The Hebrew Words That Unlock Job 1: From Blameless to Blessed in the Ashes

You have read Job 1 in English. You have probably felt the force of it – the whiplash from prosperity to ruin, the four messengers crashing into one another like waves against a seawall, the impossible dignity of a man who tears his robe and worships in the same breath. It is one of the most powerful chapters in all of Scripture even in translation. But you have been reading it through a pane of glass.

Hebrew is not English. Where English deals in approximation, Hebrew deals in precision. Where English gives you one word for “bless,” Hebrew gives you one word that means both “bless” and “curse” simultaneously, and the entire chapter turns on that ambiguity. Where English says a man was “blameless,” Hebrew says something far richer and far more dangerous – it says his heart was whole, undivided, with no partition between the sanctuary and the street. These are not decorative differences. They are structural. Miss them, and you miss the architecture of the chapter.

Job 1 is built on a vocabulary of roughly two dozen Hebrew words that do extraordinary theological work. Some of them appear nowhere else in the Old Testament with quite the same force. Others are common words deployed in uncommon ways – ordinary bricks arranged to build a cathedral. What follows is a careful examination of the Hebrew terms that matter most, the ones where the original language does not merely add color but fundamentally reshapes what the text is saying.

You do not need to know Hebrew to benefit from what follows. You need only the willingness to slow down and let these ancient words do what English has been preventing them from doing for the last four hundred years.

The Character Terms (vv. 1-5)

The opening five verses of Job 1 constitute the most concentrated character study in the Old Testament. Four Hebrew predicates are stacked on top of one another to build a portrait of a man whose integrity must be established beyond all doubt – because everything that follows depends on it. If Job is a fraud, Satan is right and the book collapses. Every word the narrator uses to describe this man is load-bearing.

1. Tam – “Blameless”

The first predicate is the most important. “tam”Hebrew“תָּם”“tam”“blameless, does not mean sinless. It never does. The word describes wholeness, completeness, an undivided heart – a man whose inner reality matches his outward profession without remainder. Jacob is called tam in Genesis 25:27, where the word is set in contrast to Esau’s wildness and wandering. A tam man is not a man who never stumbles. He is a man with no hidden compartments, no secret double life, no partition between the Sunday face and the Monday face.¹The root t-m-m carries the fundamental sense of completeness or wholeness. In the Qal stem, tamam means “to be complete, to be finished, to be consumed.” The adjective tam denotes one whose character is whole, integrated, and without duplicity. It is used of sacrificial animals that must be tamim – without blemish – a usage that underscores the connection between moral wholeness and fitness for divine service (Lev 1:3, 10; 3:1).

This matters enormously for the drama of the chapter. Satan will argue that Job’s piety is a transaction – worship exchanged for wealth. But the narrator, before Satan ever opens his mouth, has already told us that Job is tam. His heart is whole. There is no gap between his worship and his character, no secret mercenary motive lurking behind the sacrifices. The word tam is the narrator’s preemptive verdict: this man is the real thing. Botterweck’s treatment of the root tmm in the TDOT confirms that the “predominant use of the root in the realm of morality and ethics is due to the particular nature of the OT documents (esp. Psalms, Proverbs, and Job)” (TDOT vol. 15, p.731). The word is at home in exactly this kind of text – the Wisdom literature’s examination of what it means to live before God without partition or pretense. Freedman notes in the Anchor Bible Dictionary that the same phrase ish tam appears in Genesis 25:27 of Jacob, where “tam clearly implies moral excellence. This, then – moral excellence – is to be Israel’s vocation” (ABD vol. 4, p.4124).

Keil and Delitzsch describe it precisely: “with the whole heart disposed towards God and what is good, and also well-disposed toward mankind.” Botterweck traces how this word reverberates through the book: “In his contention with God, Job declares that he is ‘innocent’ (tam, Job 9:21), but acknowledges that God can prove even the ‘blameless’ (tam) to be ‘perverse’ (9:20), since God destroys both ‘the blameless (tam) and the wicked’ (v.22). Job’s friends, however, are convinced that God never rejects someone who is ‘devout’ (tam, 8:20)” (TDOT vol. 15, p.732). The word does not claim perfection. It claims integrity – and integrity, in the vocabulary of Scripture, is not the absence of sin but the absence of duplicity.

