Job 28:4-7

28:4 Far from where people live ¹  he sinks a shaft,

in places travelers have long forgotten, ² 

far from other people he dangles and sways. ³ 

28:5 The earth, from which food comes,

is overturned below as though by fire; ⁴ 

28:6 a place whose stones are sapphires ⁵ 

and which contains dust of gold; ⁶ 

28:7 a hidden path ⁷  no bird of prey knows –

no falcon’s ⁸  eye has spotted it.

[28:4]  ¹ 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]  ² 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]  ³ 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]  ⁴ 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]  ⁷ 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]  ⁸ 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]  ¹⁰ 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]  ¹¹ 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.