Job 42

Translator Notes

1. Job's second and final response to God. The first response (40:4-5) was stunned silence — hand over mouth. This response is qualitatively different: Job speaks, and what he says transforms the book. The formula va-ya'an Iyyov et YHWH ('and Job answered YHWH') uses the personal divine name, not El or Shaddai — Job responds to the covenant God who has spoken from the storm.

Translator Notes

1. The yadati ('I know') echoes Job's great declaration in 19:25 ('I know that my Redeemer lives'). The same verb of certainty frames both the peak of Job's hope and the peak of his submission. The mezimmah ('plan, purpose') can have either positive or negative connotations (wise plan or scheme); here it is God's inscrutable purpose that cannot be blocked. Job affirms divine sovereignty without understanding divine rationale.

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. Job's self-quotation of 38:2 is significant: he appropriates God's accusation and makes it his own confession. The nifla'ot ('wonderful things, extraordinary things') is used elsewhere for God's mighty acts (Exodus 15:11, Psalm 77:15, Psalm 78:12) — things that inspire awe precisely because they exceed comprehension. Job's 'not knowing' is not ignorance but the encounter with a reality too large for human categories.

Translator Notes

1. Job again quotes God's words — this time from 38:3 and 40:7 (esh'alkha ve-hodi'eni, 'I will ask you and you will make known to me'). But the meaning has shifted. When God spoke these words, they were a challenge: I will question you. When Job speaks them, they are a request: teach me. The same formula, spoken by a different person from a different position, becomes an act of humility rather than an assertion of authority. Job has moved from demanding answers to requesting instruction.

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The contrast between shama ('heard') and ra'ah ('seen') is the interpretive key to the entire chapter. In Hebrew epistemology, hearing is the mode of received tradition — 'Hear, O Israel' (Deuteronomy 6:4) — while seeing is the mode of direct experience. Job does not reject hearing; he transcends it. What he had received by report he now knows by encounter. The le-shema ozen ('by the hearing of the ear') may be a Hebrew idiom meaning 'by hearsay, by secondhand report.' The theological move from hearing to seeing parallels mystical traditions across religious cultures: the shift from knowing about God to knowing God.

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The translation problem in this verse is genuine and consequential. The em'as has no object — the KJV's 'I abhor myself' is interpretation, not translation. The nichamti can mean repent, relent, be comforted, or change one's mind. The al can be 'upon' or 'concerning.' Major scholarly readings include: (1) 'I retract [my words] and repent in dust and ashes' — the traditional penitential reading; (2) 'I reject [my former understanding] and am comforted about [being] dust and ashes' — Job accepts his mortality; (3) 'I retract and relent concerning dust and ashes' — Job abandons his mourning posture; (4) 'I melt away and find comfort on dust and ashes' — Job dissolves in the presence of God. The rendering 'I yield, and I am changed concerning dust and ashes' tries to preserve the multiplex meaning. God's subsequent vindication of Job (verse 7) makes the pure penitential reading problematic: why would God praise the speech of someone who was simply confessing error?

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The vindication of Job and the condemnation of the friends is unambiguous in the Hebrew. The phrase ke-avdi Iyyov ('as my servant Job') restores the title eved YHWH ('servant of YHWH') that Job held in the prologue (1:8, 2:3). The God who gave the satan permission to test Job now reaffirms that Job remains his servant. The elai ('about me, to me') can mean either 'about me' (the friends misrepresented God's character) or 'to me' (they did not speak to God directly as Job did). Both readings are valid and complementary. Note that Elihu is not mentioned — either his speeches are considered separately, or the author does not include him in the condemnation.

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The tefilah ('prayer') that Job offers for the friends is the same word used for intercessory prayer throughout the Hebrew Bible. Job becomes the mediator between God and the friends — the man they condemned now holds their fate in his prayers. The irony is deliberately constructed: the friends told Job to repent and seek God; now they must seek Job. The nevalah ('folly, disgrace, outrage') is a strong word — it is used for sexual assault (Genesis 34:7), violation of covenant (Joshua 7:15), and gross social offense. The friends' theology was not merely mistaken; it was nevalah before God.

Translator Notes

1. The friends obey without argument — a stark contrast to their thirty chapters of confident speech. They go to Job, offer the sacrifices, and submit to his intercession. The va-yissa YHWH et penei Iyyov ('and YHWH lifted up the face of Job') uses the priestly blessing idiom from Numbers 6:26 ('YHWH lift up his face to you'). God's face is turned toward Job in acceptance and favor. The lifting of the face is the reversal of the hiding of God's face that Job lamented throughout the dialogue.

