My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are spent without hope. Swifter than a weaver's shuttle - The word ארג areg signifies rather the weaver than his shuttle. And it has been doubted whether any such instrument were in use in the days of Job. Dr. Russell, in his account of Aleppo, shows that though they wove many kinds of curious cloth, yet no shuttle was used, as they conducted every thread of the woof by their fingers. That some such instrument as the shuttle was in use from time immemorial, there can be no doubt: and it is certain that such an instrument must have been in the view of Job, without which the figure would lose its expression and force. In almost every nation the whole of human existence has been compared to a web; and the principle of life, through the continual succession of moments, hours, days, weeks, months, and years, to a thread woven through that web. Hence arose the fable of the Parcae or Fates, called also the Destinies or Fatal Sisters. They were the daughters of Erebus and Nox, darkness and night; and were three in number, and named Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Clotho held the distaff; Lachesis spun off the thread; and Atropos cut it off with her scissors, when it was determined that life should end. Job represents the thread of his life as being spun out with great rapidity and tenuity, and about to be cut off.
And are spent without hope - Expectation of future good was at an end; hope of the alleviation of his miseries no longer existed. The hope of future good is the balm of life: where that is not, there is despair; where despair is, there is hell. The fable above mentioned is referred to by Virgil, Ecl. iv., ver. 46, but is there applied to time: -
Talia Secla, suis dixerunt, currite, fusis
Concordes stabili fatorum numine Parcae.
"The Fates, when they this happy thread have spun
Shall bless the sacred clue, and bid it smoothly run."
Dryden.
Isaiah uses the same figure, Isaiah 38:12 : -
My life is cut off, as by the weaver:
He will sever me from the loom.
In the course of the day thou wilt finish my web.
Lowth.
Coverdale translates thus: My dayes passe over more spedely then a weaver can weave out his webbe and are gone or I am awarre.
A fine example of this figure is found in the Teemour Nameh, which I shall give in Mr. Good's translation: -
"Praise be to God, who hath woven the web of human affairs in the loom of his will and of his wisdom, and hath made waves of times and of seasons to flow from the fountain of his providence into the ocean of his power." The simile is fine, and elegantly expressed.