The General Conference has an ongoing reading of the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy online. Below is the link with the church actively participating. It is also translated in a number of languages and some say the readers-public exceeds 380 000. Some short notes is supplied daily for the more advanced devotional readers.
Devotional
Short Notes to Job 1: Dear readers and contributors of comments. We read the
book of Job with fascination and interest and some of you did mention that
there were problems in it when you read it. Scholars are claiming that it is
the most difficult Book in Hebrew in the Bible. Why? Because these scholars are
not Seventh-day Adventists, to start off with, and it does make a difference
because of our wholesome lifestyles which affects our cognitive parts seeking
harmonious holistic explanations that finds equilibrium with God, but also
because they bought into Higher Critical
Rationalism that wants to take out of the Bible: miracles, inspiration of
the Holy Spirit, divinity of Jesus, basically that it is God’s Word. They only
want to make it an ordinary ate piece of propaganda. None of you are doing this
and thanks to that. But there are other reasons why translations are all
different on this book at many places. The meaning of certain words are locked
in mysteries for centuries because scholars made the mistake of locking the Book
as late, following their Higher Critical advisors, then secondly, they seek
only environmental languages of this late time that could help them find a meaning.
Some words in Job appear only once in the whole Bible so where to find the
meaning is a problem. The Rabbis of the Middle Ages and scholars cannot find
proper syntax understanding so they ran to the 7th century A.D. Arabic,
believing that nomadic Arabic since Mo has the purest form of meaning one can
“inject” into these Hebrew words of Job to understand that. Result? Job finds
God a “terrible” God and one can see it in many translations. But here is the
problem and only Adventists have the correct answer: Moses wrote Job and he did
so hiding in the desert from Thutmosis III since 1490 BCE and during that time,
Ellen White tells us in Patriarch and
Prophets, Moses wrote the epic poem Job. Freshly coming from Egyptian
Universities, the best language one should use for comparison of these
difficult words in Job, is definitely not post 7th century A.D. Arabic
(see any Hebrew Dictionary in modern
times) but Middle Egyptian. So what did I do in writing on this devotional
commentary of Job? Elbows deep in a Middle Egyptian dictionary to get the
loanwords that “rubbed off” on Moses when he was studying in the court of
Hatshepsut between 12 and 40 years old. Astounding cases of beauty instead of terror about the character of God and Job’s understanding of God,
opened-up in the translation. It harmonized with what a believer would think
about his God in the rest of the Bible. No longer is there a ‘shocked’ Job ‘totally
confused and navigationaless’ who thinks God ‘hates him’ but a Job that knows
his Redeemer lives and will resurrect him one day. I bought the book by E.
Dhorme on Job which is the classical magnus
opus, the modern liberal scholars are saying, but this scholar said in 42
places in his translation of Job: [blank . . . . . ] meaning that he does not
know. Even his Arabic did not help him much with the syntax. However, I found
Egyptian to be very helpful when one selects phonics or sounds of words that
resemble the Hebrew and it made more sense for me. Even the 42 places of
Dhorme’s 1926 translation are filled in my own translation. And Job? He was not
confused about his relationship with God. His friends accused him of that but
he was absolutely certain of his innocence and His God’s relationship to him
regardless of the depressing circumstances. Isn’t our God great? He will lead
us through His Spirit to the right method and when one works harmoniously with
the Word of God and desire to follow Him, there will avenues of blessings and
understanding before us. Keep unswerving in your faith. Bless the reader Lord
and add daily to our understanding. Amen.
Devotional
Short Note on Job 2:
For those who missed earlier short notes on the translation of Job, the
sales-point was that Moses who lived in 1490 BCE in Midian at the age of 40,
did not speak Arabic and some words in each chapter are rare words in the Bible
so that scholars through the ages did not know what to do with these words.
