Footnotes - continued
20:11. His bones
are filled with youthful feelings
And/but
with him upon the dust she shall lie down.
"Youthful feelings" is thought to be collective in the Hebrew, and so possible as antecedent for "she" in the second line. "Lie down" here takes both figurative senses associated with the verb: to die, and to have sexual relations. The sexual meaning seems clear in the Hebrew but the English versions shy away.
20:12. Say sweet in his mouth is evil
(f.),
He hide/efface
her under his tongue,
20:13. He have compassion to her and not let her go,
And he
keep her in the middle of his palate,
20:14. His food in his bowels is changed,
Gall
of asps in his guts.
The Hebrew for verses 12 and 13 is not quite standard. Three of the verbs in these verses contain epenthetic nuns!
20:15. Zophar's meaning here could be that God will inherit the rich man's wealth for redistribution to the poor. Zophar's revolutionary thoughts might have been recognizable -- and distasteful -- to an audience of farmers, merchants and tradesmen.
20:17. From Michael Coogan's wonderful translatoin of the 14th century BC Ras Shamra myths: "In a dream of El the Kind, the Compassionate, in a vision of the Creator of All, the heavens rained down oil, the wadis ran with honey." See also Ex 3:8, the land of milk and honey.
20:25. The sinner is under attack from above. For a parallel in the New Testament, see John 19:34, "But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water."
21:30. That as
to the day of calamity spared is the wicked,
As to
the day of wraths they are led forth.
By the deletion of a single letter, the "wraths" of 30b becomes "thick clouds": One the day of dense cloud they escaped. (I.e., the travelers of v.29 escaped.) The dark clouds are a sign that when God is angry, he destroys the good and the evil together without paying close attention. If God does not discriminate, then Job cannot be expected to : "Who will tell the wealthy sinner what he is to his face?" Job asks.
This translation looks back to Zophar's "clouds" at 20:6 and "darkness" at 20:26 and forward to the otherwise enigmatic remark of Eliphaz at 22:13, 14: "You ask 'What does God really know? Can he rule through dark shadow, concealed by thick clouds, unable to see, as he walks the vault of heaven?'" See also Elihu's charge against Job at verse 35:15.
22:2. Eliphaz intimates that the wise man serves God for the reward.
22:3. But God does take pleasure in Job's perfection! See 1:8 and 2:3.
22:21. Make-it-habit,
please, with him and be at peace;
In them
your increase shall be prosperity.
The prepositional phrase "in them", which opens the second line, is difficult. Several English versions interpret freely: "thereby", but this meaning is adopted only because no other can be discovered. If Job was played, Eliphaz could be referring to the crowd. "Just find your God again," he tells Job, "and then these good people will see to it that you get a second start in life. Strew your gold in the dust... Let the Almighty be your gold and your silver...Then when you pray, He will hear you...a light will shine on your ways." When the play is done the audience will have a chance to contribute toward Job's renewed prosperity. See 42:11.
22:30. Job himself, by a fine irony, delivers his three friends at the end of the story. See 42:7-10. See also Ezek: 14:12-20.
23:7. The Satan had been sure Job would curse God to his face, but Job is still hoping for justice from God. To this extent the author has preserved the image of Job in the children's story as long-suffering and patient.
23:10. Job explains why he is suddenly marching up and down, back and forth like a madman. He is merely following in God's footsteps!
26:5-14. This section seems to work in its new spot after chapter 23, but it may have been intended for Bildad instead of for Job.
Chapters 24 through 30 are clearly jumbled. Job's final speech is two or three times longer than average, while Bildad's speech in chapter 25 is very short and Zophar does not get a final speech at all. Moreover, sections of Job's speech have him saying things he would never agree to. See 24:20 and 27:7. Then, too, chapter 28 is a self-contained wisdom poem which though relevant to the Book of Job does not make sense in its place.
There is nothing for it but to reorder the text as best we can, realizing that the original order is probably lost forever. Here is the (relatively simple) rearrangement adopted for the current edition:
These notes will be kept in chapter and verse order for easier reference.