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The be-hitpallelo be'ad re'ehu ('when he prayed for his friends') places the prayer as the condition or occasion of the restoration. The word re'ehu ('his friends') is poignant — despite everything, they are still called Job's friends. The le-mishneh ('to double, to the second power') is precise: Job receives exactly twice what he had. Some commentators note that Job's children are not doubled (he receives the same number, 7 sons and 3 daughters) — which may imply that the dead children are not lost but still counted; Job's total number of children, living and dead, is doubled.

Translator Notes

1. The social restoration is as important as the material restoration. The kol echav ve-khol achyotav ('all his brothers and all his sisters') and kol yode'av lefanim ('all who knew him before') — the community that presumably avoided Job during his suffering now returns. They eat bread with him (va-yokhelu immo lechem be-veito, 'they ate bread with him in his house') — the most basic act of social reintegration. They noddu lo ('shook their heads for him,' a gesture of sympathy) and nachammu oto ('comforted him'). The narrator does not disguise the cause of Job's suffering: al kol ha-ra'ah asher hevi YHWH alav ('for all the disaster that YHWH had brought upon him'). God is named as the agent. The qesitah is an archaic unit of money (cf. Genesis 33:19, Joshua 24:32) — its use here gives the epilogue a deliberately antique, patriarchal flavor.

Translator Notes

1. The YHWH berakh et acharit Iyyov me-reshito ('YHWH blessed the end of Job more than his beginning') — the acharit ('end, latter part, future') is greater than the reshit ('beginning'). The numbers confirm the doubling: Job originally had 7,000 sheep (now 14,000), 3,000 camels (now 6,000), 500 yoke of oxen (now 1,000), and 500 female donkeys (now 1,000). Each category is exactly doubled. The precision is deliberate — this is not approximate generosity but exact restitution at the double rate.

Translator Notes

1. The same number of children as before — seven sons and three daughters (cf. 1:2). Unlike the livestock, the children are not doubled. The traditional explanation is profoundly humane: the first children are not lost but are alive with God; Job's total children, counting both sets, is twenty — the doubled number. The dead are not replaced but supplemented. The author refuses to treat children as fungible property that can be replaced by doubling the quantity.

Translator Notes

1. Yemimah (KJV 'Jemima') likely derives from yom ('day') or yonah ('dove') — either 'daylight' or 'dove,' both images of beauty and peace. Qetsi'ah (KJV 'Kezia') is cassia, an aromatic bark related to cinnamon, used in the holy anointing oil (Exodus 30:24) and mentioned as a luxury fragrance (Psalm 45:9). Qeren Happukh (KJV 'Keren-happuch') means 'horn of kohl' or 'horn of eye-paint' — a small horn-shaped container for cosmetic eye liner. The names are extravagantly sensory — a sharp contrast to the austerity of the dialogue. The book of Job ends not with theology but with beauty.

Translator Notes

1. The nachalah ('inheritance, portion, estate') given to the daughters be-tokh acheihem ('in the midst of their brothers') is legally exceptional. The Zelophehad precedent (Numbers 27) allowed daughters to inherit only in the absence of male heirs. Job goes beyond this. Whether this reflects an older pre-Mosaic custom, a deliberate legal innovation by Job, or the author's social vision, the effect is the same: the daughters are full participants in the family's restored wealth. The emphasis on the daughters — named, praised for beauty, given inheritance — while the sons remain anonymous is the book's final subversion of expectation.

Translator Notes

1. The me'ah ve-arba'im shanah ('one hundred and forty years') after the restoration gives Job a patriarchal lifespan. If his original life span before the trial matched this period, his total would be 280 — doubled, like everything else. The va-yir'e et banav ve-et benei vanav arba'ah dorot ('and he saw his children and his children's children, four generations') is the classic description of a full, blessed life in the Hebrew Bible (cf. Genesis 50:23, Psalm 128:6). Four generations means Job saw great-great-grandchildren — the maximum extension of personal legacy.

Translator Notes

1. The death formula zaqen u-seva yamim ('old and full of days') is reserved in the Hebrew Bible for the most honored figures. The seva ('full, satisfied') implies not mere length of life but quality — Job was not merely old but satisfied. The echo of Abraham's death (Genesis 25:8, zaqen ve-savea, 'old and satisfied') places Job in the patriarchal lineage despite his non-Israelite origin (he is from the land of Uz). The book's final word on Job is not theological but biographical: he lived, he suffered, he encountered God, he was restored, and he died full. The absence of any final moral or theological summary is itself the book's last statement — life with God exceeds the capacity of moral formulae to contain it.