Job 1:14-15

1:14 and a messenger came to Job, saying, “The oxen were plowing ¹  and the donkeys were grazing beside them, 1:15 and the Sabeans ²  swooped down ³  and carried them all away, and they killed ⁴  the servants with the sword! ⁵  And I – only I alone ⁶  – escaped to tell you!”

[1:14]  ¹ tn The use of the verb “to be” with the participle gives emphasis to the continuing of the action in the past (GKC 360 §116.r).

[1:15]  ² tn The LXX has “the spoilers spoiled them” instead of “the Sabeans swooped down.” The translators might have connected the word to שְָׁבָה (shavah, “to take captive”) rather than שְׁבָא (shÿva’, “Sabeans”), or they may have understood the name as general reference to all types of Bedouin invaders from southern Arabia (HALOT 1381 s.v. שְׁבָא 2.c).

[1:15]  ³ tn The Hebrew is simply “fell” (from נָפַל, nafal). To “fall upon” something in war means to attack quickly and suddenly.

[1:15]  ⁴ sn Job’s servants were probably armed and gave resistance, which would be the normal case in that time. This was probably why they were “killed with the sword.”

[1:15]  ⁵ tn Heb “the edge/mouth of the sword”; see T. J. Meek, “Archaeology and a Point of Hebrew Syntax,” BASOR 122 (1951): 31-33.

[1:15]  ⁶ tn The pleonasms in the verse emphasize the emotional excitement of the messenger.