Mandy and I have joined that illustrious group of bloggers known as the Top 10. Our jump of 34 places was no doubt due to a heavy increase in the number of posts for June. We’ll see if we can continue the pace through July. Over the coming month you can look forward to additional posts on Job, Proverbs and Lamentations (Mandy promises!). Furthermore, expect some interaction with various topics that have been spinning around the Biblioblogosphere. If one of us is feeling exceptionally adventurous, Daniel and Tonya may even get their wish and receive a post that has something to do with Biblical Greek (to which Mandy responds, πτυω).

Most importantly, we want to take this moment to thank all of our readers. Without you, we wouldn’t even be in the Top 50. Thanks for taking the time to read our ramblings.

You may have noticed that, over the past week, we have been posting somewhat less often than in recent days. This is primarily because Mandy and I are both in the middle of a Summer course on the Gospel of John. We don’t intend to fall off the face of the planet, but the number of updates on our blog will be limited for the next two to three weeks.

In the meantime, might I suggest you point your browser to some of the excellent blogs on the sidebar under Blogroll.

It has occurred to me that, for those not well versed in Hebrew, an English translation of Job 5.2-7 may be helpful in following the posts I have been making. To that end I provide a rough translation here. For the reconstructed Hebrew text from which this translation has been made, go here. The raised numbers refer to footnotes; they are not verse numbers. I apologize, in advance, for the rather lengthy explanatory notes. If nothing else the notes prove that all translation is interpretation. As always, comments are welcome.

Job 5.2-7
Surely¹ anger slays the fool²
and envy kills the simple³

As for me,⁴ I have seen the fool taking root
but suddenly his abode was consumed!

His children⁵ are far from deliverance
⁶They are crushed in the gate
There is not a rescuer

What they harvested the hungry will eat
Their wealth the starving will take
The thirsty will pursue⁷ their possessions

For sorrow⁸ does not come from the dust
and trouble does not sprout from the ground

Rather,⁹ humanity¹⁰ gives birth to trouble
as the sons of Resheph¹¹ fly high.

Bryan supplied several good reasons for pastors to learn Hebrew in the form of verses from Hosea. For those who are regular readers of this blog it should come as no surprise that I think pastors ought to know Hebrew and Greek, and know them well. I also think that laity ought to learn the original languages as a matter of course. I think someone’s religious experience can only benefit from learning the original languages.

So, since Bryan was nice enough to provide some reasons for learning Hebrew, I thought I might provide an example as well. The Hebrew Bible is filled with various word plays. These commonly occur in the poetic sections of the canon, though they are not uncommon in the prose sections as well. In particular I direct your attention to 1 Samuel 6.5 which reads:

ועשיתם צלמי עפליכם וצלמי עצבריכם המשחיתם את־הארץ ונתתם לאלהי ישראל כבוד אולי יקל את־ידו מעליכם ומעל אלהיכם ומעל ארצכם

English: You shall make images of your tumors and images of your rats, the ones destroying the land. Also you shall give glory to the God of Israel, perhaps he will lighten his hand from upon you and from upon your gods and from upon your land.

Some background to this verse is necessary. The Ark of the Covenant had recently been lost to the Philistines. The circumstances surrounding that event, although interesting, have no direct bearing on the point of this post. Suffice it to say that the Philistines got more than they bargained for. First they put the Ark in Dagon’s temple. Apparently YHVH didn’t like sharing a house because within a couple days Dagon’s idol had been pretty well demolished. After this, the Ark gets passed around the Philistine cities, and wherever it is the Philistines are afflicted with tumors (and…uh…rats?). As you might imagine it doesn’t take them long to figure out they want nothing to do with Israel’s God, and so they ask their religious leaders what they ought to do. Verse five, above, is part of the instructions which they are given.

The really fun bit is a wordplay that simply doesn’t come through in English. The Philistines are told to give glory (כבוד) to the God of Israel. The idea being that if they do so, maybe YHVH will “lighten (יקל) his hand.” In other words, maybe YHVH will stop afflicting them. The fun thing here is that the basic meaning of כבוד has to do with being heavy. The juxtaposition of the two words creates a subtle, or perhaps not so subtle, wordplay. The Philistines ought to make God heavy, and perhaps he will lighten his hand.¹

One would never notice the wordplay in an English translation since our word “glory” has no relation to our word “heavy.” Limiting oneself to reading the Bible in English ensures that one will never be exposed to the plethora of brilliant literary features within the text. Learning Biblical Hebrew is an activity in which all serious students of the Bible ought to be engaged.

