The groans of the dying rise from the city,
    and the wounded cry for help,
    yet God ignores their moaning. (Job 24:12)

In the New Living Translation, Job 24 is given the section heading, “Job Asks Why the Wicked Are Not Punished.” I think that’s such a sweet, polite heading. Look at the passive sentence structure that avoids making God the subject: not “Why God Does Not Punish the Wicked,” but “Why the Wicked Are Not Punished.” How tactful. But I think it misses the point.

Job is not as concerned with tact, is he. Verse one, he launches right in.

Here’s his bottom-of-the-mountain beginning as it is translated in the New Living Translation:

Why doesn’t the Almighty bring the wicked to judgment?
    Why must the godly wait for him in vain? (Job 24:1, NLT)

Don’t sugarcoat it, Job. Tell us what you really think.

You may be finding about now that verse one above looks very little like verse one in your Bible, and I would like to take a long-winded but important detour to address that. I have been struggling with what to make of Job 24 because it sounds an awful lot like what his three friends have been saying, so I have been spending a lot of time reading it in different versions to see if that clarified the nuances in the meaning at all. I have been considering how the differences in our own language’s denotation and connotation may be skewing my own understanding of this chapter, too. In short, I have been ripping the language of this chapter apart as best I can in a non-native language of the text to see if I have been misunderstanding something with my American English speaking mind. I think I have.

Let’s start with clarity’s biggest obstacle: the change from the original language.

I usually like the New Living Translation best, but sometimes, I think it’s worthwhile to shop around the different versions and try to understand why different translations phrase things so differently. I am going to be using a couple of terms interchangeably that really should not be used interchangeably, so let me briefly define these terms as I understand them so I can completely ignore these definitions as we proceed:

translation: word-by-word change from one language to another (Few translations are true word-by-word translations due to widely varying grammatical structures across languages, especially in different linguistical families like Hebrew and English, that make an exact translation impossible to decipher for those who don’t know both languages – we call this kind of straight translation a lexicon, aka a massive headache).

interpretation: concept-by-concept change from one language to another in a way that considers cultural context and common phrasing to increase understanding. Biblically speaking, The Message is the best example of an interpretation rather than a translation of the original text. This is usually easier for a non-native reader to understand, but the danger is that it is up to the interpreter to decide what the original author meant by the words, and sometimes that can be unclear, leading to seemingly large discrepancies between versions. The interpreter’s own culture, beliefs, and biases can also influence their interpretation, although that can be said of translations as well.

interpretive translation: a middle ground that tries to stay as true to the word choice of the original as possible while modifying grammatical structure and obscure language to be more understandable. Most “translated” works fall somewhere on the spectrum of interpretive translation.

The NLT is more on the interpretive side of interpretive translation, meaning rather than just changing it from one language to another word-by-word, it does its best to capture the original meaning of the phrases and concepts.

For contrast, here’s verse one in the New American Standard Bible, a straighter translation that I usually find very accurate, but the meaning can be a bit foggy to those of us who don’t have a great grasp of the subtleties of ancient Hebrew language and embedded culture.

Why are times not stored up by the Almighty, And why do those who know Him not see His days? (Job 24:1)

Oh, dear, that’s very different, isn’t it. That’s very, very different. At least the way I understand it.

The most difficult part about translating and reading a translation is that there are ideas that just don’t translate straight across languages. One reason we work so hard to preserve languages today is that we have come to realize that there is cultural knowledge and perspective embedded in language; there are words for things in some languages that other cultures do not even know exist, like political roles or familial designations that are unique to that culture. The most famous, perhaps, is the extra distinctions in the Inuit language for different kinds of snow (though scholars disagree on how many words they have and whether or not that is really so different from other languages). We also identify different kinds of snow in our language (ie snow, sleet, slush, etc), but because they are native to a northern climate, their vocabulary contains words for different types of snow we consider to be all the same. In contrast, an equatorial language might not have any words for snow, or maybe just one to describe something that happens to other people, but they may have a word for different kinds of weather in their rainy season that the Inuit do not experience and therefore do not have words to describe. Color is another popular example of embedded cultural perspective; while we think of colors as having distinct lines between them when we are young, we grow to understand that color is actually a spectrum. It turns out different cultures draw those color-separating lines in different places, so trying to translate simple words like color words can be much more difficult than expected. One culture’s word for blue might not include all the hues we consider blue, but it might include some we would consider green and some we would consider gray.

Because some cultures have words for concepts other cultures have no reason to know, like weather patterns or local animals or unique social and political terms, word-by-word translations can be more than a little challenging for both the translator and the reader. Archaic literature takes the linguistic-cultural barrier one step farther by displacing us in time as well as place. We all know how difficult it is to understand our own children’s slang terminology, right? That’s only one generational step to cross; Job was written thousands of those generational steps ago.

All that to say, I am going to do my best to understand the nuances in the language of Job 24, but I am no historical scholar. I am no linguist or anthropologist. I studied literature. I read books, people, in English, that’s it, that’s all I’ve got for the talent show.

So I did some cross-referencing across all the English translations I could find, and I think if we listen to a combination of conceptual interpretations and word-by-word translations, we can begin to understand how the same words went through the transformation-into-English process and came out so very, very different.

One version I like to go back to when I am not sure which translation I am understanding correctly is the Orthodox Jewish Bible. The OJB is a primarily English translation that incorporates both modern Yiddish and Hasidic vocabulary for words that are not always easily or accurately translated. I do not speak Yiddish. I do not understand any of the Hasidic words. I could not even begin to tell you which of the words are Yiddish and which are Hasidic, and my explanation of the difference between the two would edge on embarrassingly ignorant. But sometimes there are words in parentheses that really help, and often the internet knows a lot more about it than I do, so a quick copy-paste search goes a long way to clarifying things I don’t understand.

So here’s what we’ve got from the OJB:

Why are times [for judgment] from Shaddai not kept, and why do those who have da’as of him not see his yamim [days [of assize])? (Job 24:1)

There are a couple of words in there that us ignorant English-only speaking folk need some clarification on, so let me give you a brief summary of what my much-too-long internet search came up with:

Shaddai – Almighty, a name of God (I knew this one!)

da’as – simply translated, knowledge, but this is a special kind of knowledge that comes from being closely acquainted with someone. This isn’t just someone you know, it’s someone you know, ya feel me? Yeah that’s why language is hard to translate.

yamim – simply translated, days, but more specifically, kind of like a court date. Often translated “day of judgment.” Apparently that’s what “of assize” means too because I don’t know about you, but that parenthetical hint did nothing for me, so I looked it up. A court of assize was some kind of periodic court that convened at specific intervals around England apparently. Who knew. I’m still not sure I really do.

Given what the OJB says, I think we can safely say that the most accurate interpretive translation is probably this one:

Why doesn’t Shadday set aside times for punishment? Why don’t those who are close to him see his days of judgment? (Job 24:1, Names of God Bible)

Or, the way I summarize it in my own head,

“Why isn’t there a court date for all these murderers, thieves, and swindlers yet, Lord? If there is one, why don’t you at least tell your best friends when it’s happening?”

So now that we’ve got verse one figured out, on to 2-25! Eeks, this is looking to be a long post. Sorry everyone. Not sorry. Pretending. I love words.

Don’t worry, we won’t go through all of them nearly as closely. Maybe. We’ll see.

You know what. I think we’re going to have to go ahead and break this one into parts. Yeah, let’s do that.

to be continued…