2. Yashar – “Upright”

The second predicate is “yashar”Hebrew“יָשָׁר”“yashar”“upright,. Where tam describes the interior landscape of the heart, yashar describes the external trajectory of the life. The root means “to be straight, to be level” – a path without deviation, a plumb line that does not waver. An upright man does not bend his principles to fit his circumstances. He is faithful to his promises, honest in his dealings, consistent in his character before both God and men.²The root y-sh-r is used extensively in the Wisdom literature to describe moral rectitude. The “Book of Jashar” (Sepher ha-Yashar, Josh 10:13; 2 Sam 1:18) may have been an anthology celebrating the deeds of the upright. In Proverbs, the way of the yashar is set against the way of the crooked (Prov 2:13; 11:3; 21:8). The combination of tam and yashar in Job 1:1 creates a portrait of integrity that is both internal (tam) and externally demonstrated (yashar).

Botterweck observes that yashar is even predicated of God’s own word – the dabhar of the Lord is called yashar, “upright,” in Psalm 33:4, meaning straight, reliable, and true to its purpose (TDOT vol. 3, p.130). When the narrator applies this same word to Job, he is saying that Job’s life runs on the same trajectory as God’s own speech: straight, without deviation, aimed at the mark.

The pairing of tam and yashar is deliberate and comprehensive. Together they cover the whole ground of moral life. Tam is the root system; yashar is the visible tree. Tam is what God sees when He searches the heart; yashar is what the neighbors see when they watch the man conduct his business. Job is sound on the inside and straight on the outside. The combination eliminates every possible angle of attack – or so it seems, until the Adversary finds an angle no one expected.

3. Yere Elohim – “One Who Fears God”

The third predicate shifts from character to orientation. “yereHebrew“יְרֵא“yere“one is the controlling principle that generates the first two qualities. The fear of God is not terror. It is not the cowering of a slave before a master’s whip. It is filial reverence – the awe of a creature who has grasped something of the Creator’s majesty and has been permanently altered by the encounter. It is what Proverbs calls the beginning of wisdom (Prov 1:7; 9:10), the foundational virtue from which all other virtues grow.³The phrase yere Elohim uses the divine name Elohim rather than YHWH, which is consistent with the patriarchal and non-Israelite setting of the book. The fear of Elohim appears in Genesis 20:11, where Abraham expresses concern that “there is no fear of God in this place.” The usage indicates a universal, pre-covenantal awareness of divine authority and moral accountability that transcends national boundaries. John Gill observes that Job “feared God with a filial and godly fear, which sprung from the grace of God, and was encouraged and increased by his goodness to him.”

This is the predicate Satan will attack. He will not deny that Job fears God. He cannot – the evidence is too overwhelming. Instead, he will question the motive behind the fear. “Does Job fear God for nothing?” (v. 9). The Hebrew word for “fear” (yare) is capacious enough to include both genuine reverence and self-interested caution. Satan exploits that ambiguity. He wants to reduce Job’s yirah from worship to calculation, from love to leverage. The entire drama of the chapter is a contest over the meaning of this single word.

4. Sar Mera – “Turning Away from Evil”

The fourth predicate completes the portrait. “sarHebrew“סָר“sar“one describes active, deliberate moral effort. The verb sur means to turn aside, to depart, to remove oneself – not a passive avoidance of sin but a habitual, watchful withdrawal from everything that offends the holiness of God. The construction implies ongoing, continuous action: this is what Job does, day after day, as a matter of ingrained practice.⁴The pairing of the fear of God with departing from evil echoes Proverbs 3:7 (“Fear the LORD and depart from evil”) and Proverbs 16:6 (“By the fear of the LORD men depart from evil”). The four predicates of Job 1:1 are not four independent qualities but a descending chain of cause and effect: wholeness of heart produces uprightness of conduct, which is grounded in the fear of God, which manifests as a resolute turning from evil. Remove any link, and the chain breaks.

