Job 4 — Hebrew and Greek compared
Disparate in this chapter: 4:6, 4:12, 4:16
Each card keeps the independently rendered source readings above their shared comparison and reception notes. The badge records the source’s governing classification; disparate readings are marked in red. Each reading retains its original reference.
Chapter 4
Eliphaz’s challenge and the night revelation
Source chapters: [BHS4] Hebrew; [LXX4] Greek.
Verse 4:1 Same
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:1 Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said:
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:1 Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:
Classification & Notes
Same. Text: Both identify the speaker without repeating the royal title of Greek 2:11.
Verse 4:2 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:2 “If someone ventures a word to you, will you be weary?
But who can restrain words?
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:2 “Have you not often been spoken to amid trouble?
Who will endure the force of your words?
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: Hebrew asks about attempting and restraining speech; Greek asks about prior speech and enduring Job’s words. The difficult first Greek question is retained provisionally.
Verse 4:3 Similar
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:3 Look, you have instructed many
and strengthened slack hands.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:3 For if you admonished many
and encouraged a weak person’s hands,
Classification & Notes
Similar. Text: Greek begins an if construction continuing through the contrast in 4:5.
Verse 4:4 Similar
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:4 Your words have raised up the stumbling,
and you have strengthened buckling knees.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:4 and raised up the weak with words
and put courage into powerless knees,
Classification & Notes
Similar. Text: The strengthening image agrees; Greek explicitly speaks of courage.
Verse 4:5 Similar
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:5 But now it comes to you, and you are weary;
it touches you, and you are alarmed.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:5 yet now pain has come upon you and touched you, and you have become agitated.
Classification & Notes
Similar. Text: Greek explicitly names pain and has one concluding reaction. Agitated renders the contextual urgency of espoudasas.
Verse 4:6 Disparate
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:6 Is not your fear of God your confidence,
and the integrity of your ways your hope?
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:6 Is not your fear in foolishness,
and your hope and the innocence of your way as well?
Classification & Notes
Disparate. Text: Hebrew presents reverence and integrity as confidence and hope; Greek associates fear, hope and innocence with foolishness. Of God supplies the Hebrew fear’s contextual object; Greek ambiguity is not harmonized to the Hebrew reassurance.
Verse 4:7 Similar
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:7 Remember now: who that was innocent ever perished?
Where were the upright wiped out?
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:7 Remember, then: who perished while pure,
or when were true people utterly uprooted?
Classification & Notes
Similar. Text: Both express Eliphaz’s claim about the fate of the innocent; it is not presented as the narrator’s judgment.
Verse 4:8 Similar
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:8 As I have seen, those who plow wrongdoing
and sow trouble reap it.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:8 As I have seen those who plow improper things,
those who sow them will reap pains for themselves.
Classification & Notes
Similar. Text: Greek has pains as the resulting harvest and explicitly for themselves.
Verse 4:9 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:9 By God’s breath they perish;
by the blast of His anger they come to an end.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:9 By the Lord’s command they will perish;
by the breath of His anger they will disappear.
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: The first Hebrew breath becomes Greek command; the second breath or blast image agrees.
Verse 4:10 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:10 The lion’s roar, the fierce lion’s voice,
and the teeth of young lions are broken.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:10 The lion’s strength, the lioness’s voice,
and the boasting of dragons were extinguished.
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: Greek strength, lioness and dragons differ from Hebrew roar, fierce lion and young lions’ teeth. These animal and bodily images are preserved.
Verse 4:11 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:11 The strong lion perishes for lack of prey,
and the lioness’s cubs scatter.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:11 The ant-lion perished for lack of food,
and lion cubs abandoned one another.
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: Greek myrmekoleon is retained as ant-lion, without identifying it with a modern insect or silently replacing it with the Hebrew lion.
Verse 4:12 Disparate
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:12 Now a word stole to me,
and my ear caught a whisper of it.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:12 But if some true word had been among your words,
none of these evils would have met you.
Will not my ear receive extraordinary things from Him?
Classification & Notes
Disparate. Text: Greek adds an accusation that true speech would have prevented Job’s calamities, then introduces hearing extraordinary things. Hebrew instead describes a whispered revelation arriving stealthily.
Verse 4:13 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:13 Amid disquieting thoughts from visions of the night,
when deep sleep falls upon people,
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:13 There were terrors and a nocturnal sound,
fear falling upon people;
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: Greek terrors and sound replace Hebrew thoughts, visions and deep sleep.
Verse 4:14 Similar
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:14 dread and trembling met me
and made all my bones shake.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:14 a shudder and trembling met me
and shook my bones greatly.
Classification & Notes
Similar. Text: The bodily terror agrees; Hebrew’s abundance of bones is rendered collectively as all my bones.
Verse 4:15 Similar
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:15 A spirit passed across my face;
the hair of my flesh stood on end.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:15 A spirit came upon my face,
and my hair and flesh shuddered.
Classification & Notes
Similar. Text: Spirit or wind is lexically possible; no specific angel or divine identity is imposed.
Verse 4:16 Disparate
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:16 It stood still, but I could not recognize its appearance—
a form before my eyes.
Silence, and then I heard a voice:
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:16 I stood up and did not recognize it;
I looked, and there was no form before my eyes,
but I heard a breeze and a voice:
Classification & Notes
Disparate. Text: Hebrew has an unidentified form standing before the speaker; Greek makes the speaker stand and explicitly says no form was there. Breeze differs from Hebrew silence.
Verse 4:17 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:17 ‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God?
Can a man be purer than his Maker?
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:17 ‘What then? Can a mortal be pure before the Lord,
or a man blameless on account of his works?
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: Hebrew min is rendered comparatively, with before God / before his Maker remaining possible. Greek explicitly says before the Lord and speaks of his works, provisionally the man’s own deeds, rather than his Maker.
Verse 4:18 Similar
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:18 Look, He puts no trust in His servants,
and He charges His angels with error;
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:18 If He places no trust in His servants
and finds something crooked in His angels,
Classification & Notes
Similar. Text: Both put even heavenly servants under scrutiny. Hebrew toholah is difficult; error is provisional. These words remain within Eliphaz’s reported experience.
Verse 4:19 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:19 how much more those who dwell in houses of clay,
whose foundation is in dust,
who are crushed more easily than a moth!
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:19 as for those who inhabit houses of clay,
from which we ourselves also are, of the same clay,
He struck them as one does a moth.
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: Greek includes we ourselves of the same clay and an explicit singular striking agent. Hebrew before a moth is provisionally a comparison of fragility; the exact force remains open.
Verse 4:20 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:20 From morning to evening they are shattered;
without anyone noticing, they perish forever.
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:20 From morning until evening they are no more;
because they cannot help themselves, they perished.
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: Hebrew lack of anyone’s attention differs from Greek inability to help themselves; Greek does not have forever.
Verse 4:21 Different
Hebrew–English: Literal-Smooth (Rabbinic Priority)
4:21 Is not their tent cord pulled away within them?
They die without wisdom.’
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
4:21 For He blew upon them, and they withered;
they perished because they had no wisdom.’
Classification & Notes
Different. Text: Hebrew yitram is provisionally their tent cord in an image of collapse. Greek instead has divine blowing and withering, with lack of wisdom made causal.