Footnotes - continued
34:6. The received text has "I lie about my case." This may have been one of the pious Emendations of the Scribes. The translation follows the LXX: "He has erred in my judgment."
35:12. More evidence of an active crowd. The audience has a part in the play as the town assembly before which Job is tried. If Job was put on year after year at an annual festival, as seems possible, then the crowd would have learnt its part eventually. At first the playwright would have had to plant confederates in the crowd to guarantee the proper reactions.
36:14. Perishes in youth their soul
Their
life is among the qadeshim.
The qadeshim are literally the clean or holy ones, but the meaning, strangely enough, is male homosexuals, Canaanite temple prostitutes. The King James Version translates "and their life is among the unclean." A complete turnabout of meaning. The temple prostitutes are mentioned at Deut. 23:17, I Kings 14:24, 15:12, 22:46, and II Kings 23:7. With only a change of vowels, we can read qadoshim instead, which yields a more sensible meaning in context. The qadoshim are angels as at Job 5:1 and 15:15.
34:36. The Hebrew plainly says "my father". Elihu refers to God as "my Maker" three times, so why not "my Father"? The Vulgate so translated but the English versions nearly all transform or disregard the phrase.
35:3. Elihu seems to be referring to 21:15. But was Job speaking for himself there or continuing to quote the prosperous sinners of the previous verse? Most English versions assign both 21:14 and 21:15 to the sinners, which puts Elihu a little in the wrong here in chapter 35. There were no quotation marks in ancient Hebrew, though, so there is no way to be sure. The audience/jury will have to decide for itself.
36:29-33. The rearrangement of the lines in these verses is a last ditch attempt to wring meaning from a difficult passage. 'Aliy is a name of God meaning "Most High". Could the "cattle" be a sly reference to the audience?
37:1-13. Job and friends speak? The wording of 37:1 indicates a change of speaker. Also, the writing in this section has a pre-Elihu feel to it.
37:17. Sirocco is the Italian name for the hot south wind. See Luke 12:55.
37:19b. Not-we-set-in-order because of darkness/confusion.
This could be a marginal comment of an early editor trying to make sense of 37:19-24, which is indeed a confusing passage.
38:1. Then YWHW answered Job from the tempest and he said:
The headings in the section of God's speeches from 38:1 to 42:6 may have been added by someone other than the author. There is no proof, only several small reasons which together form a possibility. The question would not even be worth pursuing except that it bears on the status of verse 42:6, which is critical to the meaning of the book.
If the chapter headings are taken as conclusive, then 42:6 belongs to Job, and Job must repent in dust and ashes. But 42:6 may belong to God, in which case the meaning is that God takes pity on Job. Any argument that weakens the authority of the chapter headings strengthens this latter possibility. See the note at 42:6. The note at 38:2 is also relevant.
The name of the God of Israel, YWHW, occurs often in the prose prologue and epilogue. Outside of that it occurs in Job only at 12:9 and in the headings of God's speeches at 38:1, 40:1,3,6 and 42:1. Of course the headings are not the poetry, so the inconsistency may mean nothing at all.
More persuasively, the headings at 38:1 and 40:6 both have God answering Job "from the storm". But if we can believe 37:21,22 then the storm is already over: "Now the light is unseen though it shines above, but arise the wind and clear the skies. Then from Zaphon come gold, fierce splendor of God." However, the last section of chapter 37 is confused and difficult so no definite conclusion can be drawn.
Also, the formula for the headings from 38:1 to 40:1 includes both the name of the speaker and the name of the person spoken to: "The Job answered the Lord," or "Then the Lord said to Job". The headings in the earlier chapters mention only the speaker, not the one spoken to.
38:2. The King James interpretation of 38;2 is generally accepted: "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?" But what a weak opening line for God! True, a theologian's meaning can be wrung from the words. But in Job God is no theologian. I tried and I could neither find nor invent a satisfying translation. For strength of address, compare 38:3.
