28:3 is a strophe unto
itself. The notes I offer are technical, and go into more detail on some
matters than is done in otherwise available commentary. If this puts you off, you
may choose instead to ask whatever questions you might have regarding the verse.
I’ll do my best to answer them.
3קֵץ שָׂם לַחֹשֶׁךְ
וּלְכֹל תַּכְלִית
הוּא חוֹקֵר
אֶבֶן אֹפֶל וְצַלְמָוֶת
to every limit;
the explorer, that is,
of rock, gloom, and murk.
The poetry of the book
of Job is divided into verses (pesuqim) in the masoretic tradition. A
verse most often contains a single “line” consisting of a pair of three-beat “versets.”
13 of 28 verses in Job 28 are like that: one-liners 3:3 in structure. Variations
on the theme include (2:2):3 and 3:(2:2) structures. In my view, two-liners
(2:2) (2:2) in format are also frequent.
28:3, it seems to me, is
a (3:2) (2:3) structure. I revocalize לכל
accordingly. 28:3 thus contains a prosodic chiasm. Chiasm serves in ancient
Hebrew verse to artfully tie contiguous parts more closely together.
The verse contains a
delayed identification of subject. The “he” who puts an end to the darkness, to
every limit, is the explorer. The delay serves to make the identification emphatic. The verb חקר has God as subject in the conclusion
of the poem, forming an inclusio with its occurrence here. The most human
beings can do is explore rock and realize its potential. God, on the other
hand, explores wisdom and realizes its potential.
Delayed identification
of subject in ancient Hebrew is a grammatical nicety that has not, so far as I
know, received much attention. The use of הוא to
introduce an expositive comment is well-known. That it functions in this way
here has not been previously suggested.
The strophe begins with a fronted קץ “end”
which lacks a corresponding item in parallelism following. It stands out all
the more for that reason. But it seems awkward to front “end” in English in
this context.
Word order is flexible in ancient Hebrew. Prepositioning of the object before the verb it modifies is relatively
common. It is often hard to reproduce it in natural English. The
fronting of "end" in this verse serves to underline the accomplishment of human exploration of the
sources of precious minerals. Within the economy of the poem as a whole, the accomplishment serves as a positive foil to
God’s relationship with the wisdom that structures the universe, and as a
negative foil to man’s inability to fathom that kind of wisdom.
The qatal verb form at the beginning of the verse is best
understood, like most other qatal forms in the poem, as unmarked in
terms of tense. A present tense translation in English is a workable
equivalent.
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