26:2-4. In these three verses Job addresses someone, probably Bildad, in the second person singular. Similar puzzling usage of the singular occurs at 16:3b and 21:3b and elsewhere. How can the reader be sure that Job singled out Bildad rather than Eliphaz or Zophar?
Good modern writers realize that text is more ambiguous than speech and must be constructed carefully if it is to convey the intended meaning. But the Hebrews seem to have had little regard for the plight of the reader. Pronouns with ambiguous reference are nearly a signature for the age. Maybe they thought of written language less as a medium in its own right and more as an aid to the memory in the reconstruction of the spoken or chanted word. Or maybe Job really was a play!
26:7. As happens often in Job, the text is far from clear. The word 'zaphon' in Hebrew means 'north'. Mount Zaphon on the North Syrian coast was the stronghold of Baal according to the Ugaritic texts of the fourteenth century B.C. Still, one might have expected the heavens to be stretched out, not the north or a mountain, however important.
27:19,20. The variations of tense are in the Hebrew original -- a sign of Zophar's frenzy.
27:23. He claps at him his hands
And hisses
at him from his standing-place.
The usual assumption is that Zophar is still speaking and that the object of the clapping and the hissing must be Job. The "he" of the verbs might be God or the East wind from verse 21. Also, though, the Hebrews had a way of saying "one" to mean persons in general, so the meaning might be:
They will clap at Job their hands
And hiss at Job from their place.
Several English versions forsake grammar and take the "at him" of the second line as a direct object instead of an indirect object. The technique is questionable, but the result is intriguing if we interpret the verse as a marginal comment, in which case Zophar might be the object:
The crowd will clap at Zophar their hands
And hiss Zophar from his place.
There is no need to be ungrammatical, though. Allow the verse as a marginal comment and there it is, the world's earliest surviving stage direction (in Hebrew, anyway):
Zophar claps his hands at Job
And hisses at Job from his station.
28:1. Chapter 28 is a self-contained wisdom poem which is related to Job by theme and allusion. It does not represent the viewpoint of any of the characters but seems to be instead the author's commentary on his play.
28:28. This verse is suspected of being a later addition because the piety of the verse contradicts the spirit of the dialogue. Also, the Hebrew word 'Adonay - "Lord" - occurs only here in Job and the phrase "And he said to man" is outside the regular meter.
But the phrase that stands outside the meter serves very well as an accent and some manuscripts have YWHW instead of 'Adonay. If chapter 28 stood at the end of the play, then the last verse of the play pairs the first verse, which introduced Job as a man who "feared God and shunned evil." By returning to the beginning from the end, the author would avoid making a conclusion. Thus he might broaden the minds of his audience without cluttering up the world with yet another definite opinion.
29:10. Job is referring to Zophar's clever remark at 20:13. Elihu takes up the thread at 33:2.
30:18. With great strength/ability is disguised my garment
like
a mouth of my tunic girds me round
Or, with the original consonants unchanged, the second line can be read:
my hand my tunic closes round me
Either way the verse is senseless in context. The scholars make varoius changes to the Hebrew with little success and the versions differ greatly. My speculation is that 30:18 is a marginal comment from the actor who played Job, maybe the author himself, explaining how his tunic was made specially so he could suddenly become like dust and ashes.
30:19. Dust and ashes: 'awfar v'ayfer. A pretty turn of words and important to remember for reference at 42:6.
30:31. This verse may be a direction to the musicians. Musical interludes and accompaniment seem likely if Job was a staged production.
31:5-8. Technically, the subordinate "if" clause of a conditional sentence is the protasis and the main clause is the apodosis. "If my steps have strayed from the path (protasis), then may I sow and another eat (apodosis)." In chapter 31 the pattern recurs that several protases share an apodosis. The Hebrew for "if", though, can also be an interrogative particle introducing a question which expects the answer "no". So at 31:5 we might translate: "Have I walked with falsehood or hurried my footsteps to deceive?"
