Job 9:25

Post - A runner; courier.

Swifter than a post - מני רץ minni rats, than a runner. The light-footed messenger or courier who carries messages from place to place. They flee away - The Chaldee says, My days are swifter than the shadow of a flying bird. So swiftly do they flee away that I cannot discern them; and when past they cannot be recalled. There is a sentiment like this in Virgil, Geor. lib. iii., ver. 284: -

Sed Fugit interea, Cubit Irreparabile tempus! -

"But in the meanwhile time flies! irreparable time flies away!"

Now my days are swifter than a post - Than a courier, runner, or racer, רוּץ rûts. Vulgate, cursore; Septuagint, δρομέως dromeōs, a racer. The word is not unfrequently applied to the runners or couriers, that carried royal commands in ancient times. It is applied to the mounted couriers of the Persians who carried the royal edicts to the distant provinces, Esther 3:13, Esther 3:15; Esther 8:14, and to the body-guard and royal messengers of Saul and of David, 1 Samuel 22:17; 2 Kings 10:25. The common rate of traveling in the East is exceedingly slow. The caravans move little more than two miles an hour. Couriers are however, employed who go either on dromedaries, on horses, or on foot, and who travel with great rapidity. Lady Montague says that "after the defeat; at Peterwaradin, they (the couriers on dromedaries) far outran the fleetest horses, and brought the first news of the battle at Belgrade." The messengers in Barbary who carry despatches, it is said, will run one hundred and fifty miles in twenty-four hours (Harmer's Observa. ii. 200, ed. 1808), and it has been said that the messengers among the American savages would run an hundred and twenty miles in the twenty-four hours. In Egypt, it is a common thing for an Arab on foot to accompany a rider, and to keep up with the horse when at full gallop, and to do this for a long time without apparent fatigue. The meaning of Job here is, that his life was short, and that his days were passing swiftly away, not like the slow caravan, but like the most fleet messenger compare the note at Job 7:6.

They see no good - I am not permitted to enjoy happiness. My life is a life of misery.

9:25 Now - What he had said of the calamities which God frequently inflicts upon good men, he now exemplifies in himself. My days - The days of my life. Post - Who rides upon swift horses. See - I enjoy no good in them. Seeing is often put for experiencing either good or evil.