9 Their line, קָו, _i.e._, their measuring line. By the figure of metonymy the _line_ which measures is put for the portion or heritage which is measured, as in many other places. See Ps. xvi. 6, “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.” (See also Ps. lxxviii. 55, &c.) Here, it means that “Their measuring line has gone forth unto all the earth (אֶרֶץ)”; _i.e._, All the earth inherits this their testimony (_i.e._, has this testimony for its heritage), and to the ends of the world (תֵבֵל, _the inhabited world_) their instruction has gone forth. With this agrees, in sense, the LXX. here, and Rom. x. 16, which each has φθόγγος, _a sound_, or _voice_; _i.e._, a sound in relation to the hearer, rather than to that which causes it. The meaning of the passage is, “All the earth has their _sound_ or testimony as its heritage, and the ends of the world hear their words.” Symmachus has ἦχος, _a sound_, or _report_. 10 חֵמָה means _that which is hot_, and is a poetical name of the sun itself. 11 Job is thought by some to be the Jobab mentioned in Gen. x. 29, the third in descent from Eber. 12 Note the structure of this verse:— A | The seven stars, B | Orion, _A_ | The twelve signs, _B_ | Arcturus. 13 General Chesney allowed the late Dean Goode to copy the passage, among other matters, from his private MS. The Dean quotes it in his _Warburtonian Lectures_ (2nd Ed., Note I. to Sermon IV., p. 170‐1.) 14 Fragments of these coloured glazed bricks are to be seen in the British Museum. 15 _Babylonian Life and History_, p. 36. 16 τοῦ γαρ καὶ γένος ἐσμεν. 17 τοῦ γαρ καὶ γένος ἐσμεν. 18 Besides this _monthly_ difference, there is an _annual_ difference; for at the end of twelve months the sun does not come back to exactly the same point in the sign which commenced the year, but is a little behind it. But this difference, though it occurs every year, is so small that it will take 25,579 years for the sun to complete this vast cycle, which is called _The precession of the Equinoxes_; _i.e._, about one degree in every 71 years. If the sun came back to the precise point at which it began the year, each _sign_ would correspond, always and regularly, exactly with a particular _month_; but, owing to this constant regression, the sun (while it goes through the whole twelve signs every year) commences the year in one sign for only about 2,131 years. In point of fact, since the Creation the commencement of the year has changed to the extent of nearly three of the signs. When Virgil sings— “_The White Bull with golden horns opens the year_,” he does not record what took place in his own day. This is another proof of the antiquity of these signs.