| While Job 28 is universally considered a masterpiece of biblical poetry, very little attention has been given to how the poem achieves meaning. After a brief overview of Job 28 in current research, this study investigates the poem from two interdependent angles of vision. Introduced by a new translation and a vocalized text, Part One treats the poem's formal linguistic structures, conceptual metaphors, and aesthetic effects. This reading of Job 28 is informed by two particular foci. First, it highlights the cosmic reverberations in the language and imagery in the poem. Second, it sets Job 28 in dialogue with the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgaxnesh as an intertext that provides an instructive model for interpreting the biblical poem, though no genetic connection between the biblical poem and the Akkadian epic is assumed.;Part Two is a philological and textual study of Job 28. While the meaning of the poem's words and the integrity of its text are supported by appeals to ancient textual witnesses and to comparative Semitic philology, the cogency of these conclusions is strengthened by demonstrating how these readings participate in the conceptual world of the poem and contribute to its aesthetic logic.;The last section contains several conclusions about disputed aspects of the interpretation of Job 28. It also presents a brief reading of the chapter in its horizontal literary context that arises from the deep exegesis of the poem in Parts One and Two. The conclusions include the following: The subject of vv. 3-11 is human, not God. Aside from vv. 14-19, the integrity of the poem is not in doubt. Wisdom is not personified or hypostatized in the poem, but objectified. The language of the first section of the poem is not merely technical, but flexible, opening up semantic possibilities on literal and figurative levels. In context, Job 28 may be read as Job's parable of his friends' failure in their quest for wisdom. |
