Job 28:11

Footnotes

1. 21 The translation “searched” follows the and ; the reads “binds up” or “dams up.” This latter translation might refer to the damming of water that might seep into a mine ( חבשׁ; cf. ESV, , , , ).
2. 22 The older translations had “he binds the streams from weeping,” i.e., from trickling (מִבְּכִי, mibbékhi). But the Ugaritic parallel has changed the understanding, reading “toward the spring of the rivers” (`m 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 (mabbékhe, “sources”). Now there is much Ugaritic support for the reading (see G. M. Landes, 144 [1956]: 32f.; and H. L. Ginsberg, “The Ugaritic texts and textual criticism,” 62 [1943]: 111).