Discovery BoxJob 27:7--28:28
Context27:7 “May my enemy be like the wicked, 1
my adversary 2 like the unrighteous. 3
27:8 For what hope does the godless have when he is cut off, 4
when God takes away his life? 5
27:9 Does God listen to his cry
when distress overtakes him?
27:10 Will he find delight 6 in the Almighty?
Will he call out to God at all times?
27:11 I will teach you 7 about the power 8 of God;
What is on the Almighty’s mind 9 I will not conceal.
27:12 If you yourselves have all seen this,
Why in the world 10 do you continue this meaningless talk? 11
27:13 This is the portion of the wicked man
allotted by God, 12
the inheritance that evildoers receive
from the Almighty.
27:14 If his children increase – it is for the sword! 13
His offspring never have enough to eat. 14
27:15 Those who survive him are buried by the plague, 15
and their 16 widows do not mourn for them.
27:16 If he piles up silver like dust
and stores up clothing like mounds of clay,
27:17 what he stores up 17 a righteous man will wear,
and an innocent man will inherit his silver.
27:18 The house he builds is as fragile as a moth’s cocoon, 18
like a hut 19 that a watchman has made.
27:19 He goes to bed wealthy, but will do so no more. 20
When he opens his eyes, it is all gone. 21
27:20 Terrors overwhelm him like a flood; 22
at night a whirlwind carries him off.
27:21 The east wind carries him away, and he is gone;
it sweeps him out of his place.
27:22 It hurls itself against him without pity 23
as he flees headlong from its power.
27:23 It claps 24 its hands at him in derision
and hisses him away from his place. 25
III. Job’s Search for Wisdom (28:1-28)
No Known Road to Wisdom 2628:1 “Surely 27 there is a mine 28 for silver,
and a place where gold is refined. 29
28:2 Iron is taken from the ground, 30
and rock is poured out 31 as copper.
28:3 Man puts an end to the darkness; 32
he searches the farthest recesses
for the ore in the deepest darkness. 33
28:4 Far from where people live 34 he sinks a shaft,
in places travelers have long forgotten, 35
far from other people he dangles and sways. 36
28:5 The earth, from which food comes,
is overturned below as though by fire; 37
28:6 a place whose stones are sapphires 38
and which contains dust of gold; 39
28:7 a hidden path 40 no bird of prey knows –
no falcon’s 41 eye has spotted it.
28:8 Proud beasts 42 have not set foot on it,
and no lion has passed along it.
28:9 On the flinty rock man has set to work 43 with his hand;
he has overturned mountains at their bases. 44
28:10 He has cut out channels 45 through the rocks;
his eyes have spotted 46 every precious thing.
28:11 He has searched 47 the sources 48 of the rivers
and what was hidden he has brought into the light.
28:12 “But wisdom – where can it be found?
Where is the place of understanding?
28:13 Mankind does not know its place; 49
it cannot be found in the land of the living.
28:14 The deep 50 says, ‘It is not with 51 me.’
And the sea says, ‘It is not with me.’
28:15 Fine gold cannot be given in exchange for it,
nor can its price be weighed out in silver.
28:16 It cannot be measured out for purchase 52 with the gold of Ophir,
with precious onyx 53 or sapphires.
28:17 Neither gold nor crystal 54 can be compared with it,
nor can a vase 55 of gold match its worth.
28:18 Of coral and jasper no mention will be made;
the price 56 of wisdom is more than pearls. 57
28:19 The topaz of Cush 58 cannot be compared with it;
it cannot be purchased with pure gold.
28:20 “But wisdom – where does it come from? 59
Where is the place of understanding?
28:21 For 60 it has been hidden
from the eyes of every living creature,
and from the birds of the sky it has been concealed.
28:22 Destruction 61 and Death say,
‘With our ears we have heard a rumor about where it can be found.’ 62
28:23 God understands the way to it,
and he alone knows its place.
28:24 For he looks to the ends of the earth
and observes everything under the heavens.