Proverbs 1.8-19, otherwise known as the First Instruction, opens the series of “my son” poems which dominate the first nine chapters of Proverbs. The specific verses I reference in the title (11-18) contain several instances of double entendre.^{here and here.}

I think that the double entendres within the first Instruction in Proverbs 1-9 are meant to be read a certain way on the first reading, and meant to reveal their alternative reading once one has completed the poem for the first time. I will illustrate this below.

The First Reading:
Verse 11

אם־יאמרו לכה אתנו נארבה לדם נצפנה לנקי חנם

English: “If they say, ‘Come with us! Let us lie in wait for blood/Let us ambush the innocent without reason”

Verse 11 is not one of the verses I feel contain a double entendre. Rather, it is one of two unambiguous verses which frame the inner section of the poem. If you refer back to this post you will see that I view verses 11-18 as a large protasis-apodosis (=”if-then” statement). The framing verses on either end are unambiguous, and I think this is important. In the case of verse 11, the meaning is clear: the sinners intend to shed the blood of innocent people.

Verse 12

נבלעם כשאול חיים ותמימים כיורדי בור

English: “Let us swallow them alive like Sheol/whole, like those who go down to the pit”

Verse 12 does contain a double entendre, in my opinion. The first time one reads the verse, the meaning appears clear: the sinners intend to swallow people alive, just like Sheol.² The second part of the verse is simple parallelism, they will swallow the innocent whole. The innocent people will be like those who go down to the pit.

Verse 16

כי רגליהם לרע ירוצו וימהרו לשפך דם

English: “For their feet run to evil/they make haste to shed blood”

This is the most apparent, and in some ways most striking, of the ambiguities in this section of Proverbs. During the initial reading the sense of the verse appears to be clear: the father warns the son that he should avoid the sinners’ path because they “make haste to spill blood” (ie, they kill people). The sinners run to evil, and that evil is–presumably, the shedding of blood.

Verse 18

והם לדמם יארבו יצפנו לנפשתם

English: “These people lie in wait for their own blood/they set an ambush for their own life”

Once the reader arrives at the end of the poem, the verses mentioned above take on a different meaning. Only at the end is the alternative reading revealed unambiguously. In fact, verse 11, with its unambiguous declaration concerning the sinners ensures that the reader will read the poem in a certain way. Once one arrives at verse 18, however, everything is seen in a different light. The sinners lie in wait for their own blood! Each of the verses mentioned above can now be seen in a different light. Interestingly, verse 18 borrows the vocabulary of verse 11. In both verses the sinners “lie in wait.”

The Second Reading:
Verse 12
This verse is the most difficult in which to see the alternative reading. It is here, however. The first stitch says plainly “let us swallow them, as Sheol, alive!” or in easier English, “let us swallow them alive, like Sheol.” The issue is not with the initial stitch, but rather with the second “and whole, like the ones going down to the pit.” During the first read-through of the poem verse 11 has already prepped the reader in how to understand this. However, during a second reading something doesn’t sit right. The issue is visible, even in translation. In the first stitch the sinners want to be “like Sheol.” The innocent are swallowed “alive.” The second stitch lacks a verb, and so the verb from the first stitch does double duty. This is a normal occurrence in poetry. So, the second stitch means “let us swallow them whole, like the ones going down to the pit.” This too is obvious even in translation, even on the initial reading. The question, of course, is to what is “like the ones going down to the pit” parallel? The answer is clear, it is parallel to “like Sheol.” In other words, the sinners declare that they themselves will go down to the pit.³

Verse 16
One way of understanding the Hebrew word רע in the first stitch (translated “evil”) is “trouble.” In other words, one might read the first stitch as “their feet rush to trouble,” (ie, they get themselves into trouble). As Waltke has written, “in 1:16 it [רע] can denote either moral evil or calamity.”⁴ This is not the most eye-popping double-meaning in the verse, but it is certainly interesting to note. The second stitch presents the most striking ambiguity, as well as the most easily recognized. On the first reading the meaning seems obvious, the sinners make haste to spill the blood of the innocent. Once one has read verse 18, however, things shift slightly and one realizes that the verse may easily be read to mean that the sinners make haste to shed their own blood.

