Friday, May 15, 2009

Job 19 - second pass

Job's answer to Bildad in cycle 2. I have changed many words from my first pass in order to continue maximizing concordance with the previous 18 chapters and the 23 chapters yet to come. [pressed the wrong button - this will likely change some more since I only got half-way through the revision!]

And Job answered and said

How long will you grieve my being
and crush me with speeches
Ten times you humiliate me(1)
Are you not ashamed to slight me?

And indeed truly I have strayed
my straying lodges with me
If truly against me you gloat
and determine against me my reproach
know this indeed - that God bends me
and in his stronghold against me strikes

Lo! I cry out - violence! and I am not answered
I shout and there is no judgment
my path he has shut off and I pass not
and in my tracks he puts darkness
my glory from me he has stripped
and he removed the halo of my head

He demolished me on every side and I am gone
and he pulled out as a tree my hope
And he burns against me his wrath
and counts me as his troubler
As one come his troops
and raise against me their way
and camp on every side of my tent

My brothers he has put far from me
and who know me indeed are estranged from me

Ceased are those near me and
whom known by me have forgotten me
Those who abide in my house
and my maids count me as a stranger
an alien I have become in their eyes
To my servant I call and he does not answer
with my mouth I entreat him

My breath is strange to my wife
and I entreat the children of my belly
Even the unweaned reject me
I rise and they speak against me
All my intimate friends abhor me
and those I love turn from me

To my skin and to my flesh my bones cling
and I am stuck in the skin of my teeth
Be gracious, be gracious, you my friends
for the hand of God has touched me
Why do you hound me as if the One
and with my flesh are not satisfied?

If only it was now my sayings were written
if only it was in a book they were inscribed
With a pen of iron and lead
for ever in the rock engraved
And I - I know my vindicating of life
and at the last on dust it will rise(2)
and after this my skin stricken
and from my flesh I will discern God
whom I - I will discern for myself
and my eyes will see and not a stranger
fired my own fires within me

For you should say - why do we hound him?
For the root of the thing is determined in me
Take care, for you are in the presence of the sword
for wrath is the effect of the sword
so you know there is a judge

(1) the Hebrew תכלימוני almost sounds like calumny but there is only one word so my earlier paraphrase will not stand. The word occurs only twice - here and in chapter 11.
(2) with completion of draft 17 I changed this to
And I - I knew my redeemer is living [the verb know is qal perfect]
and at the last on dust he will rise

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