Job 12:8

12:8 Or speak ¹  to the earth ²  and it will teach you,

or let the fish of the sea declare to you.

Job 28:14

28:14 The deep ³  says, ‘It is not with ⁴  me.’

And the sea says, ‘It is not with me.’

Job 38:8

38:8 “Who shut up ⁵  the sea with doors

when it burst forth, ⁶  coming out of the womb,

[12:8]  ¹ tn The word in the MT means “to complain,” not simply “to speak,” and one would expect animals as the object here in parallel to the last verse. So several commentators have replaced the word with words for animals or reptiles – totally different words (cf. NAB, “reptiles”). The RSV and NRSV have here the word “plants” (see 30:4, 7; and Gen 21:15).

[12:8]  ² tn A. B. Davidson (Job, 90) offers a solution by taking “earth” to mean all the lower forms of life that teem in the earth (a metonymy of subject).

[28:14]  ³ sn The תְּהוֹם (tÿhom) is the “deep” of Gen 1:2, the abyss or primordial sea. It was always understood to be a place of darkness and danger. As remote as it is, it asserts that wisdom is not found there (personification). So here we have the abyss and the sea, then death and destruction – but they are not the places that wisdom resides.

[28:14]  ⁴ tn The בּ (bet) preposition is taken here to mean “with” in the light of the parallel preposition.

[38:8]  ⁵ tn The MT has “and he shut up.” The Vulgate has “Who?” and so many commentaries and editions adopt this reading, if not from the Vulgate, then from the sense of the sequence in the text itself.

[38:8]  ⁶ tn The line uses two expressions, first the temporal clause with גִּיחַ (giakh, “when it burst forth”) and then the finite verb יֵצֵא (yetse’, “go out”) to mark the concomitance of the two actions.