Hebrew Dictionaries used 7th century Arabic to explain Moses’ text 2170 years
before. What a faith to believe that Arabic preserved Moses’ meanings for two
millennia unchanged? No language ever had this record of consistency! So we
suggested to look for loanwords and borrowings surfacing in Moses’ Hebrew
rather from Middle Egyptian, and rightly so, since he was schooled in the
Universities of Egypt. Here in Job chapter 2, Satan in his conversation with
Yahweh in 2:4 is saying something that scholars just do not know what to do
with it. Some translations read that Satan said “Skin for skin”. Hebrew
Dictionaries will also tell you that the word is unknown. They suggested
“skin”. Rabbis Rashi and Ibn Ezra of the Middle Ages were totally in a flat
spin as to what this means. They thought that if you peel off the skin, another
skin is there. Middle Egyptian Dictionaries suggest the word `rrwt meaning
“gate”. Having Satan at the gate of temptation and sin was what Moses knew very
well in the other Book he wrote also in Midian after 1490 BCE, according to E.
G White, namely, in Genesis 4:7 where “The Sinful One is crouching at the
door”. Satan is sitting at the door waiting to prey on people, their feelings
and their lives. That is what Satan had in mind here: “Gate in unto gate [very
literally], and whatever a person has he will give for his life”. In Egyptian
Theology the dead are going through turmoil after death with monsters trying to
grab the deceased souls from the bark of Ra [sungod] as he makes his trip with
them through twelve gates of the night to the Judgment hall of Osiris for the
Investigative Judgment at Midnight, followed by the Executive Judgment. Of
course Moses did not believe any of this theology but Satan does and he talks
Egyptian theology to Yahweh. “Bring Job in the gate of death unto that gate of
death” is what Satan is saying to Yahweh here. One of the typical styles of
Moses is to fuse prepositions in Hebrew into one word and sometimes he fused three
together, for example in Genesis. The idea of these few comments is not to talk
at the reader but to the reader by bringing the reader into the problems of the
translation that he would not otherwise have known if it was not said. Dear
God, I pray for all readers, that they will be blessed for their enthusiasm for
the Word of God. Write it upon their minds for joyful reflection and memory.
Amen.
Devotional
Short Notes to Job 3: Just when we think
that Job cursed the day he was born, we need to know some points here. The
issue in Job 1:11 with Satan was that because God protects Job, Satan wanted
God to stretch forth His hand “if not he “bless” [not curse; or blaspheme] God
in His face”. Job always blesses God in His face but he will stop if God
permits Satan to touch his property. Satan hoped that. But it was not going to
happen. Blessing God was pumping through the veins of Job. So the tragedy came and
“Job opened his mouth and [not cursed, but the Assyrian word ḳalâlu meaning
despise or dishonor] dishonor his
day. Most people think it is his birthday but there is at least one scholar who
saw it as his “destiny” or his situation or condition. Did Job stop blessing
God? No. I asked my sick father one day: “How do you feel?” He said: “Oh, I
feel as sick as a dog”. Is he cursing God that he is a dog? Many translations
continue to give the impression that Job said: “May the day on which I was born
perish” but other options are also perfectly possible by turning it into a
question by Job: “Would the day in which I was born be lost? And the night when
one said, ‘a man [gbr] has impregnated’?” Already one has two days in this
literal translation: birthday and conception day, nine and a half
months before. That is plural but Job “dishonored his day [singular]”. That is
why the suggestion by the Higher Critical Scholar Ehrlich “destiny” makes more
sense here, although HC is not our cup of tea and should not be in Adventism. “That
day, would it be dark? Will God not seek from above? And will He not let light
shine upon it?” (Job 3:3). Verse 8 in the translation provided also need
explanation: the correct translation should be from the Egyptian and not Arabic
as the Hebrew Dictionaries are using. Because of 7th century Arabic
they translated “curse” but it is actually the Egyptian word ḳbb meaning “quiet”.
