Job 42:16 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

After this Job lived an hundred and forty years— Mr. Le Clerc has urged, as an argument that this book is parabolical, that Job, according to this account, must have lived above two hundred years, and that this length of life will suit no time assigned for Job's existence. If, with Grotius, we say he lived while the Israelites wandered in the desert, the lives of men were then much shorter than two hundred years: if with others, that he lived soon after the Flood, the lives of men were then much longer: but now, if the life of man after the Flood shortened by degrees, I hope we may suppose a time between the other two points, which will agree very well with the life of Job: or, should we say that God lengthened out his life beyond the common term as an extraordinary favour, there can be nothing unlikely in this: nay, it is highly correspondent with the other instances of the divine bounty shewn to him. Peters. In the version of the LXX there is a considerable addition to the last verse of this chapter, a translation of which Mr. Wall has given us in his critical notes: It is as follows:—"Full of days: and it is written, that he shall rise again among those whom the Lord shall raise. He is signified in the Syriac book to have dwelt in the land of Ausitis, (Uz,) upon the confines of Edom and Arabia; and his name was Jobab: taking an Arabian woman to his wife, he had a son, whose name was Ennon; but his father was Zareh, or Zareth, a son of the sons of Esau. His mother's name was Bosorrah; so that he was in the fifth generation from Abraham. And these were the kings who reigned in Edom, in which country he also bare rule: The first was Balak the son of Beor, and the name of his city was Dennaba: after Balak Jobab, who is also called Job: and after him Asom, who was governor over the country of the Temanites. After him was Adad, the son of Barad, who slew Midian in the field of Moab; and the name of his city was Gethaim. The friends who came to him were Eliphaz, of the sons of Esau, the king of the Temanites; Bildad, the king of the Sauchaeites; and Sophar, the king of the Minaeites." We will close our observations on this celebrated book, with a Short view from Mr. Peters, of the