The word for “evil” here – “ra”Hebrew“רָע”“ra”“evil, – encompasses not merely gross sins but the entire spectrum of moral deficiency. Job did not merely avoid murder and theft. He watched his steps, guarded his tongue, and examined his motives. “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil” (Prov 8:13), and by that fear Job departed from it with what Keil and Delitzsch call “deliberate, habitual determination.”

These four predicates are not the narrator’s opinion. They are repeated verbatim by God Himself in verse 8, and again in 2:3. They constitute the divine evaluation of Job’s character. When the Almighty Himself has spoken these words over a man, the verdict is settled. And the entire book that follows is, in one sense, the long vindication of that verdict against every challenge – from Satan, from the friends, and from Job’s own anguished doubt.

5. Iyyov – “Job”

The name itself deserves attention. “Iyyov”Hebrew“אִיּוֹב”“Iyyov”“the has been variously interpreted. Some scholars derive it from a root meaning “to be hostile,” yielding the sense “one who is treated as an enemy” – a reading that would be almost unbearably prophetic given what is about to happen. Others connect it to the Arabic cognate of “shuv”Hebrew“שׁוּב”“shuv”“to, producing the meaning “the one who comes back” or “the penitent one.”⁵Keil and Delitzsch, following Ewald, propose that the name Iyyov derives from a cognate of the Arabic root a-w-b, related to the Hebrew shuv, “to return.” This would yield “the returning one” or “the one who comes back” – a meaning that, whether the parents intended it or not, describes the entire arc of Job’s story: loss, endurance, and restoration. The form qittul does not normally carry a passive sense, and the name is not symbolic in the allegorical manner. Job is a historical figure named by Ezekiel (14:14, 20) alongside Noah and Daniel.

Delitzsch preferred the latter: “the one who comes back.” If that is correct, then the man’s name contains the entire story in miniature – the story of a man who loses everything, endures the worst that heaven and hell can deliver, and comes back. Harris, Archer, and Waltke note in the TWOT that “it is possible that the name bears no literary significance and is rather to be seen as the name of an ancient personage whose conduct in trial made him a worthy example of the godly man’s attitude toward suffering” (TWOT, p.57). Neither derivation is certain. What is certain is that the name belongs to a real person, not a parable. Ezekiel names him alongside Noah and Daniel as a paragon of righteousness (Ezek 14:14, 20). James holds him up as the exemplar of patience (Jas 5:11). He is no literary fiction. He is a man, and his name – whatever it originally meant – has become a synonym for suffering that does not destroy faith.

6. Barak – “Bless” (and Its Terrifying Opposite)

No Hebrew word in Job 1 carries more weight – or more danger – than “barak”Hebrew“בָּרַךְ”“barak”“to. The primary meaning of barak is “to bless” – to kneel before God in worship, to pronounce benediction, to speak well of the Almighty. It is one of the most common and most beautiful words in the Hebrew Bible. And in Job 1, it is also one of the most explosive.

Three times in this chapter, barak is used not in its ordinary sense but as an antifrastic euphemism – a word that means the opposite of what it says. In verse 5, Job fears his children may have “blessed” (bereku) God in their hearts – meaning they may have silently cursed Him, dismissed Him, taken mental leave of Him in the ease of their feasting. In verse 11, Satan predicts that Job, stripped of his blessings, will “bless” (yebarekeka) God to His face – meaning he will openly curse God, renouncing Him in blasphemous defiance. The same usage appears in 2:5 and 2:9.⁶The euphemistic use of barak for “curse” (sometimes called antiphrasis or euphemistic inversion) appears also in 1 Kings 21:10, 13 in the account of Naboth’s trial, where false witnesses testify that Naboth “blessed” God and the king – that is, he blasphemed them. The scribal tradition avoided writing the explicit phrase “curse God” out of reverence for the divine name. Keil and Delitzsch understand barak in Job 1:5 as valedicere – “to bid farewell to God,” to take leave of Him mentally while the lips say nothing.

