While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, “Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”
//You know the story, how Satan, with the permission of God, persecuted Job. In this verse, a messenger brings word of the death of Job’s children.
But then, much later, Job’s children are discovered alive. Or at least this verse hints they still live:
Job 19:17, My breath is offensive to my wife, And I am repulsive to the children of my own body (NKJV).
So, did his children miraculously survive? Not all translations agree. Some say Job repulsed not his own children, but the children of his mother…that is, his brothers. The Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament) also discovered the incongruence of this story and tried to fix it, naming the children sons of Job’s concubines.
I guess we’ll never know who felt repulsed.
Nice post.very interesting.I just wonder how others translated this story.I might sat that translation services plays a vital role, not just the process of translating words but also transformation of meaning and intentions.Luckily, I can’t see machines taking over the jobs of human translators in the near future, as they have done with so many other professions (remember telephone operators?)
Telephone operators … how quaint! And how technologically exciting to their generation!