Job vs. Jehovah

The following text represents the pronunciation of these verses:

lu sha•kol yi•sha•kel ka•si v’ha•ya•ti v’ha•va•ti b’moz•na•yim yis•u ya•khad

ki a•ta me•khol ya•mim yikh•bad al ken d’va•rai la•u

ki khi•tsei sha•dai i•ma•di a•sher kha•ma•tam sho•ta ru•khi bi•u•tei e•lo•ha ya•ar•khu•ni

ha•yin•hak pe•re a•lei de•she im yig•e shor al b’li•lo

ha•ye•a•khel ta•fel mib•li me•lakh im yesh ta•am b’rir kha•la•mut

me•a•na lin•go•a naf•shi he•ma kid•vei lakh•mi

mi yi•ten ta•vo she•e•la•ti v’tik•va•ti yi•ten e•lo•ha

v’yo•el e•lo•ha vi•dak•e•ni ya•ter ya•do vi•vats•e•ni

where ’ represents the schwa (a reduced vowel not generally affecting the syllable count), • a syllable division, the space a word division, and small caps a stressed syllable.

Roman alphabet transliterations (based on English spelling and undocumented phonetic principles) of each chapter of the Bible are available on the following site:

http://www.levsoftware.com/Vmain.htm

Structurally these verses may be represented as follows:

where ‑ represents a stressed syllable, / a foot division, | the secondary cæsura or hemistich division, || the cæsura or stich division, and : a verse division.

The psalmodic verse of Job is revealed by Tiberian cantillation marks to be far more regular than the prosodic verse of the Song of Songs. Except for 6:4, the verses adhere strictly to the four-sign pattern, and the three-sign pattern derived from it.

¹ Many scholars assign 27:7-23 to Zophar, who otherwise lacks a part in the third dialogue. For the sake of consistency all biblical citations in the present article refer to Jacobean chapter and verse number. [Back]

² Job actually recants twice, first in 40:3-5. He essentially pleads nolo contendere before being found innocent. [Back]

³ Genesis 36:15-16, “These [were] dukes of the sons of Esau: the sons of Eliphaz the firstborn [son] of Esau; duke Teman, duke Omar, duke Zepho, duke Kenaz, / Duke Korah, duke Gatam, [and] duke Amalek: these [are] the dukes [that came] of Eliphaz in the land of Edom; these [were] the sons of Adah.” Note that Teman is the home of Eliphaz in Job. [Back]

⁴ Ezekiel 14:14, “Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver [but] their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord God.” Two chapters and a fragment totaling fewer than fifty verses of no genealogical significance are unlikely to have merited a reference ascribing to Job an importance comparable with that of Noah. Either the body of Job or some other lost text must have existed at the time of the First Exile. Cf. Ezekiel 14:20, “Though Noah, Daniel, and Job, [were] in it, [as] I live, saith the Lord God, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall [but] deliver their own souls by their righteousness.” [Back]

⁵ While most authors hasten to disavow the subversive heresies of Elihu, Saadia ben Joseph (892-942), aka Gaon, the Jewish Egyptian philosopher and philologist, upholds Elihu’s position, taking as evidence the lack of a rebuke in the epilogue. Saadia seems to understand Elihu’s argument as confirmation of the terms of the wager in the prologue, that a good man may be made better through essentially meaningless suffering. Elihu, however, explicitly refutes Job (34:35), who is in turn confirmed by God (42:7). The later composition of the speeches of Elihu, the possibility of which Saadia did not consider, would account for this phenomenon. [Back]

⁶ Genesis 22:21, “Huz his firstborn, and Buz his brother, and Kemuel the father of Aram”. Cf. Jeremiah 25:20-23. Note that Buz is the home of Elihu in Job. [Back]

⁷ Cf. Numbers 22:22, 22:32, 2 Samuel 19:22, 29:4, 1 Kings 5:4, 11:14, 11:23, 11:25, 1 Chronicles 21:1, Job 1:6, 1:7, 1:7, 1:8, 1:9, 1:12, 1:12, 2:1, 2:2, 2:2, 2:3, 2:4, 2:6, 2:7, Psalms 109:6, Zechariah 3:1, 3:2, 3:2. [Back]

⁸ Cf. Deuteronomy 28 passim. [Back]

⁹ 2 Kings 22:8, “And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it.” Cf. 2 Chronicles 34:14. [Back]

¹⁰ None of the terms occur in the epilogue of Job. [Back]

¹¹ Genesis 22:1-13,

And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, [here] I [am]. / And he said, Take now thy son, thine only [son] Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. / And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. / Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. / And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you. / And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid [it] upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together. / And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here [am] I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where [is] the lamb for a burnt offering? / And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together. / And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. / And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. / And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here [am] I. / And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only [son] from me. / And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind [him] a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. [Back]

¹² Genesis 21:14, “And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread, and a bottle of water, and gave [it] unto Hagar, putting [it] on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away: and she departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.” [Back]

¹³ Cf. The Guide for the Perplexed, Moses ben Maimon (1135‑1204), aka Maimonides, the Rambam, the Jewish Spanish physician and theologian: “It is remarkable in this account that wisdom is not ascribed to Job. The text does not say he was an intelligent, wise, or clever man; but virtues and uprightness, especially in actions, are ascribed to him.” Translation by Michael Friedländer, 1904. [Back]

¹⁴ Two prosodic signs (pashta and little zakef) encroach on 3:1. [Back]

¹⁵ The following table (but not the subdivision of disjunctives) is based on the work of William Wickes, the British Orientalist and philologist. [Back]

¹⁶ Transliteration is intended only to help the English speaker recognize and pronounce the names of the cantillation marks, and does not mean to imply anything about Hebrew phonetics or orthography. The blend kh represents the phoneme [x] as ‑ch in Bach. [Back]

¹⁷ The distinction between great and little revia has not been retained, as it is based solely on the very distributional criteria that are the focus of this analysis. [Back]

¹⁸ The revia mugrash, given as a variant in the source text, and thus not counted in the statistical analysis, makes better metrical sense in the verse. [Back]

¹⁹ Hapax legomenon alternatively rendered as the comestible plants “mallow” or “purslane”. [Back]