Job 13

Scholars have to guess about how to translate this reference to what is more literally “whitewashed lies.” How did Job’s visitors whitewash the lies? There’s one main characteristic of Hebrew poetry—and this is Hebrew poetry. The lines don’t seem to rhyme as they often do in English poetry. But they repeat ideas. It’s parallelism. The first line says it one way and the second line may say it another way or in the same way with a different word picture. So a clue to understanding what the lies mean is to look at the line below, which refers to worthless physicians. One suggestion for understanding the lies is that they look like the truth, yet they’re fake—like a quack physician. From Job’s perspective he was an innocent man God was treating like a sinner. But the men who came to him didn’t consider that the possibility. They leaned on their theology without thinking for themselves and exploring the option that their theology got it wrong. That’s the whole point of the book of Job, to remind God’s people that sometimes good folks suffer and that they didn’t do anything to deserve it.

The original Hebrew text says more literally, “I will take my flesh in my teeth.” The meaning seems similar to our modern saying about putting our life on the line or about putting our life in someone else’s hands.

An ancient Hebrew copy of the Old Testament, known as the Masoretic Text, translates it more like this: God might kill me, but I trust him. The oldest known copy of the Masoretic text is about 1000 years old.