I’ve been tagged by Adam, and so has Mandy–so presumably she will also post on this topic. I find these types of memes somewhat fascinating since its interesting to see how people have been influence and shaped in various ways. The idea is that you have to either share your top five most influential books or the top five scholars that had the most immediate and lasting influence on how you read the Bible.

1. Inspiration and Incarnation by Peter Enns. This book, hands down, has been one of the biggest influences in my study of the Hebrew Bible. Enns put in writing much of what I was already thinking regarding critical Biblical scholarship and the Hebrew Bible. In this way I was able to maintain my Christian faith (albeit in a different form from what it once was) and still deal in an intellectually honest manner with the vast amounts of scholarship on the Hebrew Bible. This is a book I recommend to everyone who wants to study the Hebrew Bible.

2. The Psalms and the Life of Faith by Walter Brueggemann, edited by Patrick Miller. If Enns’ book shaped the way I deal with critical Biblical scholarship, this book shaped the way in which I appropriate the plethora of lament literature within the Bible. This book is a collect of Brueggemann’s essays on the Psalms. The most important of these, in my opinion, is “The Costly Loss of Lament.” That essay influenced how I communicate with God to a very large extent.

3. Biblical Hebrew by Kittel, Hoffer and Wright. This is the book from which I learned Biblical Hebrew. Although my love of Hebrew is due in no small part to my undergrad Hebrew professor, it is also due to Kittel’s excellent text. I really can’t recommend her approach enough. The book isn’t perfect, by any means, but is much closer to perfect than any other first year grammar I’ve had the opportunity to look at. If not for this book, I probably would not be an aspiring scholar of the Hebrew Bible.

4. Proverbs 1-9 Anchor Bible; by Michael V. Fox. This commentary is a large part of the reason that I love the Wisdom Literature of the Hebrew Bible. Adam has already said most of what needs to be said about this book, so I will simply quote him:

Fox is a master interpreter and his work has greatly influenced my understanding of this book (which is also my favorite biblical book [well, his not mine–I prefer Job). Fox’s book is the first title I pick up when I am beginning to study a particular passage in Proverbs 1-9 (outside of my BHS).

5. Genesis 1-11 by Claus Westermann. This was one of the first critical commentaries I read. As such, it was my introduction to how various higher critical theories worked out in practice. Aside from being a solid commentary on Genesis and helping me see what it meant to interact with the Bible critically, it was also fun to read and I learned–and still learn–a ton from it.

I won’t tag anyone, since A) many of those I’m most interested in hearing about have already been tagged and B) Mandy still has to go. I’ll give her a few suggestions for who to tag.

As promised, I am going to begin pulling sections out of the exegesis paper that I wrote for Dr. Stuart (Old Testament Poets) this past Spring semester, and posting them here. Since this was a Hebrew exegesis paper, the Hebrew text remains important throughout. What follows is my re-constructed text and my own translation of this passage. I will post text-critical and translation notes in further posts (otherwise this could get quite long).

18
צעק לבם אל אדני חומת בת ציון
הורידי כנחל דמעה יומם ולילה
אל תתני פוגת לך אל תדם בת עינך
19
קומי רני בלילה לראש אשמרות
שפכי כמים לבך נכח פני אדני
שאי אליו כפיך על נפש עולליך
20
ראה יהוה והביטה למי עללת כה
אם תאכלנה נשים פרים עללי טפחים
אם יהרג במקדש אדני כהן ונביא
21
שכבו לארץ חוצות נער וזקן
בתולתי ובחורי נפלו בחרב
הרגת ביום אפך טבחת לא חמלת
22
תקרא כיום מועד מגורי מסביב
ולא היה ביום אף יהוה פליט ושריד
אשר טפחתי ורביתי איבי כלם

