Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
In paths - The Septuagint, Syriac, Vulgate, and nine MSS., (two ancient), read ubenotiboth .
Will I do unto them - asitem . This word, so written as it is in the text, means "thou wilt do, "in the second person. The Masoretes have indeed pointed it for the first person; but the yod in the last syllable is absolutely necessary to distinguish the first person; and so it is written in forty MSS., asithim .
Jarchi, Kimchi, Sal. ben Melec, etc., agree that the past time is here put for the future, asithi for ; and indeed the context necessarily requires that interpretation. Farther it is to be observed that asithim is put for asithi lahem , "I have done them," for "I have done for them;" as asitheni is for asiti li , "I have made myself," for "I have made for myself," Ezekiel 29:2; and in the celebrated passage of Jephthah' s vow, Judges 11:31, veheelitihu olah for heelithi lo olah , "I will offer him a burnt-offering, "for "I will offer unto him (that is, unto Jehovah) a burnt-offering;" by an ellipsis of the preposition of which Buxtorf gives many other examples, Thes. Grammat. lib. 2:17. See also note on Isaiah 65:5. A late happy application of this grammatical remark to that much disputed passage has perfectly cleared up a difficulty which for two thousand years had puzzled all the translators and expositors, had given occasion to dissertations without number, and caused endless disputes among the learned on the question, whether Jephthah sacrificed his daughter or not; in which both parties have been equally ignorant of the meaning of the place, of the state of the fact, and of the very terms of the vow; which now at last has been cleared up beyond all doubt by my learned friend Dr. Randolph, Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford, in his Sermon on Jephthah' s Vow, Oxford, 1766. - L.
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