Verse 38:2 makes more sense as a marginal comment that was later copied into the text. Imagine an early reader of the manuscript, when it was still in its first disarray, recording his reaction in the margin: "Who is this who ignorantly obscures the design?" If 38:1 had not yet been added to the text, then he was probably reacting to God's "Gird your loins...", which, unsignposted, might easily strike a reader as a crude interruption.
38:3b. Court procedures of the time seem to have had one party asking and the other answering. See 13:22.
38:12. Here is Emily Dickenson's rendition:
Write me how many notes there be
In the new Robin's ecstasy
Among the astonished boughs --
How many trips the Tortoise makes --
How many cups the Bee partakes,
The Debauchee of Dews!
Also, who laid the Rainbow's piers,
Also, who leads the docile spheres
By withes of supple blue?
Whose fingers string the stalactite --
Who counts the wampum of the night
To see that none is due?
Who built this little Alban House
And shut the windows down so close
My spirit cannot see?
Who'll let me out some Gala day
With implements to fly away,
Passing Pomposity?
39:17. How odd that God should refer to himself this way. But see 1:8, 2:3, 40:2. What seems to be similar usage at 40:9,19 may not be. See the notes there and at 41:9.
40:7-14. God and man keep changing. Of all that I have learned from the study of Job, this is the most profound. In the twentieth century man has armed himself like God of old. What are we thinking? That God will say in praise that our own right arm can save us?
40:9,19. In these two verses God refers to "El". El was the ancient name of God as well as the common noun for "god". In the 14th century B.C. Canaanite stories from Ugarit, El was the Father of Gods, the Kind, the Compassionate, the Creator of All. In the pagan tradition, El's power was usurped by Baal, who was a storm god, Rider on the Clouds. Yahweh of the Jewish tradition is also a storm god like Baal, but Yahweh is the Creator, too.
In chapters 40 and 41 the references to El may be more pagan than Jewish. Probably not, but see the note below for 41:9.
41:1. Job's call to Leviathan at 3:8 would have aroused a superstitious fear in the crowd. Here in chapter 41 the author releases the audience from his spell by having Leviathan appear. This is God at his most terrible, yet also at his kindest, for he conjures up Leviathan, symbol of chaos, only to defeat him again as he did at the beginning of the world. Thus he negates Job's curse against the night of his conception (3:3) and Job is made whole again.
41:5. Will you play with them as with a bird
And tie him
up for your maidens?
It would be excessively cruel of God to remind Job of his lost children this way. With a small stretch of the Hebrew, the second line can be translated: "And tie him up as your sparrows?" The LXX conflates the two meanings: "Or bind him as a sparrow for a child?"
41:9. Lo, the hope of him is-proved-false
Even at the look of
him he/one is overwhelmed?
With no change to the consonantal text, the preposition "at" can be read as "El", so the second line could mean:
References to myth fit the pattern of Job, which uses concrete imagery in preference to abstract generalization. To translate 41:9 as the dismay of El, though, would suggest it is Baal who is speaking in Job chapter 41, and that seems scarcely credible. The author of Job was in the Jewish tradition, where El and Yahweh were not two gods, but One. See Ex 6:2,3.
Who is dismayed, then, if not El? The KJ interpretation is too prosaic: "shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?" Better to have God speak this line to the crowd: "Even [at] the look of him (Leviathan) wouldn't he (Job) be dismayed?"
42:2-6. These verses are Job's final answer to God. Line 3a and the whole of verse 4 appear to have been copied in from the margin or directly from parallel verses in chapter 38. With the removal of the interlopers, the section begins to make sense, but there is still a problem with 42:6.
42:5. Job sees God with his eye. The story requires the visible presence of God. Satan had said Job would curse God to His face (2:5). The motif continues at 13:15, 13:20, 13:24, 19:26,7, 23:8,9 and 37:24.