18
Their heart cries out to Adonai.
O wall of Daughter Zion!
Bring down tears like a torrent
day and night
Do not allow yourself rest
Let not the pupil of your eye be still
19
Arise, cry aloud in the night
at the beginning of every watch
Pour out your heart like water
before the face of Adonai
Lift to him your palms
for the sake of the life of your children
20
“Look, O Yahweh, and see!
To whom have you inflicted in this way?
Should women eat their fruit
the children for whom they cared?
Should they be slain in the sanctuary of Adonai
the priest and the prophet?
21
On the ground, in the streets, they lay down
the youth and the elder
My young women and my young men
fell by the sword
You slew in the day of your anger
You slaughtered mercilessly
22
You summoned like a feast day
my terrors from all around
And there was not, in the day of the anger of Yahweh,
an escapee or a survivor
Those whom I cared for and reared
my enemy destroyed them”

The first post in this series is available here. The present post will continue the series by surveying several ancient near eastern parallels to the Book of Job. It will necessarily deal more with the Book of Job as a whole than with Job 5.2-7 specifically.

The Book of Job is not an unique example of disputation literature in the ancient near east. There are several works which fall into the category of disputation literature from the ancient world. Three examples will be briefly surveyed, the first is The Babylonian Theodicy, the second is The Dispute between a Man and his Ba, an Egyptian composition, while the third is also from Egypt and entitled The Protest of the Eloquent Peasant.¹

The Babylonian Theodicy has several similarities to the Book of Job, though these similarities are not so striking as to require literary dependence of the latter on the former.² The text revolves around the dispute between a sufferer and his friend. This is an obvious similarity between The Babylonian Theodicy and the Book of Job, though Job disputes with three friends, rather than one. The friend argues for the traditional understanding of things while the sufferer, much like Job, pushes out to the fringes, and argues that traditional explanations do not provide answers. One major difference between the Book of Job and the Babylonian Theodicy is that in the latter there is a “politeness which the two speakers maintain to the end.”³ In Job, Eliphaz’ first speech is moderate–even polite–but after he concludes his initial oration things quickly deteriorate. On the other hand the end of the Babylonian text, as Pope has noted, is somewhat perplexing.⁴

Perhaps the most striking similarity between these two texts is the friends’ persistent contention that the doctrine of retribution works. Lambert explains that on several occasions the friend defends the doctrine of retribution when he writes, “the friend repeats that in the end they [the unrighteous] are discomfited.”⁵ Of course, this is Eliphaz’ point in Job 5.2-7. In fact, the friend’s response in lines 235-242 of The Babylonian Theodicy has certain thematic similarities to Eliphaz’ first speech. Specifically, lines 237-238 appear to be a proverbial saying of some type.⁶ Eliphaz makes use of such sayings throughout his first speech, but especially in 5.2 and 5.6-7. In addition, the friend’s admonition in line 239 that the sufferer “seek the will of the god” is vaguely reminiscent of Eliphaz’ admonition in Job 5.8, “but as for me, I would seek God.”

The Egyptian story known as The Dispute between a Man and His Ba has similarities with both the biblical books of Job and Qohelet.⁷ In the words of Francis Andersen, when speaking about this Egyptian story, “a poignant longing for death is expressed in words which invite comparison with chapter 3 of Job. But here the similarity ends.”⁸ Job does not, however, cease longing for death after chapter three. Even so, the similarities between the two works are limited to the desire for death. Because of this the words of the man in the story have no direct bearing on the passage at hand. The man’s Ba, on the other hand, encourages the enjoyment of life.⁹ This appears to have more in common with the central sections of Qohelet, in which the reader is implored to enjoy life.

