Then shalt thou lay up gold as dust,.... Have such plenty of it, as not to be counted:
and the [gold] of Ophir as the stones of the brooks; which was reckoned the best, probably in Arabia; not in the East and West Indies, which were not known to Job; though some take this to be an exhortation to despise riches, and as a dissuasion from covetousness, rendering the words, "put gold upon the dust", or earth i, and trample upon it, as a thing not esteemed by thee, as Sephorno interprets it; make no more account of it than of the dust of the earth; let it be like dirt unto thee, "and among the stones of the brooks", Ophir k; that is, the gold of Ophir, reckon no more of it, though the choicest gold, than the stones of the brook; or thus, "put gold for dust, and the [gold] of Ophir for the flint of the brooks" l; esteem it no more than the dust of the earth, or as flint stones; the latter clause I should choose rather to render, "and for a flint the rivers of Ophir", or the golden rivers, from whence the gold of Ophir was; and it is notorious from historians, as Strabo m and others, that gold is taken out of rivers; and especially from the writers of the history of the West Indies n.
i ושית על עפר בצר "pone aurum super pulverem", Codurcus; "in pulvere aurum", Cocceius; "abjice humi aurum", Beza; so Grotius. k ובציר נחלים אופיר "et inter saxa torrentium Ophir", Codurcus. l "Pro rupe aurum Ophirinum", Junius Tremellius so Schultens. m Geograph. l. 11. p. 344. n Pet. Martyr. Decad. 3. l. 4.