Job 18:15

Brimstone - Sulphur.

Tabernacle - A tent, booth or dwelling.

Job 18:15It shall dwell in his tabernacle - Desolation is here personified, and it is said that it shall be the inhabitant, its former owner being destroyed. Brimstone shall be scattered upon his habitation, so that, like Sodom and Gomorrah, it may be an everlasting monument of the Divine displeasure. In the Persian poet Saady, we find a couplet which contains a similar sentiment: -

Purdeh daree meekund dar keesri Keesar ankeboot

Boomee Noobat meezund ber kumbed Afraseeab.

continued...

It shall dwell in his tabernacle - It is uncertain what is to be understood as referred to here. Some suppose that the word to be understood is soul, and that the meaning is "his soul," that is, he himself, "shall dwell in his tent." Rosenmuller, Noyes, Wemyss, and others, suppose that the word is terror. "Terror (בלהה ballâhâh) shall dwell in his tent," the same word which is used in the plural in the previous verse. This is undoubtedly the correct sense; and the idea is, that his forsaken tent shall be a place of terror - somewhat, perhaps, as we speak of a forsaken house as "haunted." It may be that Bildad refers to some such superstitious fear as we sometimes, and almost always in childhood, connect with the idea of a house in which nobody lives.

Because it is none of his - It is no longer his. It is a forsaken, tenantless dwelling.

Brimstone shall be scattered - Brimstone has been always the image of desolation. Nothing will grow on a field that is covered with sulphur; and the meaning here is, that his house would be utterly desolate and forsaken. Rosenmuller and Noyes suppose that there is an allusion here to a sudden destruction, such as was that of Sodom and Gomorrha. Grotius doubts whether it refers to that or to lightning. Others suppose that lightning is referred to both here and in Genesis 19:24; Deuteronomy 29:23. I can see no evidence here, however, that there is any reference to Sodom and Gomorrha, or that there is any allusion to lightning. If the allusion had been to Sodom, it would have been more full. That was a case "just in point" in the argument; and the fact that was exactly in point, and would have furnished to the friends of Job such an irrefragalbe proof of the position which they were defending, and that it is not worked into the very texture of their argument, is full demonstration, to my mind, that that remarkable event is not referred to in this place. The only thing necessarily implied in the language before us is, that sulphur, the emblem of desolation, would be scattered on his dwelling, and that his dwelling would be wholly desolate.

18:15 It - Destruction, expressed ver. 12 , shall fix its abode with him. Because - Because it is none of his own, being got from others by deceit or violence. Brimstone - It shall be utterly destroyed, as it were, by fire and brimstone. He seems to allude both to the destruction of Sodom, which happened not long before these times, and to the judgment which befel Job, chap. 1:16 .