Job 1

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The land of Uz (erets Uts) is geographically ambiguous — Lamentations 4:21 associates Uz with Edom, while Genesis 10:23 links it to Aram. The deliberate vagueness places Job outside the land of Israel and outside the Mosaic covenant, making his story a universal exploration of suffering rather than an Israelite-specific one.
2. The fourfold description (tam, yashar, yere Elohim, sar me-ra) will be quoted verbatim by God to the Adversary in verse 8, confirming that this is not merely the narrator's assessment but God's own evaluation of Job.

Translator Notes

1. Seven sons and three daughters total ten children — the number of completeness. The numbers are literary as well as literal: seven is the number of divine fullness and three is the number of completeness. Together they signal that Job's family, like his character, is whole and abundant. This perfect number will be restored exactly in 42:13.

Translator Notes

1. The inventory follows the same pattern of completeness as the children: seven thousand, three thousand, five hundred, five hundred — round, full numbers. The phrase gadol mi-kol bene qedem ('greatest of all the sons of the east') establishes Job as the wealthiest and most prominent figure in the entire eastern region. Bene qedem ('sons of the east') refers to the peoples east of Israel — Arameans, Edomites, and Arabian tribes. Job's greatness is measured in the currency of the ancient pastoral world: livestock and household servants.

Translator Notes

1. The phrase beit ish yomo ('the house of each man on his day') suggests a rotating cycle of feasting — each brother hosted in turn. The inclusion of the three sisters in the feasting is notable: in a patriarchal context, the deliberate mention that the sisters were invited signals family harmony and completeness. The picture is one of prosperous, unified family life — which makes its destruction in verses 18-19 all the more devastating.

Translator Notes

1. The euphemistic use of barak ('to bless') for 'to curse' (qalal) is one of the most well-known scribal substitutions in the Hebrew Bible. It appears here and in 1:11, 2:5, and 2:9. We render it as 'cursed' in translation because the context makes the meaning clear: Job is not worried that his children blessed God — he fears they may have blasphemed in their hearts. The euphemism exists to protect the reader from the juxtaposition of 'curse' and 'God.'
2. The phrase kol hayyamim ('all the days') means this was not occasional but habitual — Job's intercessory practice was continuous. He did not merely believe in righteousness; he practiced it ritually and preventatively on behalf of others.

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The phrase bene ha-elohim ('sons of God') refers to divine beings in the heavenly assembly. The same expression appears in Genesis 6:2 and Psalm 29:1. In the Job context, these are members of God's royal court — they report, they serve, they receive orders.
2. ha-satan with the definite article indicates a role: 'the adversary, the accuser, the challenger.' In later Jewish and Christian theology, Satan becomes a proper name for a cosmic antagonist. In Job, he is a functionary — the prosecuting attorney in God's court. He cannot act without permission, and his challenge serves God's purpose.

Translator Notes

1. God's question me-ayin tavo ('from where have you come?') is not a request for information — God is omniscient in this narrative. It is a courtly opening, the sovereign inviting a report from a subordinate. The Adversary's answer — mi-shut ba-arets u-mehithallekh bah ('from roaming in the earth and from walking about in it') — uses two verbs of restless motion: shut ('to rove, to roam') and hithalekh ('to walk about, to go back and forth'). The picture is of a patrol agent who has surveyed the earth and now returns to report. The language echoes Zechariah 1:10-11, where angelic horsemen patrol the earth and report to the LORD.

Translator Notes

1. The title avdi ('my servant') is a term of high honor in the Hebrew Bible — it is applied to Moses (Numbers 12:7), David (2 Samuel 7:5), and the Servant of the LORD in Isaiah. By calling Job 'my servant,' God claims him and vouches for him.
2. The fact that God raises Job's name first has troubled interpreters for centuries. It means that Job's suffering, in one sense, begins with God's pride in him. The Adversary did not come looking for Job — God offered him.

Translator Notes

1. The word chinnam ('for nothing, without cause') appears again in 2:3, where God will say the Adversary incited Him against Job chinnam ('without cause'). The same word frames both the Adversary's challenge and God's eventual acknowledgment — creating a devastating irony: God admits that Job suffered 'for nothing' in the same language the Adversary used to question whether Job worships 'for nothing.'

Translator Notes

1. The Adversary describes God's protection with the verb sakta ('You have hedged, fenced') — the image is of a thorn hedge or protective fence surrounding Job from every direction (mi-saviv, 'all around'). The irony is that this protective hedge is exactly what Job will later complain about in a twisted form: in 3:23, Job says God has hedged him in (yasekh) so that he cannot escape suffering. The same verb, opposite meanings — protection becomes imprisonment.
2. The verb parats ('has burst out, spread') describes Job's livestock expanding across the land like a flood breaking its banks. The Adversary's description of Job's prosperity is accurate: God has blessed everything. The accusation is not that Job is ungrateful but that his gratitude is rational self-interest.

Translator Notes

1. The Adversary challenges God to act personally: shelach na yadekha ('stretch out Your hand') — divine agency, not delegated destruction. The verb ga ('touch, strike') uses the same root (naga) that describes plagues and afflictions throughout the Hebrew Bible. The euphemistic yevarekekha ('he will bless You') again substitutes barak for the implied qalal ('curse'). The phrase al panekha ('to Your face') is the boldest element: the Adversary claims Job will blaspheme directly, openly, not in secret thought but in frontal defiance. This is the opposite of the hidden heart-sin Job feared in his children (v. 5).