Translate Job 3:8 as “let them be quiet [Egyptian word] who curse the day”. Job
is against anyone trying to curse the days of his conception or birthday or
destiny/condition. Why? Ellen White says about trials in our lives: “He
inspires them with a determination to prove every apparent failure a success” (Gospel Workers 1915, 269.2, 269.3). Job
dislike people who curse God for his condition. His friends are going to talk
in this direction in succeeding chapters. Then Moses used a word “noah” = rest
to indicate fresh meanings of Sabbath. A Niniveh cuneiform Assyrian Dictionary
K4397 listed the meaning of Sabbath in the days of Ashurbanipal as “rest [noah]
of the heart”. Job says three times in this chapter that if he died he would
sleep, lay down, be quiet and thus keep Sabbath [noah] verse 13. Death as a
sleep is also Jesus’ message and one of our readers pinpointed the condition of
those who asleep in Christ in a contribution to the blog. A second meaning of
noah or Sabbath is in verse 17, namely, to cease from anger; for prisoners to
be at ease, not hearing the voice of the taskmaster; small and great, freedom
from the employers (verses 18-19). As Moses is writing here, shortly after the
manslaughter of the Egyptian overseer to the tasks of Hebrews in Egypt laboring
under severe conditions, he wished for their release through the thoughts of
Job in this epic. A third meaning of “noah” or rest or Sabbath in verse 26 is
to be at ease, quiet, at rest and free from turmoil. Job fully understands the
soul-healing therapy of sleep and part of Adventist wholesome living is enough
good sleep, at least an average of 8 hours a night.
Devotional
Short Notes on Job 4: We must emphasize to the reader that the Book of Job is
the most difficult Hebrew in the Bible. Scholars cannot understand many things
in the book. It is my firm belief that Adventists have a privilege for
understanding over other denominations of Christians, Jews, simply because they
accept, like ancient Jewish tradition claimed and the Syriac tradition, that
Moses wrote the Book and secondly, Ellen White indicated that the Book was
written during Moses’ hiding in Midian 1490-1450 BCE. The authorship of the
first five books are rejected by other denominations but Adventists are working
with a harmonious approach to the Bible and accept that the first five books
were written by him and Job as well as Psalm 90. In Job chapter 4, like in 41x
other places in the book of Job, Moses used a special form for the name of God:
Eloah. Moses used it 2x in Deuteronomy 32 but then it appears in that form at
14x other places in the Old Testament: Daniel, Habakkuk, Psalms, Proverbs,
Isaiah, 2 Kings, Nehemiah (derivative from Moses of course). This chapter also
continues with the one who started evil. Although scholars are classifying Job with Proverbs as wisdom literature, it is
probably a misnomer. Job is a combination of narrative, poetry, prayers, songs,
dialogues, even eschatology. It is not just creating a character and put the
words in his mouth in order to illustrate something. Job is history and history
is description of past realities. Realities it were, even the case of Satan's
involvement. It is a reality to have the Rebellion in Heaven Motif and this
motif the Ancient Near East knew well. One late example is from the library of
Ashurbanipal, in Niniveh ca. 650 where the cuneiform text of the Legend of the
Worm was found. It is set in a realistic understanding of the Rebellion in
Heaven Motif. It is an incantation text where the dentist prays that he will be
able to grab the worm inside the cave of the tooth and remove pain. The text
begins with a narrative of the origin of this evil worm and it started in
heaven where it rebelled and was cast down to earth in the marshes as a worm
from where it exalted itself to reside on human teeth. The origin of evil and
the contention between good and bad cannot be understood properly without a
proper understanding of this reality of the Rebellion in Heaven Motif in the
Bible. Did the biblical writers copied or plagiarized their Rebellion in Heaven
Motif in Isaiah 14 and Ezechiel 28 and Job 1-4 from cuneiform texts at Niniveh
in 650 BCE? No, the cuneiform text at Niniveh was produced when Israel was
already 73 years in the area and just like in New York second, third and fourth
generation kids moved up in the society so did the Jews in Ashur and Niniveh.
