Texts in Conversation
Job describes a conversation between Job and his wife and the arrival of his three friends. The Greek Septuagint expands his wife's speech, adds other details, and changes the friends to kings, reflecting the influence of Hellenistic Jewish traditions.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Job 2:9
Hebrew Bible
7 So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, and he afflicted Job with a malignant ulcer from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. 8 Job took a shard of broken pottery to scrape himself with while he was sitting among the ashes. 9 Then his wife said to him, “Are you still holding firmly to your integrity? Curse God, and die!” 10 But he replied, “You’re talking like one of the godless women would do! Should we receive what is good from God, and not also receive what is evil?” In all this Job did not sin by what he said. 11 When Job’s three friends heard about all this calamity that had happened to him, each of them came from his own country—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to come to show sympathy for him and to console him.
Date: 500–401 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Job 2:9
Septuagint
6 And the Lord said to the devil, Look, I deliver him up to you; only save his life. 7 So the devil went out from the Lord, and struck Job with severe boils from his feet to his head. 8 And he took a potsherd to scrape away the discharge, and sat upon a dung-heap outside the city. 9 And when much time had passed, his wife said to him, How long will you hold out, saying, 9a Look, I wait yet a little while, expecting the hope of my deliverance? 9b for, look, your memorial is abolished from the earth, even your sons and daughters, the pangs and pains of my womb which I bore in vain with sorrows; 9c and you yourself sit down to spend the nights in the open air among the corruption of worms,
Date: 100–1 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... This passage proves significant both as a Septuagintal addition to the book of Job and as a Hellenistic Jewish interpretation of Job. On the one hand, it represents one of several additions in LXX Job, including the speech of Job's wife in 2:9, the identification of his friends as kings in 2:11, and the assertion of his resurrection in 49:17. The fact that this passage was appended to the Greek translation of Job may point to an attitude toward this text as not completely fixed in its written form ..."
Annette Yoshiko Reed, “Job as Jobab: The Interpretation of Job in LXX Job 42:17b–e,” JBL 120.1 (2001): 31–55.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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