Job 28: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This chapter describes how miners dig deep into the earth for silver, gold, iron, copper, and gems, reaching places no bird or wild animal has ever gone. It then asks twice where wisdom can be found, and answers that no living creature knows the way to it and no amount of gold, silver, or jewels can buy it. Only God knows where wisdom is, because he saw it and measured it when he set the weight of the wind, the limits of the water, and the path of the thunderbolt. The chapter ends with what God said to man: the fear of the Lord is wisdom, and turning away from evil is understanding.

Claim by Claim

1. 28:1
   • There is a source or mine for silver.
   • There is a place where gold is refined.
2. 28:2
   • Iron is taken out of the earth.
   • Copper is smelted out of stone.
3. 28:3
   • He puts an end to darkness.
   • He searches out to the farthest limit.
   • He searches out ore in gloom and deep darkness.
4. 28:4
   • He breaks open a shaft away from where anyone dwells.
   • These places are forgotten by the foot of the passerby.
   • Far from men they hang and sway (the verb is uncertain and may instead mean they are brought low or dried up).
5. 28:5
   • Food comes out of the earth.
   • Underneath, the earth is turned over as if by fire.
6. 28:6
   • The stones of the earth are the place of sapphire.
   • The earth has dust of gold.
7. 28:7
   • There is a path that no bird of prey knows.
   • The eye of the falcon has not seen that path.
8. 28:8
   • Proud beasts have not trodden that path.
   • The lion has not passed over it.
9. 28:9
   • He puts his hand to the flint.
   • He overturns mountains from their roots.
10. 28:10
    • He cuts out channels in the rocks.
    • His eye sees every precious thing.
11. 28:11
    • He dams up the streams from trickling.
    • He brings what is hidden out to light.
12. 28:12
    • The question is asked where wisdom may be found.
    • The question is asked where the place of understanding is.
13. 28:13
    • Man does not know the worth of wisdom.
    • Wisdom is not found in the land of the living.
14. 28:14
    • The deep says wisdom is not in it.
    • The sea says wisdom is not with it.
15. 28:15
    • Wisdom cannot be obtained in exchange for fine gold.
    • Silver cannot be weighed out as the price of wisdom.
16. 28:16
    • Wisdom cannot be valued against the gold of Ophir.
    • Wisdom cannot be valued against precious onyx.
    • Wisdom cannot be valued against sapphire.
17. 28:17
    • Gold and glass cannot equal wisdom.
    • Wisdom is not exchanged for a vessel of fine gold.
18. 28:18
    • Coral and crystal are not worth mentioning beside wisdom.
    • The price of wisdom is above pearls.
19. 28:19
    • The topaz of Cush cannot equal wisdom.
    • Wisdom cannot be valued against pure gold.
20. 28:20
    • The question is asked from where wisdom comes.
    • The question is asked where the place of understanding is.
21. 28:21
    • Wisdom is hidden from the eyes of everything living.
    • Wisdom is concealed from the birds of the sky.
22. 28:22
    • Abaddon and Death say that they have heard a report of wisdom with their ears.
23. 28:23
    • God understands the way to wisdom.
    • God knows the place of wisdom.
24. 28:24
    • God looks to the ends of the earth.
    • God sees everything under the whole heavens.
25. 28:25
    • God made a weight for the wind.
    • God measured out the waters by measure.
26. 28:26
    • God made a decree for the rain.
    • God made a way for the thunderbolt.
27. 28:27
    • Then God saw wisdom.
    • God declared wisdom.
    • God established wisdom.
    • God searched wisdom out.
28. 28:28
    • God said to man that the fear of the Lord is wisdom.
    • God said that to turn away from evil is understanding.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

28:1

The chapter opens with a description of ancient deep mining, which was a real and highly developed industry in the world of the Old Testament: shafts were sunk for copper and turquoise in Sinai and the Negev, and for gold in Egypt and Nubia. "Fine" in the King James means refine, that is, to melt ore and separate out the pure metal.

28:2

The King James "brass" does not mean brass in the modern sense. Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc that was not made in the ancient Near East. The Hebrew word means copper, or bronze, which is copper alloyed with tin.

28:3

"The shadow of death" translates a single Hebrew word that means thick or deathly darkness. It does not necessarily refer to dying; it is the ordinary Hebrew term for the deepest kind of gloom, the sort found underground or in the grave.

28:4

The Hebrew of this verse is among the most difficult in the book, and translators differ considerably. The general picture is of a mine shaft sunk in uninhabited country, with the miner suspended on a rope far from any other person. The King James "the flood breaketh out from the inhabitant" reflects a different reading of the same consonants.