It is rather possible that a paganized Moses midrash happened here with the
Legend of the Worm because the Jewish scribe copying the pagan magical
anti-worm tooth text fused Moses and pagan religions to describe this war in
heaven. Moses wrote Job nearly 810 years before the cuneiform text and Isaiah
wrote his chapter 14 about the fall of Satan nearly a century before the Legend
of the Worm tablet. Again it is not a myth or legend of fable but reality that
this world has to live with. Most scholars like to call it the prologue to the
book. In Job 9:24 it is said that “The earth has been given into the hands of a
wicked one”. In Job 15:15 Satan used Eliphaz to repeat what he said to Adam and
Eve and the fallen angels in heaven during the rebellion in heaven: “He does
not believe in His holy ones and the heavens are not pure in His eyes”. In the
final remark of the young man Elihu later in Job 37:24 Satan pumped his own
wisdom in him to be vomited out against God: “He does not look upon any wise of
heart”. What a lie.
Devotional
Short Note to Job 5: Eliphaz is an existentialist who had one night a demon
visiting him in a night-vision and Zophar is a humanist while Bildad had
problems with the science of sin. In Job 5 Eliphaz mixed error and truth by
explaining that what he concludes about a theme, is the authority of truth: “I
myself have seen” (5:1); “as for me” (5:8); “we have searched out” (5:27). Since
Eliphaz denied the existence of Satan in his life he did not follow the Word of
God. He had a séance with Satan in chapter 4 and thought it was good for him.
Thus, the demographics of his worldview consist of only two levels: God above
and us here and God is involved in everything. Evil is only humanly related and
God only acts with evil humans and good ones. The Sovereign God decides whom He
wants to give pain or suffering and later decides to take it away. The proof of
God’s involvement with humanity is rain that helps the poor and needy. The view
of Eliphaz is that man is blessed who is reproved by God and that the Almighty
chastise people (Job 5:17). He brings pain and binds it, wounds and heal it
(Job 5:18). This absolute responsibility for everything in the lap of God is
the problem of Eliphaz. It is also the question that Adventists have with other
denominations. Ellen White described the positive role of Calvin during the
Reformation as divinely inspired and in 2012 Richard A. Muller asked the
question: Was Calvin a Calvinist? Eliphaz assigned the absolute responsibility
of suffering and pain in this world to God, similarly to current denominations.
The whole purpose of Moses’ in the Book of Job is to introduce this three stage
view of life with Satan in the lowest level and God above and humans sandwiched
in between. By now we already know who the origin of this pain and suffering is
and yet Eliphaz parked it all above. He counseled Job that there will be a
maximum of six troubles but in the seventh it will be over (Job 5:19). He
believes in the superstition of the magical seven. He entertains the concept of
the social liberation theology that the poor and the needy are automatically
saved in the eyes of God (Job 5:15-16) “He saved from the sword from
their mouth and the needy from the hand of the mighty. So it was hope for the
poor and injustice shuts its mouth”. [Scholars did not know what to do with
this ‘from their mouth’: Some manuscripts altered the Word of God since they
could not understand. Scholars later accepted the alteration, ‘of their tongue’.
One scholar revoweled it without changing the original but added a letter and
translated ‘from their murderers’ but so it cannot be because of the rule
against adding to the Word of God. Some deleted the word and substituted it
with ‘the poor’ but the Adventist biblical position is that one cannot take
away anything from the Word of God just because one cannot understand what it
means]. The probable understanding is that there is a parallelism between ‘from
their mouth’ and ‘of the mighty’. Authority is a problem both in position of
power (‘mighty’) and in jurisdiction (‘from their mouth’). Eliphaz has a
monergistic view of events on earth as coming only from above. The Book of Job
presents this synergistic view of life which is also the view of the rest of
the Bible namely that the role of the Great Controversy colors historical
events on earth so that any event happening on earth cannot just be ascribed to
God but has to be weighed by the principles of the Word of God whether they are
synergistic with God or with Satan. Eliphaz operates with a ‘realized
eschatology’ namely that God will eventually improve things so that this world
will become like heaven to the person before he/she dies (Job 5:21-26). Elphaz
operating with scissors to cut a cardinal element [Satan] out of his worldview
is also shared with other current philosophers who uses the same scissors to
cut other aspects of the biblical worldview. The problem with modern philosophers,
whether Spinoza, Feuerabend, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Bauer, Engels, Marx, Renan,
Strauss, Nietzsche, Ortega, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Bultmann, and the list
goes on: they all worked with an attempt to cut God out of their worldview.
