Job 42:6 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Wherefore I abhor myself— Wherefore I am ready to drop into dissolution. Heath. See the note on chap. Job 3:24. As a supplement to which, we add here, that the Chaldee paraphrast had such a sense of the greatness of Job's affliction, with respect to the loss of his children, that he thinks of it sometimes where Job did not. His paraphrase on the present verse is this, "Now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore I have cast away my riches, and am comforted for my sons, which are as dust and ashes." Nevertheless, at Job 42:13 to make amends to Job for this part of his suffering in the happy turn of his condition, he bestows upon him no less than fourteen sons, and perhaps would have doubled the number of his daughters too, had not their names, expressly mentioned, set bounds to his liberality. The reader will see from what is here represented to him as a specimen, that these Targums, to which the Jews attribute the same authority, in a manner, as to the Hebrew Scriptures, are not without their errors and reveries. However there are two things for which they are greatly valuable; as they help to ascertain the meaning of the Hebrew text; and, as they give us, interspersed, the common opinions of the Jews of those times wherein the paraphrases were made. Peters.