28:5

This can be read two ways, and the Hebrew leaves both open: either that miners tear up and burn the ground beneath fields that grow food, or that the earth's underside is a place of fire. Ancient miners did use fire-setting, heating rock until it cracked, to break it apart.

28:6

The stone called "sapphire" in older translations is almost certainly lapis lazuli, a deep blue stone flecked with gold-colored pyrite, mined in Afghanistan and traded across the ancient world. Sapphire as we know it was not worked in this period. The flecks of gold in the verse fit lapis exactly.

28:7

Birds of prey were proverbial in the ancient world for the sharpest eyesight of any creature. The point is that even the keenest eye in nature has never seen the miner's tunnel.

28:8

The King James "the lion's whelps" and the modern "proud beasts" both render a Hebrew phrase meaning literally "sons of pride," a stock expression for large, majestic wild animals. Lions were still found in the region in biblical times.

28:9

The rock in the Hebrew is flint, one of the hardest stones a miner could hit. "Overturneth the mountains by the roots" means cutting away the base of a hillside until the whole thing collapses and its contents are exposed.

28:10

"Rivers" is misleading. The Hebrew word means cut channels or galleries, the tunnels a miner drives horizontally through solid rock once the shaft is deep enough.

28:11

The Hebrew here is disputed. One reading, followed by the King James, has the miner damming back water that would flood his workings; another has him searching out the sources of underground streams. Both amount to the miner mastering water in order to reach what is buried.

28:12

The Hebrew word for wisdom, hokmah, is not book learning. It means skill: practical know-how, the kind a metalworker, a sailor or a judge has. After eleven verses on the cleverest thing human beings can do, the poem asks where that other kind of skill is mined.

28:13

"The land of the living" is a standard Hebrew expression for the world of people who are still alive, as opposed to the realm of the dead. Note also that the Hebrew word rendered "price" is read by some ancient versions as "way" or "place," which would make the line say that no one knows the road to wisdom.

28:14

"The deep" is the Hebrew word for the vast body of water thought to lie beneath the earth, the source of springs and of the sea. Here it and the sea are pictured speaking, as the two deepest places a person could imagine.

28:15

Coinage did not exist when this was written. Silver was paid by weight, which is why the verse speaks of silver being weighed out rather than counted. The word behind "gold" in the first line means something like "enclosed" or "treasured" gold, that is, gold of the finest sort.

28:16

Ophir was a place famous as a source of the highest quality gold; its location is unknown, and suggestions have included southern Arabia, the coast of Africa and India. "Gold of Ophir" functioned as a byword for the best gold obtainable, much as we might say Swiss watch. The exact stones meant by the Hebrew words translated "onyx" and "sapphire" are uncertain.

28:17

"Crystal" may mean rock crystal or, more probably, glass. Glass in this period was rare, made in small quantities, and valued alongside precious stones rather than treated as a cheap material.

28:18

The Hebrew names for these gems and materials cannot all be identified with certainty. The word rendered "pearls" may mean rock crystal or jasper, and the word rendered "rubies" is often taken as red coral or pearls. What is clear is that the list names the most expensive things a person of that time could buy.

28:19

"Ethiopia" translates Cush, the region of the Nile south of Egypt, corresponding roughly to modern Sudan and southern Egypt rather than to the modern country of Ethiopia. The "topaz" of ancient writers was probably the yellow-green stone we call peridot, mined on an island in the Red Sea.

28:21

"Kept close" in 1611 English means kept hidden or shut away. It has nothing to do with being nearby, which is the opposite of what the verse says.

28:22

The Hebrew word behind "destruction" is Abaddon, a name for the place of ruin where the dead go, used as a near synonym for the grave. Here Abaddon and Death are addressed as if they were persons who could be questioned, a common way of speaking in Hebrew poetry.

28:25

Weighing the wind and measuring water are the actions of a merchant with scales and measuring vessels. The image is of setting fixed quantities, as a trader does when filling an order.

28:26

A "decree" is a fixed rule or limit. "The lightning of the thunder" treats the flash and the crash as a single thing, what we would call a thunderbolt, and its "way" is the path cut through the sky.

28:27

The verbs in this verse are the vocabulary of appraisal used earlier in the chapter for pricing precious things, and of the prospector's search: God sized wisdom up, declared its value, set it in place and searched it out, doing to wisdom what the miner does to ore.

28:28

"The fear of the LORD" is a fixed Hebrew expression meaning reverence or awe before God, and the attitude of life that follows from it; it does not mean being frightened. Where the King James prints LORD in capitals it is standing in for the personal name of God, which Jewish readers did not pronounce aloud; in this one verse, however, the Hebrew actually has the ordinary word for "Lord" or "master," the only place in the book of Job where it appears.