31:10. Though clearly sexual from the context, the meaning of these two verbs is not quite explicit in the Hebrew. In 10a the verb "to grind" can mean to do a slave's work and the literal meaning of the second line is "And others kneel upon her." We can read Job's character here. His innocence is the first line of protection for his wife against the consequences of his oath, but he uses his wit to make doubly sure she will come to no harm.
31:21,22. An example of the lex talionis, though Job offers even more than is due. For raising his hand, he will lose his arm. See Ex 21:23-25.
31:35. A pleasing addition to the action could be made in connection with this verse. The storyteller of chapters 1, 2 and 42 could also play a scribe unobtrusively taking down in a scroll every word that Job and his friends utter. Here at 31:35 he could present the scroll to Job for his signature.
We can imaging that when the play was originally produced in 465 B.C., the rumour was circulated that the script had been found in the wall of an old house recently knocked down in an earthquake. Then the play could have been advertised as the true words of Job, recently discovered, etc, etc. Of course, in that case there must have been someone present at the original exchange between Job and his friends to take it all down. To emphasize the circularity of the argument, the scroll that the scribe writes in could be the same that the storyteller reads from.
The presence of a scribe would also help explain Job's sudden conviction at 19:25 that his eventual exoneration was assured. In verses 19:23 and 19:24 Job wishes that his words could be preserved. "Who then will grant that my words be written down?" he asks. At that moment the scribe could bring herself to Job's attention for the first time. Job would take heart because his wish had been so swiftly fulfilled.
31:37. "I would approach him like a prince." Job no longer fears God.
32:3. The Hebrew has "put Job in the wrong" instead of "put God in the wrong" -- one of the eighteen Emendations of the Scribes.
32:6. The Elihu speeches, at least through 36:22, are more direct in style that the rest of Job. They may even have been written by someone else entirely or added in the author's old age. More likely though, their plainer style is a deliberate mark of Elihu's character. See 32:21,22 where Elihu disclaims any truck with the flowery talk of the upper class. Also, if Elihu came from the audience, then his would be modern instead of ancient speech.
Elihu is an intelligent young man. His ability to reason appears to outstrip that of Job and his friends. With almost mathematical logic he proves that Job must have done something to deserve his punishment. But we know that Job is innocent so the net effect is to discredit rational argument and logic as too shallow. Wisdom is more elusive than Elihu imagines. For all his intelligence and for all the seriousness of what he has to say, Elihu is in part a buffoon, full of wind as he himself proclaims.
The speeches of Elihu are powerfully written, a positive addition to the Book of Job. Still it is a wonder why there should be such a long interlude between Job's great oath and God's response. As a guess, the time might have been used to erect a tent of darkness over the crowd. The storm inside the tent would play well in itself and it would heighten the effect of God's appearance in chapter 38. Also, the author would have enjoyed illustrating the "storm and eclipse" of 3:5, the "darkness at noon" from 5:14 and the sudden collapse of a "tent whose mainstay has been loosened" from 4:21.
32:21,22. The dropping of honorific titles may have been a recognizable trait among the young or even a sign of membership in some particular group of social levelers. Zophar seems to have been a social leveler, too, of the distribute-the-wealth sort. Throughout Job there are signs that the book was written in a time of chaos, a time when many were made homeless by economic dislocation, a time when the world was given into the hands of the wicked. Amidst these calamities authority itself came into question, even that of God. See also 34:17-19.
33:2. Today among the Arabs the cluck indicates dismay. Elihu is referring to verses 20:13 and 29:10.
33:16-18. According to Elihu, Job's suffering is less a punishment for his past misdeeds than a warning lest he stray from the path. At 34:7,8 Elihu does not accuse Job of wrongdoing, but only of associating with the wicked. See the section on Elihu in the Commentary of Robert Gordis.
34:2-15. These lines are good evidence that Job was played before a live crowd. Elihu would not be addressing the three friends in this manner, so he must be interacting with the audience here.
last changed September 2, 1997