Job 28:9–11

Footnotes

1. 17 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.
2. 18 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).
3. 19 Or “tunnels.” The word is יְאֹרִים (yé’orim), the word for “rivers” and in the singular, the Nile River. Here it refers to tunnels or channels through the rocks.
4. 20 Heb “his eye sees.”
5. 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, , , , ).
6. 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).