The effect is devastating. The entire chapter is framed by this single word and its double meaning. Job begins by fearing that his children may have barak-ed God in the wrong direction (v. 5). Satan predicts that Job himself will barak God in the wrong direction (v. 11). And Job, in the ashes of total loss, barak-s God in the right direction: “Blessed be the name of the LORD” (v. 21). The same word. The same sound. The same letters on the page. But the meaning is inverted by the posture of the heart. Job uses barak the way it was always meant to be used – in genuine, grief-stricken, undefeated praise. Satan’s prediction collapses. The word that was supposed to be Job’s blasphemy becomes his finest act of worship.

Freedman’s Anchor Bible Dictionary observes that “recent studies have turned attention to the artistic use of blessings and curses as organizing devices by those who composed or shaped longer and shorter sections of the Bible” (ABD vol. 1, p.1151). Job 1 is one of the most striking examples of this structural technique – the entire narrative arc is organized around the word barak and its double meaning.

This is the kind of literary and theological precision that English cannot replicate. You need the Hebrew to see that the chapter is built on a single word with two faces, and that everything comes down to which face Job will show.

7. Olot – “Burnt Offerings”

Job rises before dawn and offers “olot”Hebrew“עֹלוֹת”“olot”“whole. The word comes from the root alah, “to go up, to ascend.” A burnt offering was consumed entirely by fire – nothing was held back for the worshipper. The whole animal ascended to God in flame and smoke. It was the most total form of sacrifice, the offering that said: everything belongs to You.⁷The olah (singular of olot) is the oldest sacrificial form in the Hebrew Bible, appearing immediately after the Flood when Noah “built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal and every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar” (Gen 8:20). In the pre-Mosaic period, the olah served as a comprehensive sacrifice covering atonement, consecration, and worship. Job’s offering of olot for each of his children individually indicates both the depth of his priestly concern and the pre-Levitical patriarchal context in which each head of household served as priest for his family.

Botterweck’s extensive treatment of the olah in the TDOT traces the etymology and cultic significance of this sacrifice, noting that in contrast to the zebah (communion sacrifice), the burnt offering involved no shared meal – “kettles and pots play no role in the burnt offering” (TDOT vol. 11, p.117). The olah was total surrender, not communal celebration. Beeke adds in the Reformation Heritage KJV Study Bible that “the fact that Job, who was not of the tribe of Levi, offered burnt offerings indicates that this was before the time of the Levitical priesthood” (RHSB, p.39), confirming the pre-Mosaic, patriarchal setting of the narrative.

That Job offers these sacrifices “according to the number of them all” – one for each child – reveals the intensity of his spiritual vigilance. He does not offer a single blanket sacrifice for the household. He intercedes for each child individually, by name, carrying each one separately before God. And he does it continually – the Hebrew phrase “kol-hayyamim”Hebrew“כָּל־הַיָּמִים”“kol-hayyamim”“all indicates unbroken habit. This was not an occasional burst of parental piety. It was the rhythm of his life.

The Heavenly Court Terms (vv. 6-12)

The scene shifts without warning from earth to heaven. No transition, no explanation, no apology. And the Hebrew vocabulary of the heavenly court is as precise and loaded as the vocabulary of Job’s character.

8. Bene Ha’Elohim – “Sons of God”

“beneHebrew“בְּנֵי“bene“sons designates the angelic host – spiritual beings created in the likeness of God who serve as His immediate attendants and agents. The same phrase appears in Job 38:7, where “the sons of God shouted for joy” at the creation of the world. They are called “sons” not by redemption or adoption but by creation – beings who issued directly from the hand of God before the material universe existed.⁸The phrase bene ha’elohim appears in Genesis 6:2 (where it is debated whether it refers to angelic beings or the godly line of Seth), Job 1:6, 2:1, and 38:7. In the Job passages, the angelic interpretation is virtually certain, as the context describes a heavenly assembly before the throne of God. The language of “presenting themselves before the LORD” (lehityatsev al-YHWH) is the vocabulary of a royal court, where servants report for duty and receive their commissions, paralleling the vision of Micaiah in 1 Kings 22:19.