28:25 When he made 63 the force of the wind
and measured 64 the waters with a gauge.
28:26 When he imposed a limit 65 for the rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm, 66
28:27 then he looked at wisdom 67 and assessed its value; 68
he established 69 it and examined it closely. 70
28:28 And he said to mankind,
‘The fear of the Lord 71 – that is wisdom,
and to turn away from evil is understanding.’” 72
[27:7] 1 sn Of course, he means like his enemy when he is judged, not when he is thriving in prosperity and luxury.
[27:7] 2 tn The form is the Hitpolel participle from קוּם (qum): “those who are rising up against me,” or “my adversary.”
[27:7] 3 tc The LXX made a free paraphrase: “No, but let my enemies be as the overthrow of the ungodly, and they that rise up against me as the destruction of transgressors.”
[27:8] 4 tn The verb יִבְצָע (yivtsa’) means “to cut off.” It could be translated transitively or intransitively – the latter is better here (“when he is cut off”). Since the next line speaks of prayer, some have thought this verse should be about prayer. Mandelkern, in his concordance (p. 228b), suggested the verb should be “when he prays” (reading יִפְגַּע [yifga’] in place of יִבְצָע [yivtsa’]).
[27:8] 5 tn The verb יֵשֶׁל (yeshel) is found only here. It has been related spoils [or sheaves]”); שָׁאַל (sha’al, “to ask”); נָשָׂא (nasa’, “to lift up” [i.e., pray]); and a host of others.
[27:10] 7 tn See the note on 22:26 where the same verb is employed.
[27:11] 10 tn The object suffix is in the plural, which gives some support to the idea Job is speaking to them.
[27:11] 11 tn Heb “the hand of.”
[27:11] 12 tn Heb “[what is] with Shaddai.”
[27:12] 13 tn The interrogative uses the demonstrative pronoun in its emphatic position: “Why in the world…?” (IBHS 312-13 §17.4.3c).
[27:12] 14 tn The text has the noun “vain thing; breath; vapor,” and then a denominative verb from the same root: “to become vain with a vain thing,” or “to do in vain a vain thing.” This is an example of the internal object, or a cognate accusative (see GKC 367 §117.q). The LXX has “you all know that you are adding vanity to vanity.”
[27:13] 16 tn The expression “allotted by God” interprets the simple prepositional phrase in the text: “with/from God.”
[27:14] 19 tn R. Gordis (Job, 294) identifies this as a breviloquence. Compare Ps 92:8 where the last two words also constitute the apodosis.
[27:14] 20 tn Heb “will not be satisfied with bread/food.”
[27:15] 22 tn The text says “will be buried in/by death.” A number of passages in the Bible use “death” to mean the plague that kills (see Jer 15:2; Isa 28:3; and BDB 89 s.v. בְּ 2.a). In this sense it is like the English expression for the plague, “the Black Death.”
[27:15] 23 tc The LXX has “their widows” to match the plural, and most commentators harmonize in the same way.
[27:17] 25 tn The text simply repeats the verb from the last clause. It could be treated as a separate short clause: “He may store it up, but the righteous will wear it. But it also could be understood as the object of the following verb, “[what] he stores up the righteous will wear.” The LXX simply has, “All these things shall the righteous gain.”
[27:18] 28 tn Heb כָעָשׁ (kha’ash, “like a moth”), but this leaves room for clarification. Some commentators wanted to change it to “bird’s nest” or just “nest” (cf. NRSV) to make the parallelism; see Job 4:14. But the word is not found. The LXX has a double expression, “as moths, as a spider.” So several take it as the spider’s web, which is certainly unsubstantial (cf. NAB, NASB, NLT; see Job 8:14).
[27:18] 29 tn The Hebrew word is the word for “booth,” as in the Feast of Booths. The word describes something that is flimsy; it is not substantial at all.