Devotional Short Note on Job 6: The time is here to
provide the diligent Adventist with the options available regarding problems of
the Hebrew text since the word appears only once or twice in the Old Testament.
For that reason, there is no context from which they could guess the meaning.
So what did they do? Since scholars made the error of dating Job very late,
they sought languages that are late to explain the meanings, for example,
Aramaic. At least Akkadian and Ugaritic [about two hundred years after Moses]
were two languages with a long history as well as Amarna-Akkadian [from about
one hundred years after Moses]. These languages would be of great help. But for
Job 6 they were not. So what did the scholars do? The presumed that 7th
century A.D. Arabic would have preserved the original meaning the best and thus
consulted the Arabic dictionaries post-dating that century for the meaning.
Many of the Middle-Age Rabbis spoke Arabic fluently and wrote their
commentaries in Arabic and thus they also claimed that Moses who lived 2100
years before understood Arabic when he wrote these words. In the Hebrew
Dictionaries for these words you will see “cf. Ar. [then follows the Arabic
cognate].” Any Adventist should already have lifted up their red cards. Moses
came from Egypt and his second language was Egyptian, not Arabic. It is more
profitable to seek for cognates in Middle-Egyptian that are Dictionaries from
the time of Moses from Pyramid Texts and Temple Texts rather than late Arabic Dictionaries.
We thus provide a list of these words:
6:2 Instead of anger/grief read turn
aways[Egyptian gwš meaning “turn away”]
6:4 Instead of terrors of God read the
marvels[Egyptian bἰ(3)yt “miracle” or “marvels”] of God are against Job.
6:4 Instead of bray/set themselves against
read they will beg[Egyptian neheq indicated by W. Budge in his
dictionary (Vol. I :382) with a sign of a man asking, begging, praying, doing
supplication, petitioning, requesting] or stare[Egyptian ggwy = “stare”].
6:6 Instead of bland/unsavory read breathing[Egyptian
tpr meaning “to breathe” and since Egyptian does not have a /l/ the /r/ is used
for the same]
6:6 Instead of strong tasting read the pig[Egyptian.
It is the preposition be- plus the Middle Egyptian word for “pig” rer]
6:7 Instead of sorrowful/loathsome read as
unclean[Egyptian. The word kidewey כדוי is probably
related to the Ugaritic word dw that means “to be unclean, to be sick”. The Egyptian word tui is chosen to mean “abominable”]
6:13 Instead of have I?/is not read ignorant[Egyptian
word ḫm meaning “ignorant of; ignorance; ignorant man”]
6:17 Instead of they become warm/they are
consumed read rthey are relieved[Egyptian The form yezobu יזרבו is only here in the Old
Testament so it is probably a Middle Egyptian word srf meaning “to rest; to
relieve”]
6:18 Instead of are held/wind along read proliferation[Egyptian
root rptt in Egyptian meaning “lady image, woman statute”. It may take on the
meaning of a verb that the paths make an image but as they go up in the far distance
on the horizon of a desert, they become nothingness. The Egyptians do not have
a /l/ and use instead an /r/]
6:21 Instead of ruin/terror/casting down
read tomb [Egyptian ḥ3t or ḥ3tt meaning “tomb”]
6:27 Instead of and you dig read They finish
off [Egyptian grḥ = finish off is probably in mind by Moses here for wetikeru = ותכרו ]
Devotional
Short Notes to chapter 7: It is not the
purpose to create scholasticism here and confuse readers. What is happening
here with these notes, is that an Adventist attempts to solve the problems of
the book of Job, since scholars went bananas with the text by cutting words out
that they did not understand, transpositioned the letters of the Hebrew around
like the Scribe of the Greek Septuagint did in this chapter, interchange
letters with other letters in Hebrew because the newly created word they
understood better, like Jerome did and also the Greek Septuagint scribe and
Targum. A ‘can of worms’. Where is the certain Word of God in all this grabbing
in the air? Knowing this, it is irresponsible not to bring these points to the
attention of informed readers so that they might develop an eye for the
problems and in future also grow in giving explanations and answers. That is
the purpose of this detailed rambling as some may see it.