They come “to present themselves before the LORD” – “lehityatsevHebrew“לְהִתְיַצֵּב“lehityatsev“to – the language of a royal court where servants report for duty and receive commissions. The picture is of ordered governance: God does not rule the cosmos by arbitrary fiat alone but through a council of spiritual beings who execute His will. And into this council walks the Adversary.

9. Hasatan – “The Adversary”

The Hebrew “hasatan”Hebrew“הַשָּׂטָן”“hasatan”“the carries the definite article – the Satan, not merely “a satan” or “an adversary.” This is not a generic opponent but a specific being with a specific role and a specific malice. The word derives from the verb “satan”Hebrew“שָׂטַן”“satan”“to, and in its judicial context it designates the prosecuting attorney of the heavenly court – the one whose function is accusation.

Botterweck records in the TDOT that von Rad “understands hasatan clearly as an accuser before a court, and more specifically as the heavenly public prosecutor” (TDOT vol. 14, p.97). Clines develops the image further in the Word Biblical Commentary, observing that the Satan “is remarkably analogous to the functionary in Christendom known as advocatus diaboli whose task is to raise objections to the canonization of a saint; his office and his appointment owe their existence to the body that actively supports the canonization, and his role is to ensure that no potential criticism of the candidate remains unheard and unanswered” (WBC 17, p.127).

This is neither the cartoonish devil of medieval art nor the benign “testing angel” that some liberal commentators have tried to domesticate. He is a real spiritual being, fallen from his original glory, who retains access to the divine court – not because he belongs there, but because God has not yet finally expelled him. As Revelation 12:10 reveals, he is “the accuser of the brethren, who accuses them before our God day and night.” His accusation will cease only when Christ’s victory is fully consummated.

John Gill captures the relational texture of the name: “an implacable and bitter enemy to men, especially to Christ and his people; and so has this name from his hatred of them, and opposition to them.” The definite article is not decorative. It marks this being as the adversary – the one who defines himself by opposition to everything God loves.

10. Eved – “Servant”

When God introduces Job to Satan, He uses a title of the highest honor: “avdi”Hebrew“עַבְדִּי”“avdi”“my. In the Old Testament, the designation “my servant” is reserved for the most exalted figures in redemptive history – Abraham (Gen 26:24), Moses (Num 12:7), David (2 Sam 7:5), and the Suffering Servant of Isaiah (Isa 42:1; 52:13). God claims Job as His own. He is not embarrassed by this man. He boasts about him.⁹The possessive suffix on eved – “my servant” (avdi) – is theologically significant. It denotes not merely employment but ownership, protection, and endorsement. When God calls Job avdi, He is staking His own reputation on Job’s character. Matthew Henry captures the force: “He is my servant. Good men are God’s servants, and he is pleased to reckon himself honoured in their services. Yonder is my servant Job; there is none like him, none I value like him, of all the princes and potentates of the earth.”

Wenham and Motyer note in the New Bible Commentary that “Job is someone God can boast about; there are few in the OT who are called by the dignified title my servant (e.g. 2 Sa. 7:5; Is. 42:1). The Satan does not doubt Job’s goodness; what he questions is whether Job is righteous for the sake of righteousness or for the sake of the reward that comes from being righteous” (NBC, p.550).

The word eved carries a double resonance in Hebrew. It can mean “servant” or “slave” – one who belongs entirely to another, whose will is subordinate to the master’s will, whose identity is defined by the relationship. When God calls Job avdi, He is simultaneously honoring him and claiming him. Job does not belong to himself. He does not belong to the Adversary. He belongs to God. And God is about to stake His own reputation on that claim.