[27:19] 31 tc The verb is the Niphal יֵאָסֵף (ye’asef), from אָסַף (’asaf, “to gather”). So, “he lies down rich, but he is not gathered.” This does not make much sense. It would mean “he will not be gathered for burial,” but that does not belong here. Many commentators accept the variant יֹאסִף (yo’sif) stood for יוֹסִיף (yosif, “will [not] add”). This is what the LXX and the Syriac have. This leads to the interpretive translation that “he will do so no longer.”
[27:19] 32 tn Heb “and he is not.” One view is that this must mean that he dies, not that his wealth is gone. R. Gordis (Job, 295) says the first part should be made impersonal: “when one opens one’s eyes, the wicked is no longer there.” E. Dhorme (Job, 396) has it more simply: “He has opened his eyes, and it is for the last time.” But the other view is that the wealth goes overnight. In support of this is the introduction into the verse of the wealthy. The RSV, NRSV, ESV, and NLT take it that “wealth is gone.”
[27:20] 34 tn Many commentators want a word parallel to “in the night.” And so we are offered בַּיּוֹם (bayyom, “in the day”) for כַמַּיִם (khammayim, “like waters”) as well as a number of others. But “waters” sometimes stand for major calamities, and so may be retained here. Besides, not all parallel structures are synonymous.
[27:22] 37 tn The verb is once again functioning in an adverbial sense. The text has “it hurls itself against him and shows no mercy.”
[27:23] 40 tn If the same subject is to be carried through here, it is the wind. That would make this a bold personification, perhaps suggesting the force of the wind. Others argue that it is unlikely that the wind claps its hands. They suggest taking the verb with an indefinite subject: “he claps” means “one claps. The idea is that of people rejoicing when the wicked are gone. But the parallelism is against this unless the second line is changed as well. R. Gordis (Job, 296) has “men will clap their hands…men will whistle upon him.”
[27:23] 41 tn Or “hisses at him from its place” (ESV).
[28:1] 43 sn As the book is now arranged, this chapter forms an additional speech by Job, although some argue that it comes from the writer of the book. The mood of the chapter is not despair, but wisdom; it anticipates the divine speeches in the end of the book. This poem, like many psalms in the Bible, has a refrain (vv. 12 and 20). These refrains outline the chapter, giving three sections: there is no known road to wisdom (1-11); no price can buy it (12-19); and only God has it, and only by revelation can man posses it (20-28).
[28:1] 44 tn The poem opens with כִּי (ki). Some commentators think this should have been “for,” and that the poem once stood in another setting. But there are places in the Bible where this word occurs with the sense of “surely” and no other meaning (cf. Gen 18:20).
[28:1] 45 tn The word מוֹצָא (motsa’, from יָצָא [yatsa’, “go out”]) is the word for “mine,” or more simply, “source.” Mining was not an enormous industry in the land of Canaan or Israel; mined products were imported. Some editors have suggested alternative readings: Dahood found in the word the root for “shine” and translated the MT as “smelter.” But that is going too far. P. Joüon suggested “place of finding,” reading מִמְצָא (mimtsa’) for מוֹצָא (motsa’; see Bib 11 [1930]: 323).
[28:1] 46 tn The verb יָזֹקּוּ (yazoqqu) translated “refined,” comes from זָקַק (zaqaq), a word that basically means “to blow.” From the meaning “to blow; to distend; to inflate” derives the meaning for refining.
[28:2] 47 tn The verb יָצוּק (yatsuq) is usually translated as a passive participle “is smelted” (from יָצַק [yatsaq, “to melt”]): “copper is smelted from the ore” (ESV) or “from the stone, copper is poured out” (as an imperfect from צוּק [tsuq]). But the rock becomes the metal in the process. So according to R. Gordis (Job, 304) the translation should be: “the rock is poured out as copper.” E. Dhorme (Job, 400), however, defines the form in the text as “hard,” and simply has it “hard stone becomes copper.”
[28:3] 49 sn The text appears at first to be saying that by opening up a mine shaft, or by taking lights down below, the miner dispels the darkness. But the clause might be more general, meaning that man goes deep into the earth as if it were day.
[28:3] 50 tn The verse ends with “the stone of darkness and deep darkness.” The genitive would be location, describing the place where the stones are found.
