Job 39:3 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

They bow themselves— The manuscripts mark the two last verbs with a circle. Houbigant's version runs thus: They bow themselves; they burst with their pains; they cast forth their young. But I cannot help disagreeing with the learned father of the Oratory; as the passage, according to our version, appears to me much more emphatical. Every reader of taste must discern peculiar strength and beauty in the expression, They cast out their sorrows. Houbigant renders the 4th verse, [Knowest thou] how their young ones grow up, increase in the fields, and, once departing, return to them no more?—Whose house, in the 6th verse, would more properly be rendered whose habitation; and the barren land might be better rendered the thicket. The word מלחה melechah, signifies a kind of shrub; the covert, probably, in which these animals delight. See Parkhurst on the word מלח melach, 4.