Job 26:11

[daraku]

Job 26:11 The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at his reproof.​

2 Samuel 18:7 Where the people of Israel were slain before the servants of David, and there was there a great slaughter that day of twenty thousand men.

For the battle was there scattered over the face of all the country: and the wood devoured more people that day than the sword devoured.

Is this a figure of speech? what is the meaning of the following verses?

 

[JeanneH]

Is this a figure of speech? what is the meaning of the following verses?

2Sam18:8 The fighting spread throughout the region and, of the troops, the forest claimed more victims that day then did the sword.

I think that so many troops were wounded that they might have crawled off into the wood to hide but died.
Just my thought.

JeanneH

 

[Nita]

Is this a figure of speech? what is the meaning of the following verses?

Footnotes from the Geo Haydock Bible:

JOB 26 Ver. 11. Heaven. The mountains are so styled by Pindar; and the poets represent them supporting the heavens. Totum ferre potest humeris minitantibus orbem. (Petronius) — Yet others understand that power which keeps all things together, (Calmet) or the angels, to whose rule the ancients attributed the celestial bodies. (St. Gregory; Ven. Bede, &c.)

(2nd Sam is II Kings in the Douay. Verse reads: “…and there were many more of the people whom the forest consumed, than whom the sword devoured that day”)

II KINGS 18 Ver. 8. Country; people fighting in great numbers. But the army of Absalom was soon dispersed. (Haydock) — Consumed, viz., by pits and precipices: (Challoner) “wild beasts.” (Syriac, &c.) Many also died of their wounds, and were slain in the wood; (Calmet) so that not less, probably, than 50,000 perished on this fatal day. (Haydock)

The Geo Haydock Commentary can be accessed online at:
haydock1859.tripod.com

Nita

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

A good army trick is to set booby traps in dark places like a forrest.

 

[COPLAND_3]

As usual I go to the Fathers and Doctors, St. Thomas Aquinas says this,

After listing the effects of the divine power on corporeal creatures he shows its effect on spiritual creatures which he calls the pillars of heaven, because their duty, in effect, is to preside over the movements of the heaven. So he says, “The pillars of heaven,” the angels, “tremble and quake with fear at his nod,” that is, they obey him at his nod, and he speaks using the metaphor of a slave obeying the nod of his master in fear and trembling, with fear referring to the soul and trembling to the body. Do not think that there is fear of punishment in the holy angels, for their fear here is called reverential for God: and so their fear refers to the affection, while trembling refers to the exterior effect.