Job 21:8
Their seed continueth before them, a multitude of kinsmen, and of children's children in their sight.
Open Job 21:8 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Semen eorum permanet coram eis : propinquorum turba et nepotum in conspectu eorum.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ὁ σπόρος αὐτῶν κατὰ ψυχήν, τὰ δὲ τέκνα αὐτῶν ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- זַרְעָ֤ם נָכ֣וֹן לִפְנֵיהֶ֣ם עִמָּ֑ם וְ֝צֶאֱצָאֵיהֶ֗ם לְעֵינֵיהֶֽם
Haydock's commentary
Sight. The Jews esteemed this as the greatest blessing and mark of God's favour. Yet it was also equivocal, as it was often possessed by the wicked. (Calmet)
Where a note speaks of the Jewish people, the Church teaches that the Passion cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).
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.
The Fathers on this verse
St Ambrose On the Duties of the Clergy, Chapter XII. To prevent any one from being checked in the exercise of mercy, he shows that God cares for human actions; and proves on the evidence of Job that all wicked men are unhappy in the very abundance of their wealth
41. That is no small point. For those three royal friends of Job declared him to be a sinner, because they saw that he, after being rich, became poor; that after having many children, he had lost them all, and that he was now covered with sores and was full of weals, and was a mass of wounds from head to foot. But holy Job made this declaration to them: “If I suffer thus because of my sins, why do the wicked live? They grow old also in riches, their seed is according to their pleasure, their children are before their eyes, their houses are prosperous; but they have no fear; there is no scourge from the Lord on them.”