, full, turgid, roaring, fed by snow and ice, discoloured–black with the melted ice, but which vanish away under the first heat of the summer sun.
I. Friends are often, like winter brooks, full so long as they are fed. In this, then, may be found their likeness to that false friendship which is never so strong and noisy and babbling as when it is living upon your substance. As long as these friends can draw from your abundance, their professions are loud–they are like the full, strong stream of winter.
II. Friends often give, like winter brooks, promises which are unfulfilled. The Arabs say of a treacherous friend, I trust not in thy torrent. The caravan wends its way through the sultry desert. The drivers remember a valley where, in the spring, the waters flowed in a copious stream. They turn aside to seek it. Behold, nothing but a torrent-scarred gorge! (Note–Verse 18 should be translated thus: [The caravans] turn aside out of the way; they go to a desert and perish.) Thus with false friendship. In your adversity you recall the promises of those whom you befriended. You turn to them in your distress and perplexity. You go to a desert!
III. Friends often withdraw in adversity like brooks in summer. What time they wax warm they become slender; when it is hot they are consumed out of their place. First the stream flows more narrowly,–then becomes silent and still; at length every trace of water disappears by evaporation. Accurate description of the conduct of friends, who have not the courage to break openly with you, but desert you by degrees. In the light of this how comforting the reflection that there is a Friend who sticketh closer than a brother. He is the river of the water of life–no failing stream. (J. L. Lafferty.)
Friends jail in adversity
Sir W. Scott had become a bankrupt by lavish expenditures on his castle, etc. The heaviest blow was, I think, the blow to his pride. Very early he begins to note painfully the different way in which different friends greet him, to remark that some smile as if to say, Think nothing about it, my lad, it is quite out of our thoughts; that others adopt an affected gravity, such as one sees and despises at a funeral, and the best-bred just shook hands and went on.
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 15. Have dealt deceitfully as a brook] There is probably an allusion here to those land torrents which make a sudden appearance, and as suddenly vanish; being produced by the rains that fall upon the mountains during the rainy season, and are soon absorbed by the thirsty sands over which they run. At first they seem to promise a permanent stream, and are noticed with delight by the people, who fill their tanks or reservoirs from their waters; but sometimes they are so large and rapid as to carry every thing before them: and then suddenly fail, so that there is no time to fill the tanks. The approach of Job’s friends promised much of sympathy and compassion; his expectations were raised: but their conduct soon convinced him that they were physicians of no value; therefore he compares them to the deceitful torrents that soon pass away.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
My brethren, i.e. my kinsmen or three friends; for though Eliphaz only had spoken, the other two showed their approbation of his discourse, or, at least, of that part of it which contained his censure of Jobs person and state.
Have dealt deceitfully; under a pretence of friendship and kindness dealing unrighteously and unmercifully with me, and adding to these afflictions which they said they came to remove.
As the stream of brooks, which quickly vanish, and deceive the hopes of the thirsty traveller.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
15. Those whom I regarded as “mybrethren,” from whom I looked for faithfulness in my adversity,have disappointed me, as the streams failing from droughtwadies ofArabia, filled in the winter, but dry in the summer, which disappointthe caravans expecting to find water there. The fulness and noise ofthese temporary streams answer to the past large and loud professionsof my friends; their dryness in summer, to the failure of thefriendship when needed. The Arab proverb says of a treacherousfriend, “I trust not in thy torrent” (Isa58:11, Margin).
stream of brooksrather,”the brook in the ravines which passes away.” It has noperpetual spring of water to renew it (unlike “the fountain ofliving waters,” Jer 2:13;Isa 33:16, at the end); and thusit passes away as rapidly as it arose.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook,…. Meaning his three friends, represented by Eliphaz, who were of the same sentiments with him, and behaved towards Job as he did: these were his brethren not by birth by blood nor by country, but by the profession of the same religion of the one true and living God in opposition to the idolatrous people among whom they dwelt; and this their relation to him is an aggravation of their perfidy and treachery, unfaithfulness and deceit, by which is meant their balking and disappointing him in his expectations; when they came to visit him as friends, he might reasonably expect they came to condole and sympathize with him, and comfort him; but, instead of this they reproached him and grieved him, and were miserable comforters of him; and this he illustrates by the simile of a “brook”, which he enlarges upon in the following verses: these friends and brethren of his he compares to a “brook”, not that was fed by a spring which continues, but filled with falls of water and melting snows from the hills, with which it is swelled, and looks like a large river for a while, but when these fail it is soon gone; hereby representing his friends in his state of prosperity, who looked big, and promised long and lasting friendship, but proved, in time of adversity, unfaithful and deceitful; and so it denotes the fickleness and inconstancy of their friendship:
[and] as the stream of brooks they pass away: or, “pass by” g, as a stream of water, fed by many brooks, or flows of water like unto many brooks, which run with great rapidity and force, and are quickly gone and seen no more; thus his friends, as such, passed by him, and were of no use to him any more than the priest and Levite were to the man that fell among thieves, Lu 10:30.
