Job 28:27

28:27 then he looked at wisdom ¹  and assessed its value; ² 

he established ³  it and examined it closely. ⁴ 

Job 33:11

33:11 ⁵ He puts my feet in shackles;

he watches closely all my paths.’

Job 41:15

41:15 Its back ⁶  has rows of shields,

shut up closely ⁷  together as with a seal;

Job 23:11

23:11 My feet ⁸  have followed ⁹  his steps closely;

I have kept to his way and have not turned aside. ¹⁰ 

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¹ tn Heb “it”; the referent (wisdom) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

² tn The verb סָפַר (safar) in the Piel basically means “to tell; to declare; to show” or “to count; to number.” Many commentators offer different suggestions for the translation. “Declared” (as in the RSV, NASB, and NRSV) would be the simplest – but to whom did God declare it? Besides “appraised” which is the view of Pope, Dhorme and others (cf. NAB, NIV), J. Reider has suggested “probed” (“Etymological studies in biblical Hebrew,” VT 2 [1952]: 127), Strahan has “studied,” and Kissane has “reckoned.” The difficulty is that the line has a series of verbs, which seem to build to a climax; but without more details it is hard to know how to translate them when they have such a range of meaning.

³ tc The verb כּוּן (kun) means “to establish; to prepare” in this stem. There are several mss that have the form from בִּין (bin, “discern”), giving “he discerned it,” making more of a parallel with the first colon. But the weight of the evidence supports the traditional MT reading.

⁴ tn The verb חָקַר (khaqar) means “to examine; to search out.” Some of the language used here is anthropomorphic, for the sovereign Lord did not have to research or investigate wisdom. The point is that it is as if he did this human activity, meaning that as in the results of such a search God knows everything about wisdom.

⁵ sn See Job 13:27.

⁶ tc The MT has גַּאֲוָה (ga’avah, “his pride”), but the LXX, Aquila, and the Vulgate all read גַּוּוֹ (gavvo, “his back”). Almost all the modern English versions follow the variant reading, speaking about “his [or its] back.”

⁷ tn Instead of צָר (tsar, “closely”) the LXX has צֹר (tsor, “stone”) to say that the seal was rock hard.

⁸ tn Heb “my foot.”

⁹ tn Heb “held fast.”

¹⁰ tn The last clause, “and I have not turned aside,” functions adverbially in the sentence. The form אָט (’at) is a pausal form of אַתֶּה (’atteh), the Hiphil of נָטָה (natah, “stretch out”).