[B-Greek] Job 3:24

Albert Pietersma albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Fri Dec 12 12:53:54 EST 2003


  On Friday, December 12, 2003, at 11:45 AM, Rick Duggin wrote:

> Dear B-Greekers:
> Be glad that I always exhaust my own resources before
> bothering you; otherwise, I would have at least two questions
> a day!
>
> While reading Job 3 this morning, PRO caught my attention in v.24:
>
> PRO GAR TWN SITWN MOU STENAGMOS hKEI,
> DAKRUW DE EGW SUNECOMENOS FOBWi.
>
> At first, I tried to translate PRO in its usual sense (before), but 
> this
> did not seem to make much sense.
It does, though, as soon as one remembers that PRO can not only have a 
spatial sense, but it can have a temporal one as well. Here I would opt 
for the latter since the former ("in front of my victuals" etc.) does 
not make sense, as you note.
>  It seemed to have more of the
> flavor of ANTI (the idea of substitution or exchange).  This made
> perfect sense to me.   The problem is that I don't know that PRO
> can be used as ANTI.
Quite so, but temporal PRO will do just fine.
> Although neither LSJ nor BDAG discuss
> LXX vocabulary, my research in these volumes did not indicate such
> a use for PRO.
Do, however, note that LSJ sub voce has:  I. of Place <<before, in 
front of>> . . .II. of Time <<before>>  . . . III. in other relations: 
1. of Preference <<before, rather than>>.  III.1. incidentally, 
approaches certain uses of ANTI. One needs to remember, of course, that 
prepositions are first and foremost structure words, with a very wide 
range of meaning.
> The closest BDAG came to this possibility, IMO, is
> def. number 3, marker of precedence in importance or rank (pg. 864),
> but this still falls short of a definition that parallels ANTI.
Right. See LSJ II.1.
>
> When I checked the Hebrew (the preposition lphn), neither BDB nor
> Gesenius were of any help at all.
ESPECIALLY not in Greek Job, which is a literary translation and thus 
atypical in the LXX corpus.
>
> Finally, when I checked NET, footnote (# 91) for Job 3:24 says
> that the temporal meaning before makes very little sense here.   The
> meaning "in place of, for" fits better.   So, at least I'm not out on 
> a limb
> totally by myself.
I would respectfully disagree. The not-yet published NETS translation 
of Job (Claude Cox) reads:
23	Death is rest for a man,
	for God shut him in.
24	For sighing has come before my food,
	and I cry, gripped by fear.
25	For fear—which was my worry—came to me,
	and the fear I dreaded befell me.
I concur.
Al
>
> Does PRO sometimes occur in the sense of exchange?   Would you
> suggest this rendering of Job 3:24?    Or is there another/better way
> to view the passage?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Rick Duggin
> ---
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>
—
Albert Pietersma
Professor of Septuagint and Hellenistic Greek
Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
University of Toronto
Home: 21 Cross Street,
Weston ON Canada M9N 2B8
Email: albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Homepage: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~pietersm




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