Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 6:17
What time they wax warm, they vanish: when it is hot, they are consumed out of their place.
What time – In the time; or after a time.
They wax warm – Gesenius renders this word ( yezorebu) when they became narrow, and this version has been adopted by Noyes. The word occurs nowhere else. Taylor (Concord.) renders it, to be dissolved by the heat of the sun. Jerome, fuerint dissipati – in the time in which they are scattered. The Septuagint, takeisa thermes genomenes – melting at the approach of heat. The Chaldee, In the time in which the generation of the deluge sinned, they were scattered. Castell says that the word zarab in the Piel, as the word in Chaldee ( zerab) means to flow; and also that it has the same signification as tsarab, to become warm. In Syriac the word means to be straitened, bound, confined. On the whole, however, the connection seems to require us to understand it as it is rendered in our common translation, as meaning, that when they are exposed to the rays of a burning sun, they evaporate. They pour down from the mountains in torrents, but when they flow into burning sands, or become exposed to the intense action of the sun, they are dried up, and disappear.
They vanish – Margin, are cut off. That is, they wander off into the sands of the desert until they are finally lost.
When it is hot – Margin, in the heat thereof. When the summer comes, or when the rays of the sun are poured down upon them.
They are consumed – Margin, extinguished. They are dried up, and furnish no water for the caravan.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
When the weather grows milder, and the frost and snow is dissolved.
When it is hot; in the hot season of the year, when waters are most refreshing and necessary.
Out of their place; in which the traveller expected to find them to his comfort, but they are gone he knows not whither.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
17. wax warmrather, “Atthe time when.” (“But they soon wax”) [UMBREIT].”they become narrower (flow in a narrower bed), they are silent(cease to flow noisily); in the heat (of the sun) they are consumedor vanish out of their place. First the stream flows morenarrowlythen it becomes silent and still; at length every trace ofwater disappears by evaporation under the hot sun” [UMBREIT].
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
What time they wax warm they vanish,…. The ice and the snow, which, when the weather becomes warm, they melt away and disappear; and in like manner, he suggests his friends ceased to be friends to him in a time of adversity; the sun of affliction having looked upon him, they deserted him, at least did not administer comfort to him:
when it is hot they are consumed out of their place; when it is hot weather, and the sun has great strength then the waters, which swelled through the floods and fall of rain and snow, and which when frozen, looked black and big as if they had great depth in them, were quickly dried up, and no more to be seen in the place where they were; which still expresses the short duration of friendship among men, which Job had a sorrowful experience of.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
17. What time At the time (that is, as soon as) they flow, they vanish away. So short-lived are the mountain torrents. As soon as the snows that feed the streams are melted, the torrents are consumed away. “The simile is remarkably complete. When little needed the torrent overflows, when needed it disappears; in winter it does not fertilize, in summer it is dried up.”
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 6:17 What time they wax warm, they vanish: when it is hot, they are consumed out of their place.
Ver. 17. What time they wax warm, they vanish: when it is hot, &c.] Lo, such is the fruit of creature confidence, of making flesh our arm, of trusting in men or means; whereas Deo confisi nunquam confusi, they that trust in the Lord shall never be disappointed. This thou canst never do, unless (unbottomed of thyself and the creature) thou so lean upon the Lord, as that if he fail thee thou sinkest, and not otherwise.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
vanish: Heb. are cut off
when it is hot they are consumed: Heb. in the heat thereof they are extinguished. 1Ki 17:1
Reciprocal: Job 37:17 – he Psa 147:18 – General Dan 2:35 – no place
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Job 6:17-18. What time they wax warm When the weather grows milder, and the frost and snow are dissolved; they vanish , nitsmathu, ex cisi sunt, they are cut off, having no fountain from whence to draw a supply. When it is hot In the hot season, when waters are most refreshing and necessary; they are consumed out of their place The place where the traveller expected to find them to his comfort; but they are gone he knows not whither. The paths of their way are turned aside That is, the courses of those waters are changed; they are gone out of their channel, flowing hither and thither, till they be quite consumed, as it here follows. There is a noble climax, as Heath observes, in these last three verses; a most poetical description of the torrents in the hot climates. By extraordinary cold they are frozen over, but the sun no sooner exerts its power than they melt; they are exhaled by the heat, till the stream for smallness is diverted into many channels; it yet lasts a little way, but is soon quite evaporated and lost.