"14. They have rushed in upon me as when a wall is broken, and a gate opened, and have rolled themselves down to my miseries. . . ." Maurer translates, "as when a wall is broken," "with a shout like the _crash of falling masonry_." {p. 305} 29. I was the brother of _dragons_ and companion of ostriches. "30. My _skin is become black_ upon me, and my bones are dried up with the _heat_." We are reminded of Ovid's statement that the conflagration of Phaëton caused the skin of the Africans to turn black. In chapter xxxiv, (King James's version,) we read: "14. If he" (God) "set his heart upon man, if he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath; "15. _All flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust_." And in chapter xxxvi, (verses 15, 16, Douay,) we see that Job was shut up in something like a cavern: "15. He shall deliver the poor out of his distress, and shall open his ear in affliction. "16. Therefore he shall _set thee at large out of the narrow mouth, and which hath no foundation under it_; and the rest of thy table shall be full of fatness." That is to say, in the day when he delivers the poor out of their misery, he will bring thee forth from the place where thou hast been "hiding," (see chap. xiii, 20,) from that narrow-mouthed, bottomless cavern; and instead of starving, as you have been, your table, during the rest of your life, "shall be full of fatness." "27. He" (God) "lifteth up the drops of rain and poureth out showers like floods. "28. Which flow from the clouds which _cover all from above_." The commentators tell us that this expression, "which cover all from above," means literally, "the bottom of the sea is laid bare"; and they confess their inability to understand it. But is it not the same story told by Ovid of the bottom of the Mediterranean having been rendered {p. 306} a bed of dry sand by Phaëton's conflagration; and does it not remind us of the Central American legend of the starving people migrating in search of the sun, through rocky places where the sea had been separated to allow them to pass? And the King James version continues "32. _With clouds he covereth the light; and commandeth it not to shine by the cloud that cometh betwixt_. "33. _The noise thereof_ sheweth concerning it, the cattle also concerning the vapor." This last line shows how greatly the original text has been garbled; what have the cattle to do with it? Unless, indeed, here, as in the other myths, the cows signify the clouds. The meaning of the rest is plain: God draws up the water, sends it down as rain, which covers all things; the clouds gather before the sun and hide its light; and the vapor restores the cows, the clouds; and all this is accompanied by great disturbances and noise. And the next chapter (xxxvii) continues the description: "2. Hear ye attentively the terror of his" (the comet's) "voice, and the sound that cometh out of his mouth.