42:6. Upon this I reject/despise [something] and am sorry/comforted
For/Concerning/Upon
the dust and ashes.
The verb "reject" normally requires an object. Ancient manuscripts smudged easily, so accidental erasure is one possibility. A daydreaming copyist is another. At 34:33 and 36:5, "reject" is used without an object but the usage in those verses is pretty clearly not applicable here, though the coincidence of three abnormal usages in a row like that does give pause.
The prologue has Job sitting in an ashpit (2:8), so if we assume that 42:6 is his, then we get something like this:
KJ: Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
JPS: Wherefore I abhor my words, and repent,
Seeing
I am dust and ashes.
There are good reasons, though, to give this verse to God instead of to Job.
Job had likened himself to dust and ashes at 30:19. "Dust and ashes" is a memorable phrase in Hebrew: 'awfar v'ayfer. (At Gen 18:27 Abraham also spoke of himself as "dust and ashes".) The Jewish Publication Society version has picked up on this, but since it has Job speaking, JPS has to struggle with the Hebrew.
Also, the Hebrew for "am sorry for / am comforted concerning" is a standard verb-preposition compound. The King James reading is still possible, but Job would have to put a definite break between the verb and the preposition to get his non-standard meaning across, and he would end up sounding awkward and a little pompous: "I reject [something] and I repent --pause-- upon the dust and ashes."
The heading at 42;1 assigns the section to Job, but that heading itself may have been added later by someone other than the author. See the note for 38:1. The next verse (42:7) continues: "And it happened after Jehovah spoke these words/speeches..." This is direct support from the text for the idea that 42:6 belongs to God, but 42:7 may refer to the whole of God's speeches so there is no absolute proof here. Still, in an exchange between Job and God, who would have the last word? And so much more so in the context of a Trial where only God can be Judge.
Four times in the epilogue God speaks proudly of "his servant Job", twice saying Job has spoken "what is right" of Him. If God is so proud of him, why does Job despise himself and repent in dust and ashes? "As God lives" Job had said, "I will maintain my innocence until I die." (27:2-6) If Job has just broken so solemn an oath, why is God so proud of him?
Job has done nothing worthy of repentence in dust and ashes. He did charge God with being unjust. But Job's charge was not in any way corrupt or blameworthy. Rather it was a spirited defense of the truth as best Job could see it. God answered Job's charge by showing him there is a larger view beyond a man's comprehension and Job acknowledged God's answer at 42:3, saying "I spoke of things I did not understand, of wonders beyond my ken... For I had report of you by ear, but now my eye gives sight of you." Why should he go on to abase himself?
In his Messengers of God, Elie Wiesel says, "I prefer to think that the Book's true ending was lost. That Job died without having repented, without having humiliated himself; that he succumbed to his grief an uncompromising and whole man.... The third act of a play is usually a kind of apotheosis; this one is pale, disappointing. The fighter has turned into a lamb. A sad metamorphosis, inexplicable in literary terms."
Inexplicable, too, is the Satan's absence from the story after the prologue. Job's answer to God has proved he will not curse God to His face as the Satan had foretold. So if 42:6 belongs to God, then the Satan is logical for the missing object in the first line: Therefore I reject [the Satan] and take pity upon the dust and ashes." Job's idea was to bring suit against God. Job even worried that there was no fitting "arbiter" between himself and God. (See 9:33). By rejecting the Satan, God effortlessly transcends Job's conception. yes, there is a trial, but God is not one of the parties; he is the Judge. The Satan is the Accuser and Job is the defendant. The verdict goes against the Satan. Job is found innocent. Twenty-four centuries of (abysmal) error is enough! Job was innocent before God, a hero who confirmed God's faith in man.
42:10. In the early years of the Return to Jerusalem from Babylon the
Jews clashed with the Samaritans. See Ezra, chapter 4. If Job
is from that era, the author may be counseling an end to the enmity.
last changed July 3, 1997