Job 5:15

But from their sharp tongue and heavy hand,

   He saves the needy.

 

Enigmatic is a word I cannot spell but came to me as a way to overcome writer’s block. As it turns out, I did not even have a good idea of what it meant. Enigmatic is a way to describe God in that we cannot understand fully who God is. As I know the study of Job will get me a better understanding of God, I keep at it.

This verse diverges from the previous run in that we are moving on from the crafty and back to the characteristics of God. The only interjection used by my sources was “But”, however, I am not sure I like it. Oddly enough, I followed my favorite source in placing the action after its description. Everyone else had it the other way around.

The only alternative to “save” was “rescue”, but I felt save was appropriate. My poetic source used “who” in place of “he”, but I did not like its use after the divergence to the crafty. The “needy” was chosen over the “poor” and the “simple” as neither of those seemed appropriate to the sharp tongue and heavy handedness.

The big gap I see in the remaining terms are the “who”, the tongue, and the hand.

One rendition has God saving from “the knife, the maw, and the mighty” which are three separate pieces.

Others have God saving from the tongue and hand of the mighty which is two actions from one entity. Breaking this down, we have “the sword of their mouth”, “the sword in their mouth”, “the sword and the mouth of the mighty”, “the sword from their mouth”, “the sword and the hand”, and finally, “the sharp tongue”.

The first time I went through I picked the sharp tongue and moved on quickly. Now I find that there was a third option to look at the verse as two separate pieces. Basically, he saves the simple from the sword, and he saves the poor from the heavy handed.

I assumed “their” referred to the crafty when I first worked this verse. This time, I wondered where the term “simple” came from since only one source used it. I landed on the “needy” could be “saved” from the sword due to the dumb things they themselves said. Which would lead to thinking of them as “simple”, I suppose.

The “sharp tongue” from my favorite source got around all the sword and mouth issues pretty simply, but the use of knife by one source returns me to the concept of sword and the crafty expecting someone to be right around the corner to get them with a knife or a sword.

The same with the “heavy hand” as it combines the term that others took as “mighty” or “strong”. I am not sure the difference between the “heavy hand” and the “clutches of the strong” is big enough to impact the meaning, but I feel the knife and the sharp tongue are very different in this application.

The term “maw” carries an informal meaning of the “mouth of the greedy” and its use pushes me to God saving from three things and not two: the sword, the mouth, and the hand.

Maybe it would be “He saves the needy from the sword, the maw, and the hand of the mighty.”

However, I believe the “who” in the verse is indeed the crafty as the next verse deals with shutting the mouth of iniquity. So then, the hand is not of the strong, but of the crafty and it is better to be the heavy hand of the crafty. Therefore, the single entity also lends to not a sword and a mouth, but a sharp tongue coming from the crafty that is shut in the next verse.

I am glad that did not change the way I had the verse. Context is king.

A friend used a phrase I once spoke to pick me a Christmas gift. He picked me a cool gift. But then he told me the idea he had and the reason he did not get the other choice. I laughed. My comment had to do with something I no longer wanted to spend my money on. The context was that I really like the item but had set aside spending my own money on it because of different, more personal issues. I would much rather someone give me the items I will not buy myself rather than much of anything else as long as it is not done using my money. Too funny. Context. Hopefully I was vague enough you do not know what I am talking about.