Translator Notes

1. The phrase beyadekha ('in your hand') transfers operational authority. The Adversary cannot exceed the boundary God sets, but within that boundary he has full discretion. This establishes a principle that governs the entire book: suffering operates within divine permission, not outside it.
2. The Adversary's departure from God's presence is narrated with the same formula used for courtiers leaving a king's throne room. He is a subordinate executing authorized action, not a rebel seizing independent power.

Translator Notes

1. The scene returns to earth with vayyehi hayyom ('and the day came') — the same formula that opened the heavenly council scene in verse 6. The reader knows what Job does not: this ordinary day of family feasting is the day the Adversary has been authorized to act. The detail that they are in the eldest brother's house (beit acheihem habbekhor) anchors the catastrophe in a specific, domestic moment. They are celebrating when destruction arrives.

Translator Notes

1. The first of four messengers arrives. The word mal'akh ('messenger') is the same word used for angels, though here it refers to a human survivor. The scene described is ordinary agricultural life — oxen plowing, donkeys grazing — peaceful normalcy that is about to be shattered. The narrative technique of beginning with the mundane before the catastrophe intensifies the shock.

Translator Notes

1. The Sabeans (Sheva) were raiders from the Arabian Peninsula — a historical people known for both trade and raiding. The phrase vatippol Sheva ('Sheba fell upon them') uses the verb nafal ('to fall') in its military sense: a sudden, overwhelming assault. The formula va-immaltah raq ani levaddi lehagid lakh ('and I escaped, only I alone, to tell you') will be repeated by each messenger — it becomes a refrain of catastrophe, each survivor arriving with the same formulaic announcement of ruin.

Translator Notes

1. The phrase od zeh medabber vezeh ba ('while this one was still speaking, that one came') creates a relentless rhythm — disaster arrives faster than it can be reported. The 'fire of God' (esh Elohim) is lightning, but the narrator's phrase is theologically charged: it is God's fire, falling from God's heaven, destroying God's servant's property — with God's permission. The verb vatokhleim ('and it consumed them') uses the verb akhal ('to eat, devour') — the fire ate the sheep and servants. The messenger formula repeats identically.

Translator Notes

1. The Chaldeans (Kasdim) were a Mesopotamian people, later associated with Babylon. Their military tactic — sheloshah rashim ('three heads/divisions') — describes a coordinated three-pronged assault, surrounding the herd from multiple directions. The verb vayyifshetu ('they raided, stripped') implies violent plundering. The alternation between human attackers (Sabeans, Chaldeans) and divine agency (fire from heaven) creates a pattern: some disasters come from human enemies, some from nature, but all operate under the same permission.

Translator Notes

1. The fourth messenger begins with the same formula, but now the subject shifts from livestock and servants to banekha u-venotekha ('your sons and your daughters'). The repetition of the feasting scene from verse 13 — eating and drinking wine in the oldest brother's house — creates a terrible echo: the reader already knows this scene was set up as the backdrop for disaster. The pause before the next verse is the narrative holding its breath.

Translator Notes

1. The ruach gedolah ('great wind') comes me-ever hamidbar ('from across the wilderness') — from the desert, from the direction of chaos and emptiness. It strikes be-arba pinnot habayit ('the four corners of the house') — all four simultaneously, meaning total structural collapse, not gradual damage. The verb vayyippol ('it fell') echoes the verb used for the Sabeans' attack in verse 15 (vatippol): human raiders and cosmic wind use the same verb of falling upon their victims.
2. The messenger says vayyamutu ('and they died') — the starkest possible statement. No qualification, no exception. And then the survivor formula one final time: I alone escaped to tell you. The word ne'arim ('young people') is often translated 'young men' but can include all the children — the sons and daughters of verse 18.

Translator Notes

1. The me'il ('robe') is the outer garment of a wealthy or noble person — the same word used for Samuel's robe (1 Samuel 2:19) and the priestly garment. Tearing it signifies that the life it represented is torn apart. Shaving the head (vayyagoz et rosho) is a mourning practice attested throughout the ancient Near East. Both actions are physical expressions of internal devastation.
2. The verb vayyishtachu ('he worshiped') is the Hishtaphel of shachah, meaning to prostrate oneself, to bow to the ground. It is the most embodied form of worship in Hebrew — not a word or a thought but a body pressed against the earth before God.

Translator Notes

1. The phrase arom ashuv shammah ('naked I will return there') has generated centuries of interpretation. 'There' (shammah) most likely refers to the earth — humans come from dust and return to dust (Genesis 3:19). But the grammatical antecedent is 'my mother's womb' (beten immi), creating the image of death as a return to the womb of the earth, the ground from which Adam was formed.
2. The structure YHWH natan va-YHWH laqach is deliberately parallel: the divine name occupies the same position in both clauses, making God the agent of both abundance and loss. This is not resignation — it is theological assertion. Job claims that both realities belong to God.

Translator Notes

1. The word tiflah is rare and debated. It may derive from tafel ('tasteless, unseasoned') — meaning Job did not attribute anything 'tasteless' or 'worthless' to God. Others connect it to a root meaning 'to spit out' or 'to reject.' The Septuagint translates it as 'folly' (aphrona). We chose 'assign blame' because the context suggests Job refrained from charging God with wrongdoing — which is exactly what the friends will later accuse him of doing, and what God in chapter 38 will address directly.