Job 34:30
Who maketh a man that is a hypocrite to reign for the sins of the people?
Open Job 34:30 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Qui regnare facit hominem hypocritam propter peccata populi.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- βασιλεύων ἄνθρωπον ὑποκριτὴν ἀπὸ δυσκολίας λαοῦ.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- מִ֭מְּלֹךְ אָדָ֥ם חָנֵ֗ף מִמֹּ֥קְשֵׁי עָֽם
Haydock's commentary
People. A hypocrite denotes one infected with all sorts of crimes. (St. Irenæus v. 24.) Such a king is sometimes given to punish a wicked people, Osee xiii. 11., and Isaias iii. 4. This sense is beautiful, and followed by the Chaldean, Septuagint, &c. We may explain the Hebrew in like manner, by neglecting the Masoretic points. (Calmet)
Protestants, "That the hypocrite reign not, lest the people be ensnared." (Haydock)
Hebrew, "He overturns the throne of hypocrites, on account of the scandal of the people," or "he delivers the people from servitude." The sense of the Vulgate seems preferable. (Calmet)
Eliu insinuates that Job had been a hypocrite and an oppressor; but God exculpates him. (Worthington)
Haydock wrote amid the controversies of his day. The Church teaches that those born into communities separated from her cannot be charged with the sin of separation, and embraces them as brothers (CCC 818).
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 Augustine City of God, Concerning the Difference Between True Glory and the Desire of Domination
in another place it is most unambiguously said of God, that He “maketh the man who is an hypocrite to reign on account of the perver sity of the people.” Wherefore, though I have, according to my ability, shown for what reason God, who alone is true and just, helped forward the Romans, who were good according to a certain standard of an earthly state, to the acquirement of the glory of so great an empire, there may be, nevertheless, a more hidden cause, known better to God than to us, depending on the diversity of the merits of the human race. Among all who are truly pious, it is at all events agreed that no one without true piety, that is, true worship of the true God, can have true virtue; and that it is not true virtue which is the slave of human praise. …