A New Interpretation and Translation of Job 5:5
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One of the most notoriously difficult—and frequently emended—verses in the Book of Job is 5:5, which the New jps Version translates as “May the hungry devour his harvest, Carrying it off in baskets; May the thirsty swallow their wealth”. Marvin Pope, for example, writes of 5:5b-c that “as they stand, these two lines are impossible and the various emendations not much better”, and all three cola have been the subject of considerable debate. In this paper a new interpretation of this problematic verse is offered, one that requires minimal emendation to the text and is well-suited to its context. In brief, I propose that the term in 5:5a generally translated as “harvest” should instead be glossed as “branches” (a collective singular in the Hebrew), and the verse as a whole taken as a “tree” metaphor that tacitly compares Job to a “fool” who commits apostasy.
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1
Carol Newsom, “Job”, The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol. IV (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), p. 379.
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2
Samuel R. Driver and George B. Gray, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Job (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1921), p. 51; Samuel Terrien, “Job”, The Interpreter’s Bible Vol. 3 (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1954), p. 943.
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6
Édouard Dhorme, A Commentary on the Book of Job (Nashville: T. Nelson, 1984), p. 59. The Peshiṭta renders the colon as wlṣhyʾ ntnskwn (“and to thirst be poured out”).
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22
Dhorme, A Commentary on the Book of Job, p. 60. Other occurrences of the compound אֶל־מִן in the biblical corpus support his assertion; cf. e.g., אֶל־מִחוּץ in Lev 4:12, 21; Deut 23:11, etc. and אֶל־מִנֶּגֶב as ‘southward’ in Josh 15:3.
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31
Gordis, The Book of Job, pp. 44, 54. E. Good (In Turns of Tempest: A Reading of Job [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990], pp. 60-61) adopts Gordis’s reading.
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47
W. E. M. Beuken, “Job’s Imprecation as the Cradle of a New Religious Discourse: The Perplexing Impact of the Semantic Correspondences Between Job 3, Job 4-5, and Job 6-7”, The Book of Job, ed. Beuken (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1994), p. 56.
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A New Interpretation and Translation of Job 5:5
In: Vetus TestamentumSearch for other papers by John Burnight in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
One of the most notoriously difficult—and frequently emended—verses in the Book of Job is 5:5, which the New jps Version translates as “May the hungry devour his harvest, Carrying it off in baskets; May the thirsty swallow their wealth”. Marvin Pope, for example, writes of 5:5b-c that “as they stand, these two lines are impossible and the various emendations not much better”, and all three cola have been the subject of considerable debate. In this paper a new interpretation of this problematic verse is offered, one that requires minimal emendation to the text and is well-suited to its context. In brief, I propose that the term in 5:5a generally translated as “harvest” should instead be glossed as “branches” (a collective singular in the Hebrew), and the verse as a whole taken as a “tree” metaphor that tacitly compares Job to a “fool” who commits apostasy.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 209 | 31 | 8 |
| Full Text Views | 220 | 3 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 53 | 7 | 1 |