Gift of the Giver (1)

You have granted me life and goodness; and Your care has guarded my spirit. Job 10:12  NASB

Life – Yesterday we examined the Qohelet’s claim that the animating spirit returns to God at death.  This idea is an important correction to the popular Western conception of eternal life.  It is important to note that this correction occurs in Ecclesiastes, a late text of the Tanakh.  Most scholars agree that Ecclesiastes was not written by Solomon.  Instead, it is a pseudepigraphical work attributed to Solomon to give it more credence.  But the vocabulary and themes of Ecclesiastes point to a much later authorship, perhaps after the return from Babylon.  Why does this matter to us?  Because it demonstrates how Hebrew thought opposed the Hellenistic idea of the eternal life of the psyche (soul).  Now we look at a much earlier text in Job and we find a complement to the declaration of Qohelet.  Job attributes ḥāyâ, ḥesed, and pāqad to God.  We’ll examine each of these to see just how temporal they are.

We also need to notice the syntax of the Hebrew.  It doesn’t start with the subject and the verb.  Literally, the Hebrew reads, “Life and goodness You have granted me . . .”  The order of the words tells us what’s important, and the first thing, the most important thing, is ḥāyâ (life).  So, you think, “Well, of course.  What could be more important than this?”  But the word in Hebrew isn’t quite what you expect.  It’s not ḥāyâ, but rather ḥāyyim, a plural.  “‘Lives’ You have granted me.”  What?  Does this mean that Job believed in reincarnation?  No, there’s something deeper going on here.  The TWOT suggests that the plural ḥayyîm should be translated “life” in the absolute sense, not “live” or “alive” or “having life,”  but rather the concept of life.  However, Hebrew in general doesn’t deal with concepts.  It’s much more concrete, using actual, experienced examples in its vocabulary.  I suggest that translating ḥayyîm in the abstract overlooks this fact. ḥayyîm is plural, not because it is an abstract idea but because the Hebrew experience of living involves multiple experiences.  Let me explain.

There are other significant words in Hebrew that are translated in the singular but are in reality plurals.  One of those is “face.”  The Hebrew is ʾappayim, a plural word translated as a singular in English because we don’t say “faces” when we refer to a single individual.  But Hebrew does.  Why?  Because the truth about a face is that it can have many different expressions any one of which might change our opinion of the character of the person.  We all know this; we just don’t express this multiplicity in English.  But we do in Hebrew.  Another example is the word šāmayim, literally “heavens” as in Genesis 1:1.  We don’t think of the celestial realm as “heavens’ but rather as “Heaven,” a concept that results from Platonic dualism, not biblical paradigms.  Here Job proclaims the God gives “lives,” all those manifestly different experiences and attitudes I discover in my embodied existence.

But there’s more, I believe.  We need to look at the next term to see another reason why ḥāyyim is plural.  That term is ḥesed, perhaps the most important Hebrew word in the entire Tanakh.  I won’t take you back through the dozens of explorations of this word.  Suffice it to say that ḥesed is fundamentally a word about relationship.  Since it is the archetype of divine intention, it suggests that the most important thing about living is relating, and, of course, relating requires at least two interacting persons.  Two faces, two relationships.  Man and God, man and man.  It seems to me that Job simply describes what it means to be alive as a human being.  It means to have multiple, interdependent relationships which are captured in the “faces” that I exhibit in the world.

ḥāyyim, ḥesed, and pāqad: one more term within the same frame.  And when we explore pāqad, the Hebrew word translated “care,” we will discover another reason why we have “faces” in this world.

Topical Index: ḥāyyim, life, ḥesed, pāqad, care, ʾappayim, face, Job 10:12