The writer responsible for Job is the greatest of all biblical poets and one of the most remarkable poets who flourished in any language in the ancient Mediterranean world. He is a technical virtuoso, deftly marshaling sound and rhythm for expressive effects, at times deploying brilliant word-play — as when he writes, “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, / they snap off without any hope,” the word for “hope,” tiqwah, punning on a homonym that means “thread” — utilizing a vocabulary that is the most extensive of any biblical poet, with borrowings from Aramaic, an enlisting of rare words, and even introducing words that seem to be his own invention. His range of metaphors is inventive and often dazzling, drawing on cheese-making, weaving, horticulture, and much more. Had there been bicycles in ancient Israel, I suspect we would find a bicycle simile somewhere in his poem. He exhibits an interest in nature quite untypical of biblical poets. And no other poet of his time and place possessed his ability to link together different passages with recurrent terms and images, even over long stretches of text.
The Job Poet and the Order of Things
