Job 3:26
I have no ease, no peace, no rest.
What came is agony!
The end of the first chapter of poetry. What a great ending. Literarily speaking. Maybe literally too. When I finished my version of the verse, I was really happy with it. I did not yet get consistent in writing which source was which on the page, but my guess is that whatever versions I had read before, none gave quite the emotional push that I felt when writing it down on paper. One of my bible study members loves to bring in the context, but sometimes the message in a single verse can have impact when you focus on it and this one did for me.
One version only differed from mine with “has come” in place of “came”. The nuances of case were well beyond me in Spanish and Latin, but one would think I could articulate the difference here, but I am at a loss. It just sounded better.
The biggest structural difference is that one version used a possessive form as if to say “I have agony” as opposed to “agony” having come. They actually used turmoil in place of agony, but the possessiveness seemed to miss the point.
Other terms used for what was missing include “quietness”, “safety”, “repose”, “stillness”, and “calm”. None of these was really wrong, but I felt the use of “ease”, “peace”, and “rest” gave a sort of ladder effect. He was in pain, he could not find a comfortable position, and he therefore could not rest. “Quiet” was often in the place of “peace” and while they are similar, I think quiet missed the emotion of his condition. The same was really true of “stillness” and repose”. “Calm” has a similar emotional basis, but as a one off, I went with the repeated peace. Safety was also a one off, but it does not seem to be remotely applicable to the situation.
A more subtle difference in structure was the difference between one “I have” component that I chose and an alternative where there were three such components: “I was not”, “Neither had I”, and “I had no” as an example. I chose the one phrase way as that is how I could see it being performed on stage.
Interestingly, agony was the one off. “Turmoil” once, “torment” once, “trembling” once, and “trouble” four times were my alternatives. None had near the impact of “agony” on me and upon further review, only torment comes close at the issue at hand.
This is the end of job’s first speech and that lines up with why I felt this emotional ending was so important to how the audience would be impacted it watching this performed. I am going to have to experiment to see how this first chapter reads out load. I am never great listening to my own voice, but this might be entertaining.