The Egyptian Protest of the Eloquent Peasant has several similarities with the biblical Book of Job. The story goes as follows: a peasant is bringing certain items to market. A rival robs him in a way so as to make his robbery seem legitimate. The peasant pleads with the magistrate that his goods be returned. After giving nine soliloquies the peasant receives his possessions back, as well as the entirety of the possessions of the one who robbed him. Pope notes the following, “the text is introduced by a prose prologue and epilogue…the central portion of the text is composed of…semipoetic appeals for justice.”¹⁰ The form is strikingly similar to Job, though there are narrative interludes between the speeches that serve to move the story along to a greater extent than the short prose portions embedded within the poetry of Job (cf. Job 31.40; 32.1-6; 38.1; 40.3, 6; 42.1). Setting aside for the moment the difference in the quantity of prose between the two works, the general form of Prose-Poetry-Prose is identical. The prologue for each even begins similarly, with the information that “there was a man named X.” Furthermore, the location of said man is specified (cf Job 1.1). There are major differences between the texts as well. An obvious, though still important, difference is that the eloquent peasant addresses his complaint to a human judge, whereas Job demands that he be allowed to plead his case before a divine judge. As Andersen has noted, the speeches made by the peasant are entirely concerned with human justice. ¹¹ Job, on the other hand, is concerned with divine justice. Furthermore, the eloquent peasant does not so much doubt the possibility of receiving justice, as feel the need to argue in order to receive said justice.

In summary, the three texts from the ancient near east which have been examined, The Babylonian Theodicy, The Dispute of a Man with His Ba, and The Protest of the Eloquent Peasant each provide certain similarities with the Book of Job. None of these similarities are great enough to suggest literary dependence, but they do serve to illustrate the fact that the author(s) of Job was not the only one struggling with the issues raised by belief in a strict doctrine of retribution. Furthermore, this confirms that the genre of disputation literature was well known in the ancient near east, and in use by scribes in dealing with difficult issues that challenged the status quo.

I’ve been reading through 1 Samuel for a class I’m taking this Summer. I came across 1 Samuel 6.19, and to be honest I was somewhat amused by it. The phrase I’m interested in is reproduced below:

ויך בעם שבעים איש המשים אלף איש

Roughly translated the text says “and he struck among the people seventy men fifty thousand men.” The English translations deal with this in one of two ways, they either take it as fifty thousand seventy men (50,070) or they leave out the second number all together translating simply as “seventy men.” The textual evidence doesn’t really support removing the second number since the Hebrew text as well as any major versions contain the number.¹ The few medieval manuscripts which lack it are probably best explained as a case of haplography. Of course, the first option doesn’t make sense either since if that were what the passage was attempting to say the thousands would come before the smaller units.²

I have no conclusions as to how best to translate this, though it seems that leaving out the higher number may well be the preferable method in this case. The other option is to translate the passage as-is, something akin to: “He [YHVH] struck among the people seventy men–fifty thousand men.” It hardly creates a smooth translation, but it does–more or less–represent the Hebrew. Mandy suggests that one might translate it “seventy men of fifty thousand men” (ie, 70 of the 50,000 living in Beth Shemesh). I suppose such a translation is possible, though I haven’t come across it.

As for why I found the whole thing amusing, after reading it I had the mental image of a scribe copying the text and deciding that seventy wasn’t nearly a large enough number for God to have slain, and so, in my mind’s eye, he increased it by a rather sizable amount.

Jay, over at mu-pàd-da, has some interesting thoughts on language work within academic sub-disciplines. I found his thoughts worthwhile, and I’d encourage others to visit his blog and comment.

I have noticed something related to Jay’s thoughts in regards to studying the Hebrew Bible. Most students who set out to study the Hebrew Bible will also study another major area in their PhD work. Most of those students will opt for Akkadian, whereas a relatively small number will opt for either Egyptian or intensive work in Northwest Semitic dialects. I’ve also found this fascinating for several reasons. First, when I was an undergrad student, I naively believed that becoming an Old Testament scholar required a sound knowledge of Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic. Greek–I believed–was for those who studied the Jesus Festschrift (HT: Jim Getz). Now, of course, I know better. In fact, by the time I graduate from GCTS I’ll have at least some proficiency in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Ugaritic, Moabite (if you consider this to be separate from Hebrew), Middle Egyptian and Akkadian (if knowing some basic grammar and vocabulary counts as “proficiency”).

This actually brings me to the second reason that I find Jay’s thoughts so fascinating: those of us who work with ancient documents, specifically those from the ancient near east, learn a very large number of languages. I find this to be a helpful and fun pursuit, though I doubt everyone feels that way. I’m not sure what a PhD program in Classics looks like, but I would assume that it does not expect the same number of ancient languages to be mastered.¹ I’m not making a judgment on whether this is good or bad, simply observing that I find it interesting.