Footnotes

1. Job 28:1 sn As the book is now arranged, this chapter forms an additional speech by Job, although some argue that it comes from the writer of the book. The mood of the chapter is not despair, but wisdom; it anticipates the divine speeches in the end of the book. This poem, like many psalms in the Bible, has a refrain (vv. 12 and 20). These refrains outline the chapter, giving three sections: there is no known road to wisdom (1-11); no price can buy it (12-19); and only God has it, and only by revelation can man posses it (20-28).
2. Job 28:1 tn The poem opens with כִּי (ki). Some commentators think this should have been “for,” and that the poem once stood in another setting. But there are places in the Bible where this word occurs with the sense of “surely” and no other meaning (cf. Gen 18:20).
3. Job 28:1 tn The word מוֹצָא (motsaʾ, from יָצָא [yatsaʾ, “go out”]) is the word for “mine,” or more simply, “source.” Mining was not an enormous industry in the land of Canaan or Israel; mined products were imported. Some editors have suggested alternative readings: Dahood found in the word the root for “shine” and translated the MT as “smelter.” But that is going too far. P. Joüon suggested “place of finding,” reading מִמְצָא (mimtsaʾ) for מוֹצָא (motsaʾ; see Bib 11 [1930]: 323).
4. Job 28:1 tn The verb יָזֹקּוּ (yazoqqu) translated “refined,” comes from זָקַק (zaqaq), a word that basically means “to blow.” From the meaning “to blow; to distend; to inflate” derives the meaning for refining.
5. Job 28:2 tn Heb “from dust.”
6. Job 28:2 tn The verb יָצוּק (yatsuq) is usually translated as a passive participle “is smelted” (from יָצַק [yatsaq, “to melt”]): “copper is smelted from the ore” (ESV) or “from the stone, copper is poured out” (as an imperfect from צוּק [tsuq]). But the rock becomes the metal in the process. So according to R. Gordis (Job, 304) the translation should be: “the rock is poured out as copper.” E. Dhorme (Job, 400), however, defines the form in the text as “hard,” and simply has it “hard stone becomes copper.”
7. Job 28:3 sn The text appears at first to be saying that by opening up a mine shaft, or by taking lights down below, the miner dispels the darkness. But the clause might be more general, meaning that man goes deep into the earth as if it were day.
8. Job 28:3 tn The verse ends with “the stone of darkness and deep darkness.” The genitive would be location, describing the place where the stones are found.
9. Job 28:4 tc The first part of this verse, “He cuts a shaft far from the place where people live,” has received a lot of attention. The word for “live” is גָּר (gar). Some of the proposals are: “limestone,” on the basis of the LXX; “far from the light,” reading נֵר (ner); “by a foreign people,” taking the word to means “foreign people”; “a foreign people opening shafts”; or taking gar as “crater” based on Arabic. Driver puts this and the next together: “a strange people who have been forgotten cut shafts” (see his “Problems in Job,” AJSL 52 [1935/36]: 163). L. Waterman had “the people of the lamp” (“Note on Job 28:4, ” JBL 71 [1952]: 167ff). And there are others. Since there is really no compelling argument in favor of one of these alternative interpretations, the MT should be preserved until shown to be wrong.
10. Job 28:4 tn Heb “forgotten by the foot.” This means that there are people walking above on the ground, and the places below, these mines, are not noticed by the pedestrians above.
11. Job 28:4 sn This is a description of the mining procedures. Dangling suspended from a rope would be a necessary part of the job of going up and down the shafts.
12. Job 28:5 sn The verse has been properly understood, on the whole, as comparing the earth above and all its produce with the upheaval down below.
13. Job 28:6 tn It is probably best to take “place” in construct to the rest of the colon, with an understood relative clause: “a place, the rocks of which are sapphires.”sn The modern stone known as sapphire is thought not to have been used until Roman times, and so some other stone is probably meant here, perhaps lapis lazuli.
14. Job 28:6 sn H. H. Rowley (Job [NCBC], 181) suggests that if it is lapis lazuli, then the dust of gold would refer to the particles of iron pyrite found in lapis lazuli which glitter like gold.
