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 7^th 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 7^th 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 7^th 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 7^th 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 b^cḥἰ = 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 10^th 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 5^th 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 6^th hour or 6^th 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