Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
Ye are forgers of lies - Ye frame deceitful arguments: ye reason sophistically, and pervert truth and justice, in order to support your cause.
Physicians of no value - Ye are as feeble in your reasonings as ye are inefficient in your skill. Ye can neither heal the wound of my mind, nor the disease of my body. In ancient times every wise man professed skill in the healing art, and probably Job' s friends had tried their skill on his body as well as on his mind. He therefore had, in his argument against their teaching, a double advantage: Your skill in divinity and physic is equal: in the former ye are forgers of lies; in the latter, ye are good-for-nothing physicians. I can see no reason to depart from the general meaning of the original to which the ancient versions adhere. The Chaldee says: "Ye are idle physicians; and, like the mortified flesh which is cut off with the knife, so are the whole of you." The imagery in the former clause is chirurpical, and refers to the sewing together, or connecting the divided sides of wounds; for topheley , which we translate forgers, comes from taphal , to fasten, tie, connect, sew together. And I question whether topheley here may not as well express Surgeons, as ropheey , in the latter clause, Physicians. Ye are Chirurgeons of falsity, and worthless Physicians.
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