What the book is
Job is one of the great works of world literature. It begins as a story: a man in the land of Uz, “blameless and upright”, who feared God and turned away from evil (1:1). In heaven the Accuser asks whether Job serves God for nothing, and Job loses his children, his wealth and his health. Three friends come to comfort him, and then the story becomes poetry. For thirty-five chapters Job and his friends argue. The friends insist that God punishes the wicked, so Job must have sinned; Job insists that he has not, and longs to bring his case before God. At last God speaks out of the whirlwind, not to explain, but to show Job the world he made:
Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell Me, if you have such understanding.
The book ends as it began, in prose: God says that Job has spoken rightly and the friends have not, and Job’s fortunes are restored.
Who wrote it, and when
No one knows who wrote Job or when. The story is set in the age of the patriarchs, outside Israel, with Job as his own family’s priest. The poetry, written in some of the richest and hardest Hebrew in the Bible, is usually dated somewhere between the seventh and the fourth centuries BC, and some think the prose story is older than the poems. Jewish tradition once credited the book to Moses. The draft takes no side on these questions; they do not change how a sentence is translated.
How the book is laid out
- The prologue (1–2): Job’s goodness, the two scenes in heaven, his losses, and the arrival of his friends.
- Job’s lament (3): he curses the day he was born.
- The three rounds of debate (4–27): Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar speak in turn, and Job answers each.
- A poem on wisdom (28): where can wisdom be found?
- Job’s last defence (29–31): his former life, his present misery, and his oath of innocence.
- Elihu (32–37): a younger speaker who rebukes both Job and the friends.
- The LORD speaks from the whirlwind (38:1–42:6): the foundations of the earth, the stars, the wild animals, Behemoth and Leviathan, and Job’s reply.
- The epilogue (42:7–17).
How Open Word Bible translates Job
The hardest Hebrew. Job has more rare words and uncertain lines than almost any other book. The draft has more than two hundred decisions marked uncertain and footnoted here, each giving the other ways the line can be read. The poetry is kept in its lines.
The Accuser (1:6). The Hebrew says “the satan”, with the article, which marks a title, not a name: the one who stands against someone as an adversary in court. The draft says “the Accuser”, and the footnote explains.
Hope, or no hope? (13:15). “Even if he kills me, I will hope in him.” The Hebrew text as written says “I have no hope”; the scribes’ note for reading aloud says “in him”. The draft follows the reading aloud, as many Bibles do, marks the decision uncertain, and gives the other reading in the footnote.
My Redeemer lives (19:25–27). “But I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the dust.” Who the Redeemer is, and whether Job means he will see God in his body or apart from it, are among the most debated lines in the Old Testament. The decisions read the Redeemer as most likely God himself, mark each question uncertain, and give the other readings in footnotes.
Behemoth and Leviathan (40–41). The draft keeps the names, “the great beast” and the great sea creature of the old poems, and the footnotes give the animals often suggested, the hippopotamus and the crocodile. The verses are numbered as in the Hebrew, so Leviathan begins at 40:25 here and at 41:1 in most English Bibles.
Job’s last words (42:6). “So I take back what I said, and I repent in dust and ashes.” The verbs are uncertain: the first can also mean “I despise myself”, and the second “I am comforted concerning dust and ashes”. The draft marks both decisions uncertain and footnotes them. See also Verb tenses that aren’t tenses, which starts from Job 1.