15. Job 28:7 tn The “path” could refer to the mine shaft or it could refer to wisdom. The former seems more likely in the present context; the word “hidden is supplied in the translation to indicate the mines are “hidden” from sharp-eyed birds of prey above.
16. Job 28:7 sn The kind of bird mentioned here is debated. The LXX has “vulture,” and so some commentaries follow that. The emphasis on the sight favors the view that it is the falcon.
17. Job 28:8 tn Heb “the sons of pride.” In Job 41:26 the expression refers to carnivorous wild beasts.
18. Job 28:9 tn The Hebrew verb is simply “to stretch out; to send” (שָׁלח, shalakh). With יָדוֹ (yado, “his hand”) the idea is that of laying one’s hand on the rock, i.e., getting to work on the hardest of rocks.
19. Job 28:9 tn The Hebrew מִשֹּׁרֶשׁ (mishoresh) means “from/at [their] root [or base].” In mining, people have gone below ground, under the mountains, and overturned rock and dirt. It is also interesting that here in a small way humans do what God does—overturn mountains (cf. 9:5).
20. Job 28:10 tn Or “tunnels.” The word is יְאֹרִים (y^eʾorim), the word for “rivers” and in the singular, the Nile River. Here it refers to tunnels or channels through the rocks.
21. Job 28:10 tn Heb “his eye sees.”
22. Job 28:11 tc The translation “searched” follows the LXX and Vulgate; the MT reads “binds up” or “dams up.” This latter translation might refer to the damming of water that might seep into a mine (HALOT 289 s.v. חבשׁ; cf. ESV, NJPS, NASB, REB, NLT).
23. Job 28:11 tc The older translations had “he binds the streams from weeping,” i.e., from trickling (מִבְּכִי, mibb^ekhi). But the Ugaritic parallel has changed the understanding, reading “toward the spring of the rivers” (ʿm mbk nhrm). Earlier than that discovery, the versions had taken the word as a noun as well. Some commentators had suggested repointing the Hebrew. Some chose מַבְּכֵי (mabb^ekhe, “sources”). Now there is much Ugaritic support for the reading (see G. M. Landes, BASOR 144 [1956]: 32f.; and H. L. Ginsberg, “The Ugaritic texts and textual criticism,” JBL 62 [1943]: 111).
24. Job 28:13 tc The LXX has “its way,” apparently reading דַּרְכָּה (darkah) in place of עֶרְכָּהּ (ʿerkah, “place”). This is adopted by most modern commentators. But R. Gordis (Job, 308) shows that this change is not necessary, for עֶרֶךְ (ʿerekh) in the Bible means “order; row; disposition,” and here “place.” An alternate meaning would be “worth” (NIV, ESV).
25. Job 28:14 sn The תְּהוֹם (t^ehom) is the “deep” of Gen 1:2, the abyss or primordial sea. It was always understood to be a place of darkness and danger. As remote as it is, it asserts that wisdom is not found there (personification). So here we have the abyss and the sea, then death and destruction—but they are not the places that wisdom resides.
26. Job 28:14 tn The ב (bet) preposition is taken here to mean “with” in the light of the parallel preposition.
27. Job 28:16 tn The word actually means “weighed,” that is, lifted up on the scale and weighed, in order to purchase.
28. Job 28:16 tn The exact identification of these stones is uncertain. Many recent English translations, however, have “onyx” and “sapphires.”
29. Job 28:17 tn The word is from זָכַךְ (zakhakh, “clear”). It describes a transparent substance, and so “glass” is an appropriate translation. In the ancient world it was precious and so expensive.
30. Job 28:17 tc The MT has “vase,” but the versions have a plural here, suggesting jewels of gold.
31. Job 28:18 tn The word מֶשֶׁךְ (meshekh) comes from a root meaning “to grasp; to seize; to hold,” and so the derived noun means “grasping; acquiring; taking possession,” and therefore, “price” (see the discussion in R. Gordis, Job, 309). Gray renders it “acquisition” (so A. Cohen, AJSL 40 [1923/24]: 175).
32. Job 28:18 tn In Lam 4:7 these are described as red, and so have been identified as rubies (so NIV) or corals.
33. Job 28:19 tn Or “Ethiopia.” In ancient times this referred to the region of the upper Nile, rather than modern Ethiopia (formerly known as Abyssinia).