Job 13:14
Why do I tear my flesh with my teeth, and carry my soul in my hands?
Open Job 13:14 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Quare lacero carnes meas dentibus meis, et animam meam porto in manibus meis ?
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ἀναλαβὼν τὰς σάρκας μου τοῖς ὀδοῦσιν, ψυχὴν δέ μου θήσω ἐν χειρί.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- עַל מָ֤ה אֶשָּׂ֣א בְשָׂרִ֣י בְשִׁנָּ֑י וְ֝נַפְשִׁ֗י אָשִׂ֥ים בְּכַפִּֽי
Haydock's commentary
Why you seem to ask do I thus eagerly desire to die, (Haydock) as if I were tearing my own flesh, and exposing my soul to danger, (Worthington) like a madman? (Tirinus)
Is it not better for me to address myself to God, that he would hasten my departure, than thus to tear my flesh with my teeth? (Calmet)
Some have supposed that Job really did so in extreme anguish, (Ven. Bede) the leprosy occasioning such an insupportable irritation. (Haydock)
But the expression insinuates an interior anguish or despair; (Isaias xlix. 26.) in which sense Pythagoras enjoins, "not to eat the heart."
Hands, in imminent danger of death, Psalm cxviii. 109.
St. Gregory explains it in a moral sense: "It is to manifest the intention of the heart by the actions." (Haydock)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.