[28:4] 52 tc The first part of this verse, “He cuts a shaft far from the place where people live,” has received a lot of attention. The word for “live” is גָּר (gar). Some of the proposals are: “limestone,” on the basis of the LXX; “far from the light,” reading נֵר (ner); “by a foreign people,” taking the word to means “foreign people”; “a foreign people opening shafts”; or taking gar as “crater” based on Arabic. Driver puts this and the next together: “a strange people who have been forgotten cut shafts” (see AJSL 3 [1935]: 162). L. Waterman had “the people of the lamp” (“Note on Job 28:4,” JBL 71 [1952]: 167ff). And there are others. Since there is really no compelling argument in favor of one of these alternative interpretations, the MT should be preserved until shown to be wrong.
[28:4] 53 tn Heb “forgotten by the foot.” This means that there are people walking above on the ground, and the places below, these mines, are not noticed by the pedestrians above.
[28:4] 54 sn This is a description of the mining procedures. Dangling suspended from a rope would be a necessary part of the job of going up and down the shafts.
[28:5] 55 sn The verse has been properly understood, on the whole, as comparing the earth above and all its produce with the upheaval down below.
[28:6] 58 tn It is probably best to take “place” in construct to the rest of the colon, with an understood relative clause: “a place, the rocks of which are sapphires.”
[28:6] 59 sn H. H. Rowley (Job [NCBC], 181) suggests that if it is lapis lazuli, then the dust of gold would refer to the particles of iron pyrite found in lapis lazuli which glitter like gold.
[28:7] 61 tn The “path” could refer to the mine shaft or it could refer to wisdom. The former seems more likely in the present context; the word “hidden is supplied in the translation to indicate the mines are “hidden” from sharp-eyed birds of prey above.
[28:7] 62 sn The kind of bird mentioned here is debated. The LXX has “vulture,” and so some commentaries follow that. The emphasis on the sight favors the view that it is the falcon.
[28:8] 64 tn Heb “the sons of pride.” In Job 41:26 the expression refers to carnivorous wild beasts.
[28:9] 67 tn The Hebrew verb is simply “to stretch out; to send” (שָׁלח, shalakh). With יָדוֹ (yado, “his hand”) the idea is that of laying one’s hand on the rock, i.e., getting to work on the hardest of rocks.
[28:9] 68 tn The Hebrew מִשֹּׁרֶשׁ (mishoresh) means “from/at [their] root [or base].” In mining, people have gone below ground, under the mountains, and overturned rock and dirt. It is also interesting that here in a small way humans do what God does – overturn mountains (cf. 9:5).
[28:10] 70 tn Or “tunnels.” The word is יְאֹרִים (yÿ’orim), the word for “rivers” and in the singular, the Nile River. Here it refers to tunnels or channels through the rocks.
[28:10] 71 tn Heb “his eye sees.”
[28:11] 73 tc The translation “searched” follows the LXX and Vulgate; the MT reads “binds up” or “dams up.” This latter translation might refer to the damming of water that might seep into a mine (HALOT 289 s.v. חבשׁ; cf. ESV, NJPS, NASB, REB, NLT).
[28:11] 74 tc The older translations had “he binds the streams from weeping,” i.e., from trickling (מִבְּכִי, mibbÿkhi). But the Ugaritic parallel has changed the understanding, reading “toward the spring of the rivers” (`m mbk nhrm). Earlier than that discovery, the versions had taken the word as a noun as well. Some commentators had suggested repointing the Hebrew. Some chose מַבְּכֵי (mabbÿkhe, “sources”). Now there is much Ugaritic support for the reading (see G. M. Landes, BASOR 144 [1956]: 32f.; and H. L. Ginsberg, “The Ugaritic texts and textual criticism,” JBL 62 [1943]: 111).
