Job 28:18

No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls,.... Coral is a marine plant, is as hard as a stone, and of such value as to be reckoned among precious stones; [See comments on Ezekiel 27:16].

No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies. Red coral (Ezekiel 27:16). Pearls - literally, what is frozen [ gaabiysh (H1378)]. Probably crystal; and Job 28:17 will then be glass.

No mention shall be made; they are of no value, nor worthy to be named the same day with this, nor fit to be mentioned as a price or recompence wherewith to purchase this. The price; or, the attraction, or acquisition; or rather, the extraction, or drawing forth. For Job useth the word of art which was proper in the taking of pearls, as the following word, rendered by our translators rubies, is understood by divers, both Hebrew and Christian interpreters, and amongst others by the late eminently learned Bochart, who proveth it by divers arguments. Now these pearls are and were taken by men that dived to the bottom of the sea, and drew them out thence, which is the very word which both Arabic and Latin authors use in the case; as indeed the same word is used of all fishermen, who are said to draw forth with their hook, or net, or otherwise, fishes, or any other thing for which they are fishing. Moreover this diving, as it produced great profit, so it was not without some danger and difficulty; for if they heedlessly put their fingers into the gaping shell, within which the pearl was, it speedily closed upon them, and put them to exquisite pain, to the loss of their finger, and sometimes of their life; which is a fit representation of the state of those persons who search after the knowledge of God’ s counsels and ways, and the grounds of them, who as when they modestly inquire into them, and truly discover them, they have infinite advantage and satisfaction therein; so if they pry into them too boldly, searching into those things which God hath concealed, and rashly judging of them above what they know, which Job judged to be his friends’ case, they expose themselves to manifold snares and dangers. And this extraction, or drawing forth, is aptly used concerning this wisdom, which lying very deep and remote from the reach of ordinary men, is not to be obtained without diligent search and consideration. And so the place may be thus translated, the extraction or drawing forth of wisdom is above that (to wit, the extraction) of pearls.

Job 28:18 No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls: for the price of wisdom [is] above rubies.Ver. 18. No mention shall be made of coral] No talk of coral or carbuncle, of pearl, or any other the rarest and richest jewels in all the world. We read of Cleopatra, that vying with Antony in luxury, she drunk up a pearl of incredible price dissolved in vinegar; and of Charles, duke of Burgundy, that in the fight at Nansey, he lost a diamond of that worth, ut eo tota aliqua regio emi posset, that therewith a man might have bought a whole country (Macrob. Sat. lib. 5, cap. 17; Alsted. Chronol.). It was afterwards set in the pope’ s triple crown; but no way worthy to be mentioned in the same day with wisdom. For the price of wisdom is above rubies] Which are so called from their lovely redness. See Lamentations 4:7. Pearls some render it; of which Pliny saith, Principium culmenque rerum ommum pretii margaritae tenent, Pearls are the principal of all precious things. They were so of old; but they are not so today. What huge sums were once given for saints’ relics (as they called them) and popes’ pardons! but now the world is grown wiser. England is no more a babe; there is no man here, but now he knows that they do foolishly that give gold for lead, more weight of that than they receive of this. This and much more to the same purpose speaketh Henry VIII (in his protestation against the pope), who yet, as a faint chapman, went not to the price of this true wisdom; as appeareth by that public speech of his in parliament, There are many that are too busy with their new sumpsimus, and others that dote too much upon their old mumpsimus. The new religion, though true, he envied; the old, though his own, he despised; being as a speckled bird, or a cake half baked, &c.

Verse 18. See also Clarke on "Job 28:16". Ver. 18. 4. ראמות ramoth, CORAL, from ראם raam, to be exalted or elevated; probably from this remarkable property of coral, "it always grows from the tops of marine rocky caverns with the head downwards." Red coral is found in the Mediterranean, about the isles of Majorca and Minorca, on the African coast, and in the Ethiopic ocean. 5. גביש gabish, PEARLS, from גבש gabash, in Arabic, to be smooth, to shave off the hair; and hence gabish, the pearl, the smooth round substance; and also hail or hailstones, because of their resemblance to pearls. The pearl is the production of a shell-fish of the oyster kind, found chiefly in the East Indies, and called berberi; but pearls are occasionally found in the common oyster, as I have myself observed, and in the muscle also. They are of a brilliant sparkling white, perfectly round in general, and formed of coats in the manner of an onion. Out of one oyster I once took six pearls. When large, fine, and without spots, they are valuable. I have seen one that formed the whole body of a Hindoo idol, Creeshna, more than an inch in length, and valued at 300 guineas. Ver. 18. 6. פנינים peninim, RUBIES, from פנה panah, he turned, looked, beheld. The oriental ruby is blood-red, rose-red, or with a tinge of violet. It has occasionally a mixture of blue, and is generally in the form of six-sided prisms. It is a species of the sapphire, and is sometimes chatoyant in its appearance, i.e., has a curious kind of reflection, similar to the cat's eye: and as this is particularly striking, and changes as you turn the stone, hence probably the name peninim, which you derive from פנה panah, to turn, look, behold, c. But some learned men are of opinion that the magnet or loadstone is meant, and it is thus called because of the remarkable property it has of turning north and south. And this notion is rendered the more likely, because it agrees with another word in this verse, expressive of a different property of the magnet, viz., its attractive influence: for the Hebrew words meshech chochmah mippeninim, which we render, The price of wisdom is above rubies, is literally, The ATTRACTION of wisdom is beyond the peninim, the loadstone for all the gold, silver, and precious stones, have strong influence on the human heart, attracting all its passions strongly; yet the attraction of wisdom - that which insures a man's happiness in both worlds - is more powerful and influential, when understood, than all of these, and even than the loadstone, for that can only attract iron; but, through desire of the other, a man, having separated himself from all those earthly entanglements, seeketh and intermeddleth with ALL WISDOM.

18. or of pearls] Rather, of crystal. price of wisdom is above rubies] Or, the possession of wisdom is above (or, more than) pearls, i. e. pearls cannot acquire it or give possession of it. The meaning is scarcely that Wisdom is a more precious thing to possess than pearls.

No mention shall be made of coral - That is, as a price by which to purchase wisdom, or in comparison with wisdom. The margin here is, “Ramoth” - retaining the Hebrew word ראמה râ'mâh.

18. Coral — Ramoth, cognate with the Arabic rama, to be blood red. “Probably the red coral, which was highly prized by the ancients.” — Winer. Pearls — Hebrew, Gabish.