People-Watchers Make Excellent Bible-Readers

I’m a people-watcher. Are you? No, I don’t mean staring at the tube and watching “America’s Best Home Videos.” Nor do I mean watching people on a crowded beach on the Italian riviera, people of every imaginable physical shape and state of dress and undress. Well, that can be fun, too. I’m talking about a different kind of people-watching.

When I was a pastor in Sicily, I enjoyed chatting up the other pastori of my congregation, those who spent their days and nights with sheep and goats. They were fun to watch. One whistle, and boy did the sheep and dogs hustle. Not like my sheep and dogs.

The pastori and their immediate families didn’t come to church, except for a wedding or a funeral, and perhaps Christmas and Easter. In fact, their children tended to drop out of school at the earliest convenience, and not show up for confirmation. But the pastori of my church had a potent love of the land, of the very rocks with which the Sicilian landscape abounds. I tried to meet them on their own turf.

Amidst puddles of spilled goat milk on the cobblestone courtyards of their homesteads (I would come for fresh ricotta), and among the olive groves of Sicilian contadini I came to know, groves that seem to grow right from the rock, I began to understand a phrase or two I knew from the Bible:

 

מִי־יִתְּנֵנִי כְיַרְחֵי־קֶדֶם

כִּימֵי אֱלוֹהַּ יִשְׁמְרֵנִי

. . . .

בִּרְחֹץ הֲלִיכַי בְּחֵמָה

וְצוּר יָצוּק

עִמָּדִי פַּלְגֵי־שָׁמֶן

 
If only I had it as in months gone by,

in the days when God watched over me;

. . .

when my footsteps were bathed in milk

and around me the rock gushed

streams of oil.

(Job 29:2, 6)

 

As the book’s opening narration relates, Job was a farmer and proprietor of ‘sheep and goats’ (צאן ‘small cattle,’ almost always mistranslated as ‘sheep’ alone) and camels. He also had oxen and she-asses, which served him as draught animals (1:3, 14). He did not live in a tent, as camel nomads do. He and his children lived in houses, on the land, it seems safe to imagine, and most probably of stone (1:18). Job had olive groves and vineyards, too, of course, the former implied by 29:6, the latter made plausible, at least, by 1:13.

We can see what mattered to Job by the things he mentions as he rues the day of his suffering by wishing a return to the life God took away from him. The first thing he longs for: a sense of Shaddai’s presence; the second: an environment of his own children:

בְּעוֹד שַׁדַּי עִמָּדִי

סְבִיבוֹתַי נְעָרָי

 
When Shaddai was with me,

my lads around me.

                                (Job 29:5)

 The third thing he longs for: a life among goats and sheep, and among the olive groves that grow from the flinty rock.

 
בִּרְחֹץ הֲלִיכַי בְּחֵמָה

וְצוּר יָצוּק

עִמָּדִי פַּלְגֵי־שָׁמֶן

 
When my footsteps were bathed in milk,

and around me the rock gushed

streams of oil.

                                        (Job 29:6)

 Love of land is a potent thing. It is especially strong among those whose land is harsh and forgiving at the same time. Which is why there is something called mal d’Africa. Which is why there is such a thing as mal della Sicilia, and the aching pain in Job’s gut, the throb of which overwhelmed him more than the severe inflammation of his skin, which he could relieve quite easily, by scratching until he bled.

Here is the text and a translation of Job 29:2-6, the opening section of Job’s final riposte to his three miserable friends:

 מִי־יִתְּנֵנִי כְיַרְחֵי־קֶדֶם

כִּימֵי אֱלוֹהַּ יִשְׁמְרֵנִי

 

בְּהִלֹּו נֵרֹו

עֲלֵי רֹאשִׁי

וּלְאוֹרֹו אֵלֶךְ חֹשֶׁךְ[1]

 

כַּאֲשֶׁר הָיִיתִי

בִּימֵי חָרְפִּי

 

בְּסוֹד אֱלוֹהַּ

עֲלֵי אָהֳלִי

 

בְּעוֹד שַׁדַּי עִמָּדִי

סְבִיבוֹתַי נְעָרָי

 

בִּרְחֹץ הֲלִיכַי בְּחֵמָה

וְצוּר יָצוּק

עִמָּדִי פַּלְגֵי־שָׁמֶן

If only I had it as in months gone by,

in the days when God watched over me,

 

when his lamp shone

over my head,

and by its light I walked in the dark.

 

When I was in

the days of my prime,

 

when God’s company

was over my tent.

 

When Shaddai was with me,

my lads around me;

 

when my footsteps were bathed in milk,

and around me the rock gushed

streams of oil.

 This is the second of a three part series. For the first part, go here. For the theory of ancient Hebrew poetry behind the scansion I offer, go here.

 The third installment will take a look at Job 29:7. In his recent commentary, David Clines discusses thirteen different possible ways of construing 29:7, none of which, in my view, gets it right.

---

[1] I restore a waw at the onset of the stich, which I think dropped out by haplography after the preceding yod.

Comments

[MaryAlexandra Ingram]

Wonderful, insightful and informative. Do you have Job 28 translated like this? According to the footnotes in the New Jerusalem Bible, there are many words that seem to have taken on a interperative meaning in the modern translations. When the actual translation that they give in the footnotes is reinserted, the entire scripture takes on a different meaning. Which may possibly support what some believe to be a connection between "sci-fi" and the Bible.

[JohnFH]

I have translated Job 28 for this blog. I need to update the blog's index of passages treated, don't I?

You will find the posts on Job 28 in the November archive.