28:26 When he imposed a limit 1 for the rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm, 2
28:27 then he looked at wisdom 3 and assessed its value; 4
he established 5 it and examined it closely. 6
1 tn Or “decree.”
2 tn Or “thunderbolt,” i.e., lightning. Heb “the roaring of voices/sounds,” which describes the nature of the storm.
3 tn Heb “it”; the referent (wisdom) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
4 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.
5 tc The verb כּוּן (kun) means “to establish; to prepare” in this stem. There are several
6 tn The verb חָקַר (khaqar) means “to examine; to search out.” Some of the language used here is anthropomorphic, for the sovereign