Texts in Conversation
Job describes God stretching out the heavens and walking on the sea, evoking ancient Near Eastern traditions. The Greek Septuagint intensifies this and emphasizes the act of walking on water, which eventually influenced the gospels.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Job 9:8
Hebrew Bible
5 He who removes mountains suddenly, who overturns them in his anger, 6 he who shakes the earth out of its place so that its pillars tremble, 7 he who commands the sun, and it does not shine and seals up the stars, 8 he alone spreads out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea. 9 He makes the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the constellations of the southern sky; 10 he does great and unsearchable things, and wonderful things without number.
Date: 500–401 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Job 9:8
Septuagint
5 Who wears out the mountains, and men do not know it: who overturns them in anger. 6 Who shakes the earth under heaven from its foundations, and its pillars totter. 7 Who commands the sun, and it does not rise; and he seals up the stars. 8 Who alone has stretched out the heavens, and walks on the sea as on firm ground. 9 Who makes the Pleiades, and Hesperus, and Arcturus, and the chambers of the south. 10 Who does great and unsearchable things; glorious also and excellent things, innumerable.
Date: 100–1 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... There is, however, at least one Old Testament passage that paints a picture prefiguring Mark’s sea-walking story: a doxological passage in Job, portraying God as sovereign over all creation, acclaims him as the one “who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea” (Job 9:8). In its original context, this text was probably meant as another reference to God’s subduing the primordial watery chaos; but the LXX offers a rendering of Job 9:8 that may be of considerable importance for understanding Mark 6:45-52 ... If Mark had Job 9 in mind, it would help to explain another notoriously puzzling feature of the water-walking tale. In Mark’s telling of the story, when Jesus comes walking on the sea, the narrator comments cryptically, “He intended to pass them by” ... If we recognize the allusion to Job 9, however, we may glimpse a far more illuminating reading. Thus, in Job 9 the image of God’s walking on the sea is linked with a confession of God’s mysterious transcendence of human comprehension ..."
Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016), 97.
* 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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