g “praetereunt”, Mercerus, Schmidt; “transeunt”, Piscator, Cocceius, Michaelis.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(15) Have dealt deceitfully as a brook.This is one of the most celebrated poetical similes in the book, and carries us to life in the desert, where the wadys, so mighty and torrent-like in the winter, are insignificant streams or fail altogether in summer. So when the writer saw the Gnadalquiver (or mighty wady) at Cordova, in August, it was a third-rate stream, running in many divided currents in its stony bed.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
15. As a brook The Arabians, as Schultens observes, compare a faithless friend to a mountain torrent. Thus, “I put no trust in the flowing of thy torrent.” The Greek Artemidorus, writing on dreams, interprets those of running water to indicate change and instability. The apostle is supposed by some to make use of the figure of our text in his exhortation against spiritual defection. (Heb 2:1.)
Stream of brooks Rather, the bed of torrents wadies in which Arabia and Palestine abound. Dillmann urges that should be rendered overflow, instead of pass away which certainly could not be said of the channels and that it is in better accord with the description which assumes that the channels are full. “The long, winding valleys,” in the graphic words of the recent traveller, Palmer, “by which the mountain groups are intersected, are called wadies. They are not at all like the valleys to which we are accustomed in Europe, but present rather the appearance of dry, sandy river-beds. They are, in fact, the courses along which the torrents from the mountains find their way down to the sea; but, as rain seldom falls, and as there is no soil or vegetation on the mountain sides to collect or absorb the gentle showers when they do come, the valleys are never filled except on the occasion of some fierce storm bursting over the mountains which they drain.” Desert of the Exodus, p. 22.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 6:15-20. My brethren have dealt deceitfully Bishop Lowth observes, that though the metaphor from overflowing waters is very frequent in other sacred writers, yet the author of the book of Job never touches upon it but once or twice throughout the whole poem, and that very slightly, though the subject afforded him frequent opportunities to do so. Indeed, says he, a different face of nature presented itself to him, whoever he was, if, according to the opinion of several learned men, the book was written in some part of Arabia; an opinion rendered more probable by that remarkable comparison in which Job likens his three friends to a deceitful torrent, which is manifestly taken from the dry and sandy places of Arabia, and adorned with many images peculiar to that country.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Job 6:15 My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, [and] as the stream of brooks they pass away;
Ver. 15. My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook ] Even you, whom I esteemed as my brethren (for to them he applieth this speech, Job 6:21 ), prove hollow and helpless to me; like the river Araris, that moveth so slowly, that it can hardly be discerned, saith Caesar, whether it flow forward or backward (Caesar, de Bell Gal. l. 1); or rather, to a certain fish in that river Araris, called scolopidus; which at the waxing of the moon is as white as the driven snow, and at the waning thereof is as black as a burnt coal. Job here elegantly compareth them, not to a river which is fed by a spring, and hath a perennity of flowing; but to a brook arising from rain or melted snow, the property whereof is in a moisture, when there is least need of them, to swell; in a drought, when they should do good, to fail. It is reported of the river Novanus, in Lombardy, that at every midsummer solstice it swelleth and runneth over the banks, but in midwinter is quite dry (Plin. lib. 2, cap. 10. 3.) Such were Job’s deceitful brethren; good summer birds, &c. The same author telleth us, that in that part of Spain called Carrinensis there is a river that shows all the fish in it to be like gold; but take them into thine hand, and they soon appear in their natural kind and colour. Job found that all is not gold that glittereth.
And as the stream of brooks they pass away
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
the stream of brooks. Hebrew. , aphik = a, torrent restrained in a narrow channel, natural or artificial, open as in a gorge, or covered as in an aqueduct, passing away, inaccessible, and out of sight. See note on first occurrence, 2Sa 22:16.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
My brethren: Job 19:19, Psa 38:11, Psa 41:9, Psa 55:12-14, Psa 88:18, Jer 9:4, Jer 9:5, Jer 30:14, Mic 7:5, Mic 7:6, Joh 13:18, Joh 16:32
as the stream: Jer 15:18, Jud 1:12
Reciprocal: Exo 21:8 – seeing Job 6:21 – ye are nothing Job 11:16 – as waters Job 14:11 – the flood Job 24:19 – Drought Pro 19:4 – the poor Pro 19:22 – and Isa 58:11 – fail Jer 12:6 – thy brethren Lam 1:2 – all her friends Mat 26:31 – and the
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Job 6:15. My brethren That is, my kinsmen, or three friends; for though Eliphaz only had spoken, the other two had shown their approbation of his discourse; have dealt deceitfully Under a pretence of friendship dealing unmercifully with me, and adding to the afflictions which they said they came to remove. As the stream of brooks, &c. Which quickly vanish and deceive the hopes of the thirsty traveller. It is no new thing for even brethren to deal deceitfully. It is therefore our wisdom to cease from man. We cannot expect too little from the creature, or too much from the Creator.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
6:15 My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a {k} brook, [and] as the stream of brooks they pass away;
(k) He compares friends who do not comfort us in our misery to a brook which in summer when we need water is dry, in winter is hard frozen and in the time of rain when we have no need overflows with water.