Job 11:7

“Can you discover ¹  the essence ²  of God? Can you find out ³  the perfection of the Almighty? ⁴ 

Job 5:9; Job 26:14; Job 37:23; Ps 77:19; Ps 145:3; Ec 3:11; Isa 40:28; Mt 11:27; Ro 11:33; 1Co 2:10,16; Eph 3:8

¹ tn The verb is מָצָא (matsa’, “to find; to discover”). Here it should be given the nuance of potential imperfect. And, in the rhetorical question it is affirming that Job cannot find out the essence of God.

² tn The word means “search; investigation”; but it here means what is discovered in the search (so a metonymy of cause for the effect).

³ tn The same verb is now found in the second half of the verse, with a slightly different sense – “attain, reach.” A. R. Ceresko notes this as an example of antanaclasis (repetition of a word with a lightly different sense – “find/attain”). See “The Function of Antanaclasis in Hebrew Poetry,” CBQ 44 (1982): 560-61.

⁴ tn The abstract תַּכְלִית (takhlit) from כָּלָה (kalah, “to be complete; to be perfect”) may mean the end or limit of something, perhaps to perfection. So the NIV has “can you probe the limits of the Almighty?” The LXX has: “have you come to the end of that which the Almighty has made?”