The
reader is reminded that Middle Egyptian was the language of Moses besides
Hebrew from his mother’s knees. Arabic from the time of Mo cannot adequately
explain Moses’ meanings more than 2100 years before. That is the problem with
the Hebrew Dictionaries that they ran to late Arabic for the
understanding of words that appeared only once or twice in the Bible. Thus, Job
is mistranslated with meanings that Moses never intended.
Job
7:5 Instead of *worms/rottenness* read *Weeping*[Egyptian rmww means “weeping”
and Moses may have had this in mind here for rimah = רמה]. The Septuagint scribes came to this
verse and did not know what the word means but sat with two possible options,
rotten and worms and they entered both as “rotten worms”. In doing so they
created an extra word that is not in the Word of God. Jerome did the same with
his translation of the Latin Vulgate and also entered an extra plus word in the
Word of God. Meaning was a problem in both translations.
Job
7:5 Instead of *clods* read *smears*[Egyptian gs meaning “smear”]. It appears
only one time in the Bible. Scholars and scribes could not understand it so in
both the Targum and Greek translations they changed the middle vowel-consonant
to another and translated “clods”. Red card. One cannot change the Word of God
ad hoc as one pleases. Adventists knows that well. Many scholars went further
that this newly changed word can also mean “curd” but it still remains a “red
card” issue that one cannot translate the original by adding to the Word of God
what is not there or result in letter of the original to be changed to fit
one’s translation as the Talmud even did.
Job
7:5 Instead of *melted/runs/flows* read *brought*[Egyptian ms “to bring”
transliterated in Hebrew as wayim’s = וימאס]. The Greek scribe of the Septuagint,
Targum translator and Syriac translator connected the word with another word
that is mss and ended up with “melted” or “flow”. They did not know what the
meaning was in Job. Actually the Greek scribe transposed the Hebrew letters of
the original of the Word of God by reading w’ms instead of wym’s like we
presented above. This is not the only word in this verse that the Greek scribe
took liberties to move letters of the Word of God. See also the next word.
Job
7:5 Instead of *wrinkled* read *burning*[Egyptian word rḳḥ = “burning”
transliterated in Hebrew as raga’ = רגע] (verse 5). Job 7:9 home-coming or excellence[Egyptian
word ἰḳr meaning “excellent” and Moses transliterated it in Hebrew as yakirenu
= יכירנו] to such a person (verse 9). In this verse
the Greek scribe of the Septuagint transposed the Hebrew letters when he was
translated. A red card. Instead of rg` he read gr`.
Job
7:11 Instead of *restrain* read *keep
quiet* or *cut off”*[Egyptian ḥsḳ
meaning “cut off” as ehsak = אחשך]. Scholars read this meaning of “restrain” on the basis of the
Greek and Syriac which may have followed the meaning from Isaiah 58:1, namely,
“restrain” or “hold back.”
Job
7:18 Instead of *try/examine* read *to have abundance* [Middle Egyptian word bcḥἰ
= to have abundance for the Hebrew
transliteration in Moses day as תבחננו ]. Translate as follows: “that You should visit him to the
morning to the opponents You are having abundance.” God’s benevolence is clear
here.
Job
7:18 Instead of *every moment/instant/move/be at rest* read *to the opponents/turning
aside*[Egyptian word rḳy = “opponent” or “turning aside” for the Hebrew
transliterated form ruqi = רקי]”. The Greek scribe of the Septuagint thought it meant “be at
rest” but Aquila and Symmachus Greek translations thought it is “in the
unforeseen” and the Targum read “at the moment” and the Syriac read “at the
time”. Jerome also read the same as Aquila, namely “suddenly”. Where this
meaning comes from by these ancient translators is not clear.
Devotional
Short Notes to Job 8: Job 8:13 “So are the ways”.
