Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 24:19

Drought and heat consume the snow waters: [so doth] the grave [those which] have sinned.

19. As the fierce heat and drought evaporate the abundant waters of the dissolving winter snow, leaving no trace of them, so doth Sheol engulf the sinners, that they disappear without a remnant from the world; comp. ch. Job 6:15 seq., Job 14:11; Isa 5:14.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Drought and heat consume the snow-waters – Margin, violently take; see the notes at Job 6:17. The word rendered consume, and in the margin violently take ( ygaz^elu), means properly to strip off, as skin from the flesh; and then to pluck or tear away by force; to strip, to spoil, to rob. The meaning here is, that the heat seems to seize and carry away the snow waters – to bear them off, as a plunderer does spoil. There is much poetic beauty in this image. The snow-waters here mean the waters that are produced by the melting of the snow on the hills, and which swell the rivulets in the valleys below. Those waters, Job says, are borne along in rivulets over the burning sands, until the drought and heat absorb them all, and they vanish away; see the beautiful description of this which Job gives in Job 6:15-18. Those waters vanish away silently and gently. The stream becomes smaller and smaller as it winds along in the desert until it all disappears. So Job says it is with these wicked people whom he is describing. Instead of being violently cut off; instead of being hurried out of life by some sudden and dreadful judgment, as his friends maintained, they were suffered to linger on calmly and peaceably – as the stream glides on gently in the desert – until they quietly disappear by death – as the waters sink gently in the sands or evaporate in the air. The whole description is that of a peaceful death as contradistinguished from one of violence.

So doth the grave those who have sinned – There is a wonderful terseness and energy in the original words here, which is very feebly expressed by our translation. The Hebrew is ( sh^e‘ol chata’u) the grave, they have sinned. The sense is correctly expressed in the common version. The meaning is, that they who have sinned die in the same quiet and gentle manner with which waters vanish in the desert. By those who have sinned, Job means those to whom he had just referred – robbers, adulterers, murderers, etc., and the sense of the whole is, that they died a calm and peaceful death; see the notes at Job 21:13, where he advances the same sentiment as here.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Verse 19. Drought and heat consume the snow-waters] The public cisterns or large tanks which had been filled with water by the melting of the snow on the mountains, and which water was stored for the irrigation of their lands, had been entirely exhausted by the intensity of the heat, and the long continuance of drought.

So doth the grave those which have sinned.] For this whole paragraph we have only two words in the original; viz., sheol chatau, “the pit, they have sinned;” which Mr. Good translates: – “They fall to their lowest depth.”

I believe the meaning to be, – even the deepest tanks, which held most water, and retained it longest, had become exhausted; so that expectation and succour were cut off from this as well as from every other quarter.

I have elsewhere shown that sheol signifies, not only hell and the grave, but any deep pit; and, also, that chata signifies to miss the mark. Mr. Good, properly aware of these acceptations of the original words, has translated as above; and it is the only ground on which any consistent meaning can be given to the original.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

As the snow, though it doth for a time lie upon the ground, yet at last is dissolved into water by the heat of the season, and that water quickly swallowed up by the earth when it is dry and thirsty; so ungodly sinners, though they live and prosper for a season, yet at last they shall go into the grave, which will consume them, together with all their hopes and comforts; their jolly life is attended with a sad, and ofttimes sudden and violent, death; not with such a death as the godly die, which perfects them and brings them to happiness, but with a consuming and never-dying death.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

19. Arabian image; melted snow,as contrasted with the living fountain, quickly dries up in thesunburnt sand, not leaving a trace behind (Job6:16-18). The Hebrew is terse and elliptical to expressthe swift and utter destruction of the godless; (so) “thegravethey have sinned!”

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Drought and heat consume the snow waters,…. Melt the snow into water, and dry up that, which is done easily, quickly, and suddenly:

[so doth] the grave [those which] have sinned; all have sinned, but some are more notorious sinners than others, as those here meant; and all die and are laid in the grave, and are consumed; hence the grave is called the pit of corruption and destruction, because bodies are corrupted and destroyed in it, and which is the case of all, both good and bad men; but the metaphor here used to express it by, of the consumption of snow water by drought and heat, denotes either that the death of these persons is sudden and violent, and in such a manner are brought to the grave, consumed there; that they die a sudden death, and before their time, and do not live out half the days, which, according to the course of nature, they might have lived, or it was expected by them and others they would; whereas they are “snatched away”, as the word signifies, as suddenly and violently as snow waters are by the drought and heat; or else that their death is quick, quiet, and easy, as snow is quickly dissolved, and the water as soon and as easily dried up by the drought and heat; they do not lie long under torturing diseases, but are at once taken away, and scarce feel any pain; they die in their full strength, wholly at ease and quiet; which sense well answers Job’s scope and design, see Job 21:23. Some render the words, “in the drought and heat they rob, and in the snow waters” z; that is, they rob at all times and seasons of the year, summer and winter; and this is their constant trade and employ; they are always at it, let the weather be what it will: and “they sin unto the grave”, or “hell” a; they continue in their wicked course of life as long as they live, until they are brought to the grave; they live and die in sin.

z “deficit”; so some in Simeon, Bar Tzemach. a “ad infernum usque peccarunt”, Schmidt; “usque ad sepulchrum”, Mercerus; some in Drusius.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

(19) So doth the grave those which have sinned.Job had already spoken of the sudden death of the wicked as a blessing (Job. 9:23; Job. 21:13), as compared with the lingering torture he himself was called upon to undergo.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

19. Consume the snow waters The thought of the first clause of the preceding verse Job now proceeds to illustrate by an emblematic proverb. Travellers speak of mountain streams which have their rise in beds of snow, and which, as they descend into the plains, glide gently through the sands, each day becoming smaller, until at last the rivulet yields to the hot sky above and the parched sands beneath, and disappears in the arid wastes. See Job 6:17. Thus the grave (sheol) swallows up those that have sinned. “Job concedes to his friends that the wicked perish in their turn. But he cannot see in this a divine chastisement, for this is the common lot of men.” Renan.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments