complete verse (Job 28:9)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Job 28:9:

  • Kupsabiny: “Those people dig very hard stones.
    (they) dig up hills to lay the roots bare.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Newari: “Men cut the hard rocks with their own hands,
    and overturn the roots of the mountains.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “People are-digging-up the very-hard/(flinty) rock even the deep portion of the mountain.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “Miners tear apart very hard rock;
    it is as though they turn the mountains upside down to get the ore.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

Translation commentary on Job 28:9

Having concentrated on the remoteness of the mines, the poet now speaks of the work of miners whose great feats enable them to extract precious stones. Man puts his hand to the flinty rock: this line is patterned after verse 3a. The subject man is impersonal. Puts his hand is used as in Genesis 37.22, in which Reuben advises his brothers not to harm Joseph. The expression carries the thought of “attack.” What someone attacks here is the flinty rock, which some render as “the granite rock.” The term meaning “flint stone” is used to indicate a hard rock that resists the efforts of the miners. Good News Translation emphasizes the hardness of the rock rather than its mineral nature, with “Men dig the hardest rocks.” This line may also be rendered “Miners attack the hardest rocks to remove their ore” or “They dig into solid granite.”

And overturns mountains by the roots: overturns translates the same verb root used in verse 5, where it is rendered “turned up.” It is used of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19.21-29. The word translated roots is the same as for the “roots” of trees and is used to express the extent of the excavation of the mountain. Good News Translation calls it “their base.” Biblia Dios Habla Hoy says “and pulls up the roots of the mountains.” The picture given is somewhat exaggerated, but if the receptor language permits this kind of figurative expression, the translator should use it; for example, “they turn mountains upside down,” “they pull up mountains by their roots (feet),” or more subdued, “they dig into the very bottoms of the mountains.”

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.”