The eighteenth verse begins in the Hebrew with a highly anomalous word, which is generally supposed to mean "my source of comfort" (מבליגיתי). But both the strangeness of the form itself, which can hardly be paralleled in the language, and the indifferent sense which it yields, and the uncertainty of the Hebrew MSS., and the variations of the old versions, indicate that we have here another corruption of the text. Some Hebrew copies divide the word, and this is supported by the Septuagint and the Syro-Hexaplar version, which treat the verse as the conclusion of ver. 17, and render "and they shall bite you _incurably, with pain of your perplexed heart_" (Syro-Hex. "without cure"). But if the first part of the word is "without" (מִבְּלִי "for lack of" ...), what is the second? No such root as the existing letters imply is found in Hebrew or the cognate languages. The Targum does not help us: _Because they were scoffing_ (מלעיגין) _against the prophets who prophesied unto them, sorrow and sighing will I bring_ (איתי) _upon them on account of their sins: upon them, saith the prophet, my heart is faint._ It is evident that this is no better than a kind of punning upon the words of the Masoretic text.[33] I incline to read "How shall I cheer myself? Upon me is sorrow; upon me my heart is sick." (The prophet would write עַל not עֲלֵי for "against," without a suffix. Read יָגוֹן עָלַי אַבְלִיגָה מָה Job ix. 27, x. 20; Ps. xxxix. 14.) The passage is much like iv. 19. Another possible emendation is: "Iahvah causeth sorrow to flash forth upon me" (יהוה מבליג; after the archetype of Amos v. 9); but I prefer the former.