[28:13] 76 tc The LXX has “its way, apparently reading דַּרְכָה (darkhah) in place of עֶרְכָּהּ (’erkah, “place”). This is adopted by most modern commentators. But R. Gordis (Job, 308) shows that this change is not necessary, for עֶרֶךְ (’erekh) in the Bible means “order; row; disposition,” and here “place.” An alternate meaning would be “worth” (NIV, ESV).
[28:14] 79 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] 80 tn The בּ (bet) preposition is taken here to mean “with” in the light of the parallel preposition.
[28:16] 82 tn The word actually means “weighed,” that is, lifted up on the scale and weighed, in order to purchase.
[28:16] 83 tn The exact identification of these stones is uncertain. Many recent English translations, however, have “onyx” and “sapphires.”
[28:17] 85 tn The word is from זָכַךְ (zakhakh, “clear”). It describes a transparent substance, and so “glass” is an appropriate translation. In the ancient world it was precious and so expensive.
[28:17] 86 tc The MT has “vase”; but the versions have a plural here, suggesting jewels of gold.
[28:18] 88 tn The word מֶשֶׁךְ (meshekh) comes from a root meaning “to grasp; to seize; to hold,” and so the derived noun means “grasping; acquiring; taking possession,” and therefore, “price” (see the discussion in R. Gordis, Job, 309). Gray renders it “acquisition” (so A. Cohen, AJSL 40 [1923/24]: 175).
[28:18] 89 tn In Lam 4:7 these are described as red, and so have been identified as rubies (so NIV) or corals.
[28:19] 91 tn Or “Ethiopia.” In ancient times this referred to the region of the upper Nile, rather than modern Ethiopia (formerly known as Abyssinia).
[28:20] 94 tn The refrain is repeated, except now the verb is תָּבוֹא (tavo’, “come”).
[28:21] 97 tn The vav on the verb is unexpressed in the LXX. It should not be overlooked, for it introduces a subordinate clause of condition (R. Gordis, Job, 310).
[28:22] 101 tn Heb “heard a report of it,” which means a report of its location, thus “where it can be found.”
[28:25] 103 tn Heb “he gave weight to the wind.” The form is the infinitive construct with the ל (lamed) preposition. Some have emended it to change the preposition to the temporal בּ (bet) on the basis of some of the versions (e.g., Latin and Syriac) that have “who made.” This is workable, for the infinitive would then take on the finite tense of the previous verbs. An infinitive of purpose does not work well, for that would be saying God looked everywhere in order to give wind its proper weight (see R. Gordis, Job, 310).
[28:25] 104 tn The verb is the Piel perfect, meaning “to estimate the measure” of something. In the verse, the perfect verb continues the function of the infinitive preceding it, as if it had a ו (vav) prefixed to it. Whatever usage that infinitive had, this verb is to continue it (see GKC 352 §114.r).
[28:26] 107 tn Or “thunderbolt,” i.e., lightning. Heb “the roaring of voices/sounds,” which describes the nature of the storm.
[28:27] 109 tn Heb “it”; the referent (wisdom) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[28:27] 110 tn The verb סָפַר (safar) in the Piel basically means “to tell; to declare; to show” or “to count; to number.” Many commentators offer different suggestions for the translation. “Declared” (as in the RSV, NASB, and NRSV) would be the simplest – but to whom did God declare it? Besides “appraised” which is the view of Pope, Dhorme and others (cf. NAB, NIV), J. Reider has suggested “probed” (“Etymological studies in biblical Hebrew,” VT 2 [1952]: 127), Strahan has “studied,” and Kissane has “reckoned.” The difficulty is that the line has a series of verbs, which seem to build to a climax; but without more details it is hard to know how to translate them when they have such a range of meaning.
[28:27] 111 tc The verb כּוּן (kun) means “to establish; to prepare” in this stem. There are several
[28:27] 112 tn The verb חָקַר (khaqar) means “to examine; to search out.” Some of the language used here is anthropomorphic, for the sovereign
[28:28] 112 tc A number of medieval Hebrew manuscripts have YHWH (“
[28:28] 113 tc Many commentators delete this verse because (1) many read the divine name Yahweh (translated “