The original Hebrew reads it this way but the fragile LXX or Greek Septuagint
translation used a faulty copied Hebrew text that inverted two letters and read
mistakenly “so is the end”. The
Catholic Marvin Pope and Jewish converted liberal German scholar George Fohrer preferred
the Septuagint. Keep in mind that many Church-Fathers tried to say that one
should prefer the Septuagint Greek translation because it was the Bible of
Jesus. Wrong. The only Septuagint that survived for us in modern times is not
the Septuagint of Jesus but corrupt copies that were adulterated in the days of
Antiochus Epiphanes 164 BCE when also editions of Homer’s classics were
adulterated in Alexandria. Those were the ones that survived. An Adventist has
to take out a red card to this Byzantine survived Greek Septuagint that
inverted two letters of the Hebrew to come up with a new word. We have to
consider that the original Septuagint was very literal comparing nearly exactly
to the consonantal text of the Hebrew but that the that text only survived in
fragments at Qumran at the Dead Sea in Greek (like Numbers, Leviticus etc.) but
that the errorful reformatting of the Septuagint in Epiphanes’ day is the
actual one that is canonized as Septuagint in later Byzantine times. Bookburning
practices and library stealing by the Romans, persecution and other wars caused
the original Septuagint to almost disappear. Many of our seminaries’ and
theological schools’ professors in Greek and Hebrew or Old and New Testaments do
not know of these problems with the Septuagint and by using modern populist
science of textual criticism and their prescribed books by the SBL and related
organizations, they are led to believe the opposite and end up thinking that
all texts are good and that one should just pick and choose between the
manuscripts reconstructing for ourselves our Word of God. God does not speak
with many tongues. All cannot be right. Problems of meanings with words in the
Book of Job cannot be solved by running to the Septuagint, Syriac, Targum,
Coptic, Arabic, Qumran or any other texts. Qumran is a library with
degenerative texts, full of errors, full of corrections (Isaiah texts for
example in which scribes copied wrongly and then corrected supralinearly or in
the margin). Must we give up that the Word of God cannot be found then? No.
From Qumran cave 4 a text of Daniel indicated that the Daniel that was
preserved for us in the 10th century A.D. as the consonantal text of
the Masoretic Tradition or MT, is exactly, almost 99.9% identical to Daniel of
Qumran cave 4 dating probably to 130 BCE. Thus, for 1136 years the Jewish
scribes did not lose one jota or tittle of their text in Daniel. For this
surprising reason, this must be the Word of God and therefore, one can assume
that the Hebrew consonants of the MT tradition of 1008 A.D. (like Aleppo Codex)
present the original Job as Word of God in form the best. Our dear and anointed
professors in Semitic languages and Greek as well as Greek related languages,
should do their utmost best to study Middle Egyptian or use Middle Egyptian
dictionaries to solve rare words in Job. Secondly, they should not jump to
other versions or translations as option for translation. Stick to the exact
literal form of the Aleppo Codex of 1008 A.D. because of the astounding
exactness of the Jewish Xerox preservation with the help of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit used non-Christians (Jews) to preserve for Christians their Old
Testament in exactitude. Thirdly, whenever you see that a word in a Hebrew
Dictionary meaning was derived from the Arabic, take out a red card. However,
if it is a word commonly used in many books and chapters of the Old Testament,
Arabic can be useful in a descriptive way although not dogmatically
prescriptive. Our general reader audience would do better to stick to the KJV
or any very literal translation of Job and be careful that some words are rare
with meaning problems. Therefore one should not be too dogmatic about a
sentence meaning without making sure that the sentence do not contain a rare
problem word.
Devotional
Short Note to Job 9: There is not a textbook available in the markets or
libraries that will approach the Book of Job in the way these comments are
doing. The purpose is not to create Egyptomania but to bring aspects of Moses’
University life vividly before our eyes as we consider him composing his magnus
opus, the Epic Poems of Job. The following diagram is my own understanding of
what Egyptian Theology of Judgment is in a nutshell compared to Adventist
Theology of Judgment or the biblical view.
