turned up as by fire

In Gbaya, the notion of “turned up as by fire” in Job 28:5 is emphasized with ŋa̧a̧, an ideophone that expresses a desert-like aspect.

Ideophones are a class of sound symbolic words expressing human sensation that are used as literary devices in many African languages. (Source: Philip Noss)

complete verse (Job 28:5)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Job 28:5:

  • Kupsabiny: “Food grows on top of the soil/earth,
    but inside is it stirred up as if a fire had ravaged (it)” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Newari: “Grain comes from the earth,
    but inside it a fire is burning.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “Above the ground plants grow where food comes from, but below the ground as-if (it is) formed by fire.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “Food grows on the surface of the ground,
    but down under the ground, where there is no food, the miners make fires to break apart the rocks.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

Translation commentary on Job 28:5

As for the earth, out of it comes bread: here the contrast seems to be between what happens on the surface of the ground and what takes place underneath. As for has no verbal equivalent in the Hebrew, which is literally “Earth out of it comes bread.” The thought is that the surface is orderly and produces what the farmer expects of it, namely, bread. Bread here symbolizes “food” generally, or “crops”: “Food grows on the surface of the earth.” In order to make the contrast between the two lines of the verse clear, it may be necessary to say, for example, “On top of the ground they harvest crops, but under the ground….”

But underneath it is turned up as by fire: the meaning of this line is not certain. It may refer to the process of heating rocks in a fire and cooling them to split them open. Another suggestion is that the poet thinks of igneous rocks being formed in fire. Good News Translation does not mention the fire, which it takes as a metaphor on the view that the poet was describing the layers of rock under the ground in terms of the havoc left in a town after a severe fire. This line should show a strong contrast with the previous line: “but under the ground it is as if fire had turned everything upside down” or “but below the surface it looks like fire has stirred everything up.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, Wiliam. A Handbook on Job. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1992. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .

textual location of Job 28:1-28

According to the Job translation by Greenstein (2019), Job 28:1-28 should be located following Job 37:24. He explains:

“In the preceding passage (37:14-24), Elihu describes the uncanny marvels of the created world in the upper realm, in the sky. In the present passage (chapter 28), Elihu continues to describe a world that is beyond human comprehension, now focusing on the lower realm, the earth and, more particularly, the subterranean, which includes both the netherworld—the domain of the dead—and the sea that was believed to lie beneath the land. The passage is structured by two questions that ask, Where can (divine) wisdom be found? The question turns out to be a riddle, for the answer is not about where, but when (see verses 25-27).

“Modern commentators tend to regard chapter 28, which does not comport with Job’s perspectives, as an independent poem that cannot be attributed to any of the known speakers. The assumption that the poem is autonomous is highly problematic. Biblical poems do not begin with the conjunction ki, ‘for, because,’ as this passage does. There is no antecedent to the pronoun ‘he’ in verse 3. But more important, the motif of esoteric wisdom lying beyond human reach typically includes both the above and the below (see for example Job 11:7-8; Deuteronomy 30:11-13; Jeremiah 31:36; as well the Babylonian hymn to the sun god Shamash). The conclusion of this passage (28:28) echoes the conclusion of the survey of the heavenly wonders in 37:24, and it is following that passage that this one belongs.”