to place permanently · conjunction + verb, hiphil sequential perfect, 3rd person masculine singular + pronominal suffix
byword
לִמְשֹׁ֣לlim.Shol
H4914
a satire · preposition + verb, qal infinitive construct
people
עַמִּ֑ים'a.Mim
H5971
a people (as a congregated unit) · noun, common masculine plural absolute
aforetime
לְפָנִ֣יםle.fa.Nim
H6440
the face (as the part that turns) · preposition + noun, common masculine plural absolute
tabret
וְתֹ֖פֶתve.To.fet
H8611
a smiting · conjunction + noun, common feminine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Job 30:9 And now am I their song, yea, I am their byword.
Psalms 44:14 Thou makest us a byword among the heathen, a shaking of the head among the people.
Genesis 31:27 Wherefore didst thou flee away secretly, and steal away from me; and didst not tell me, that I might have sent thee away with mirth, and wit…
1 Kings 9:7 Then will I cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them; and this house, which I have hallowed for my name, will I cast out of my…
Isaiah 5:12 And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the LORD, neither consider…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Job 17:1-9
Job's discourse is here somewhat broken and interrupted, and he passes suddenly from one thing to another, as is usual with men in trouble; but we may reduce what is here said to three heads: -
I. The deplorable condition which poor Job was now in, which he describes, to aggravate the great unkindness of his friends to him and to justify his own complaints. Let us see what his case was.
1. He was a dying man, Job 17:1. He had said (Job 16:22), "When a few years have come, I shall go that long journey." But here he corrects himself. "Why do I talk of years to come? Alas! I am just setting out on that journey, am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. My breath is a…
He--God. The poet reverentially suppresses the name of God when speaking of calamities inflicted.
by-word-- (Deu 28:37; Psa 69:11). My awful punishment makes my name execrated everywhere, as if I must have been superlatively bad to have earned it.
aforetime . . . tabret--as David was honored (Sa1 18:6). Rather from a different Hebrew root, "I am treated to my face as an object of disgust," literally, "an object to be spit upon in the face" (Num 12:14). So Raca means (Mat 5:22) [UMBREIT].
John Gill on Job 17:6
He hath made me also a byword of the people,.... Either Eliphaz, or God; for whatsoever befell him, whether more immediately by the hand of God, or by any instrument, the ascribes it to him, as being suffered in Providence to befall him; as when he became a byword or proverb to the people in common, to whom an example might be set by one or more of Job's friends. The name of Job is to this day a byword or proverb among men, both for his poverty and his patience; if a man is described as very poor, he is said to be as poor as Job; or if very patient under his afflictions, he is said to be as patient as Job; but as neither of these are to the disgrace of Job, something else seems rather intend…
"You have made me famous among the nations," the man whom you have redeemed, that is to say the Church, of which the nations were to speak, or who was to speak to them. "I became their whip; Or that of the Gentiles who were to insult him; or that of the Jews who spoke to the Gentiles.
"I will rise in authority among peoples," because of the stupefaction for all that has happened to me. And the words, "I will be a veil on their faces," that is, whoever hears about my horrible misfortunes will veil his face. This is said as an analogy of the fact that when one hears a horrible thing, he brings his hand to his forehead and veils his eyes.
Ver.6. He hath made me, as it were, a byword of the people, and I am an example before them. This let blessed Job say in his own person, yea and in the voice of all of the Elect. For everyone that is stricken with the rod, is, as it were, 'made a byword of the people,' in that every fool, when he desires to curse anyone, takes up his cursing in a likeness to him, whom he sees stricken with a temporal stroke, and wishes that punishment for his adversary, which he sees to have befallen the righteous man. And so it comes to pass that with persons not endowed with a right perception, the uptight man is brought into an example, while both the punishment of the just passes current for the condemnation of him, and the glory that is in store for him is not foreseen by any expectance of faith.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Tabret — (Heb. toph), a timbrel (q.v.) or tambourine, generally played by women (Gen. 31:27; 1 Sam. 10:5; 18:6). In Job 17:6 the word (Heb. topheth) “tabret” should be, as in the Revised Version, “an open…
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
on Job 17:6-9
6 And He hath made me a proverb to the world,
And I became as one in whose face they spit.
7 Then mine eye became dim with grief,
And all my members were like a shadow.
8 The upright were astonished at it,
And the innocent is stirred up over the godless;
9 Nevertheless the righteous holdeth fast on his way,
And he that hath clean hands waxeth stronger and stronger.
Without a question, the subj. of Job 17:6 is God. It is the same thing whether משׁל is taken as inf. followed by the subject in the nominative (Ges. 133, 2), or as a subst. (lxx θρύλλημα; Aq., Symm., Theod., παραβολήν), like שׂחוק, Job 12:4, followed by the gen. subjectivus. משׁל is the usual word for ridicule, expressed in para…