The
source for Egyptian Theology of Judgment is the Book of the Dead but it is very late, long after the biblical Old
Testament was completed. There are comparisons in the Tomb of Seti I (1331-1304
BCE) of these hours of the night but they are not exactly the same (see Budge).
Seti’s tomb drawings of the Judgment scenes in Egyptian Theology are about 160
years after Moses wrote Job. Considering Egyptian theology of Judgment in the
night, the sungod Ra died at the West every evening (cyclic) in their theology
and then climbed on a bark or boat and sailed with the souls of the dead on the
Tuat (or in-between Nile that is between the heavenly Nile and the earthly Nile).
It went in a half-circle passing every hour through a gate. The Investigative
Judgment started at the 5th hour or gate and it is a measuring with
lines (for the good people) and ladders (for the bad). This is about 11o’ clock
at night. At Midnight at the 6th hour or 6th gate, the
sungod disappeared and every soul had to appear before the throne of the headgod
Osiris who weighed the hearts of everyone in a scale with a feather on the
other side. A notorious monkey or ape sat on the scale and was supposed to
check that the calculations and numbers are correct. This was the deciding hour
in the Investigative Judgment for the Egyptians and there were gods present as a kind of a jury (The Jews in
Egypt at Elephantine probably explained Daniel 7 to the Egyptians who
wholeheartedly incorporated ideas into their own visuals of the Judgment?).
There was no-one to represent the soul in this part of the judgment. Ra was
gone. This was the part of the Judgment in Egyptian Theology that the ordinary
people in Egypt feared the most. Moses knew about this Egyptian fear every night.
Job says in his complain about the Investigative Judgment: that he does not
have an advocate to represent him in the Judgment (Job 9:33), a Man that will
answer him (Job 9:32). The bad ones are below Osiris and the good ones are
before him on his throne of judgment. Job said of God: “beneath Him crouch the
helpers of Rahab” (Job 9:13b). Job indicated that even though a man is perfect
before God, he may suffer (Job 16-18). Satan is the one who brings problems on
the good on this earth (Job 9:22-24). Job maintains that a perfect person may
have pain on earth (Job 9:16-18). In Job 9:12 it says “If He grabs away who can
hold Him back, who can say to Him what are You doing?” There are a lot of
conditionals between verses 15-30, namely, “if” appears 9x times. At the Exodus
of Israel from Egypt in 1450 BCE, the Judgment of the Angel of the Lord came at
Midnight, exactly the hour that all Egyptians feared most since their dearest
sungod Ra was not there with them. The Judgment in Heaven was in session at
that time in Egyptian Theology and the process was exactly over the earthly
Nile as far as the hour was concerned. Job believed in three levels, as the
biblical view also provides: God in Heaven (first level), humans on earth
(second level) and Satan (third level). See Job 9:24: “The earth has been given
in the hands of Wicked one”. Rabbi Rashi of the Middle Ages correctly
understood it to be the Adversary as did the Jewish tradition of Baba Bathra 16a). Did Moses borrow his
Heavenly Investigative Judgment ideas from Egyptian theology since rib (Job
9:3) is Investigative Judgment and mishpath (Job 9:19) is Executive Judgment?
No. If Israel lived in Egypt since Jacob came to Egypt in 1950 BCE, then the
Hebrews influenced Egypt and Egyptian society by the time Moses wrote Job, for
470 years. Acculturation, assimilation, borrowing, influenced the Egyptians to
take ideas over from Hebrew literature. The concept of Gerhard von Rad that
there was only oral tradition and no written ones, is not true since the
Hebrews painstakingly kept record of their chronology in history and it
coincides exactly with cuneiform sources. Memory cannot be exact. What was in biblical
prophecy charted out as a linear sequence of events, was packed in hours of the
night in a very similar sequence cyclic every night for the Egyptians. Job has
the future Time of Trouble cry: “I am
blameless, I do not know my soul, I despise my life” (Job 9:21).
Continuation
is at this link:
http://www.revivalandreformation.org/bhp/en/bible/job/9
Koot
van Wyk