Job 12:7

Knowledge of God’s Wisdom ¹ 

12:7 “But now, ask the animals and they ²  will teach you,

or the birds of the sky and they will tell you.

Job 28:24

28:24 For he looks to the ends of the earth

and observes everything under the heavens.

Job 41:11

41:11 (Who has confronted ³  me that I should repay? ⁴ 

Everything under heaven belongs to me!) ⁵ 

[12:7]  ¹ sn As J. E. Hartley (Job [NICOT], 216) observes, in this section Job argues that respected tradition “must not be accepted uncritically.”

[12:7]  ² tn The singular verb is used here with the plural collective subject (see GKC 464 §145.k).

[41:11]  ³ tn The verb קָדַם (qadam) means “to come to meet; to come before; to confront” to the face.

[41:11]  ⁴ sn The verse seems an intrusion (and so E. Dhorme, H. H. Rowley, and many others change the pronouns to make it refer to the animal). But what the text is saying is that it is more dangerous to confront God than to confront this animal.

[41:11]  ⁵ tn This line also focuses on the sovereign God rather than Leviathan. H. H. Rowley, however, wants to change לִי־חוּא (li-hu’, “it [belongs] to me”) into לֹא הוּא (lo’ hu’, “there is no one”). So it would say that there is no one under the whole heaven who could challenge Leviathan and live, rather than saying it is more dangerous to challenge God to make him repay.