Job 1:15

and the Sabeans ¹  swooped down ²  and carried them all away, and they killed ³  the servants with the sword! ⁴  And I – only I alone ⁵  – escaped to tell you!”

Ge 10:7,28; Ge 25:3; 1Sa 22:20,21; Job 1:16,17,19; Ps 72:10; Isa 45:14; Eze 23:42; Joe 3:8

¹ tn The LXX has “the spoilers spoiled them” instead of “the Sabeans swooped down.” The translators might have connected the word to שְָׁבָה (shavah, “to take captive”) rather than שְׁבָא (shÿva’, “Sabeans”), or they may have understood the name as general reference to all types of Bedouin invaders from southern Arabia (HALOT 1381 s.v. שְׁבָא 2.c).

sn The name “Sheba” is used to represent its inhabitants, or some of them. The verb is feminine because the name is a place name. The Sabeans were a tribe from the Arabian peninsula. They were traders mostly (6:19). The raid came from the south, suggesting that this band of Sabeans were near Edom. The time of the attack seems to be winter since the oxen were plowing.

² tn The Hebrew is simply “fell” (from נָפַל, nafal). To “fall upon” something in war means to attack quickly and suddenly.

³ sn Job’s servants were probably armed and gave resistance, which would be the normal case in that time. This was probably why they were “killed with the sword.”

⁴ tn Heb “the edge/mouth of the sword”; see T. J. Meek, “Archaeology and a Point of Hebrew Syntax,” BASOR 122 (1951): 31-33.

⁵ tn The pleonasms in the verse emphasize the emotional excitement of the messenger.