Job xxxi. 35. “Oh that one would hear me! behold, my desire _is_, _that_ the Almighty would answer me, and _that_ mine adversary had written a book.” Job, having asserted his innocence, expresses his strong desire that the charges against him might be brought for decision before the divine tribunal. He, on his part, is quite prepared for the trial; there, he says, is his statement, signed and sealed; let the adversary in like manner present his indictment; he would then be sure of a triumphant issue. “Oh that I had one who would hear me! Behold my mark! May the Almighty answer me, and that I had the accusation that my adversary had written. Surely, I would carry it on my shoulder, I would bind it as chaplets upon me.” Ps. xvi. 2, 3. “_Thou art_ my Lord; my goodness _extendeth_ not to thee. _But_ to the saints that _are_ in the earth, and _to_ the excellent, in whom is all my delight.” Every reader of this psalm must have felt how obscure, if not unintelligible, are these words. A more faithful rendering gives a clear and appropriate sense, “Thou art my Lord, I have no good above thee. As for the saints on the earth, and the excellent, in them is all my delight.”[71] Ps. xlii. 4. “When I remember these _things_, I pour out my soul in me, for I had gone with the multitude. I went with them to the house of God.” The words of the Psalmist are not, as this rendering makes them to be, a mere statement of what happens whenever he remembers the sorrows of the past, and the mockery of his adversaries. They are a declaration of his purpose to remember, with lively emotion and gratitude, the privileges and mercies with which he had been blessed. “I will remember these things [_i.e._ the things he is about to mention], and I will pour out my soul within me, how I passed along with the multitude, how I went with them [or how I led them] to the house of God.” Ps. xlix. 5. “Wherefore should I fear in the days of evil, _when_ the iniquity of my heels shall compass me about?” This, though seemingly an exact rendering of the Hebrew, wholly misleads the English reader. The phrase, “iniquity of my heels,” can only suggest to him the iniquity which the man himself has committed, a sense which is altogether unsuited to the passage. The Psalmist would never say that his own personal transgressions were not to him a ground of fear. The word, which in Hebrew means “heel,” is that also which, by a slight modification, forms the name of the patriarch Jacob, the “Heeler,” or supplanter of his brother. In the opinion of many scholars, the simple form here used admits of the same meaning, and they render, “when the iniquity of my supplanters [or the iniquity of those who plot against me] compasseth me about.” Whatever be the true explanation of the Hebrew phrase, it is quite certain that it is the iniquity of others, and not of the speaker, which is referred to. Some change, therefore, in the rendering is clearly called for.