11. Chinnam – “For Nothing”

Satan’s question – “Does Job fear God for nothing?” – hinges on a single Hebrew adverb: “chinnam”Hebrew“חִנָּם”“chinnam”“for. The word derives from “chen”Hebrew“חֵן”“chen”“grace,, making the etymological connection unmistakable. Satan is asking whether Job’s piety is gracious – whether it exists without a transactional motive, whether his love for God is free in the same way that grace is free.¹⁰The adverb chinnam appears throughout the Old Testament with the consistent sense of “without cause” or “freely.” In Psalm 35:7, David complains that enemies dug a pit for him chinnam – “without cause.” In Proverbs 1:17, the net is spread chinnam – “in vain.” In 1 Samuel 19:5, Jonathan argues that Saul should not slay David chinnam. The word is always charged with the question of whether an action has a proportionate reason behind it. Satan’s use of chinnam in Job 1:9 is thus a question about the proportionality of Job’s devotion: is it commensurate with what he receives, or does it exist independently of reward?

MacArthur highlights the devastating irony in the MacArthur Study Bible: in 2:3, “God uses the same expression the adversary used in Job 1 – ‘for nothing’ (1:9) … ‘without cause’ (2:3). The message behind God’s turn of words is that the adversary is the guilty party in this case, not Job who had suffered all the disaster without any personal cause” (MacArthur Study Bible, p.3356). The same chinnam that Satan wielded as a weapon becomes God’s vindication of His servant.

The question is devastating because it strikes at the root of every religious act ever performed. Does anyone love God for who He is, or only for what He gives? If Satan can prove that Job’s worship collapses the moment the benefits are withdrawn, he has proved something far worse than one man’s hypocrisy. He has proved that disinterested love for God is impossible – that all human piety is, at bottom, enlightened self-interest dressed in liturgical clothing.

Delitzsch grasps the cosmic stakes: “If Satan can prove Job a hypocrite, it will follow that God has not one faithful servant among men, and that there is no such thing as true and sincere piety in the world, but that religion is all a sham, and Satan is king de facto over all mankind.” The wager is not about one man. It is about whether faith itself has any reality.

12. Suk / Sakta – “Hedge”

Satan complains that God has placed a “sakta”Hebrew“שַׂכְתָּ”“sakta”“hedge, around Job, his household, and all his possessions. The verb comes from “suk”Hebrew“שׂוּךְ”“suk”“to. The image is of a thorny wall – impenetrable, comprehensive, leaving no gap through which the Adversary could enter to do harm.

John Gill captures Satan’s frustrated fury: “So thick was the hedge, so strong the fence, that Satan could not find the least gap to get in at, to do him any injury to his body or mind, without the divine permission; which he envied and was vexed at.” The accuser speaks like someone who has walked the perimeter of Job’s life searching for a way in and has been thwarted at every turn. The hedge of divine protection has held. And Satan is reduced to complaining about it to the very God who erected it.

13. Parats – “Break Through”

Satan uses a vivid verb to describe Job’s prosperity: his substance has “parats”Hebrew“פָּרַץ”“parats”“to in the land. This is the same verb used of Israel multiplying in Egypt (Exod 1:12) and of Jacob’s flocks increasing under God’s blessing (Gen 30:30). It carries the sense of breaking through all boundaries – wealth that overflows every container, prosperity that refuses to be contained.¹¹The verb parats conveys explosive, boundary-breaking expansion. Its use in Genesis 28:14 – “you shall spread abroad (uparatsta) to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south” – describes the promised multiplication of Abraham’s descendants. The same explosive quality characterizes Job’s prosperity: it has burst through every natural limit. Satan’s use of this word is deliberate – he wants God to see Job’s wealth as extravagant, as the obvious explanation for his devotion.

Satan uses this word with venom. He wants God to see the connection he is drawing: You blessed him, and his wealth burst forth – of course he worships You. The implication is that Job’s piety is proportional to his prosperity. Remove the prosperity, and the piety will prove to have been nothing more than a rational response to favorable circumstances. The verb parats is Satan’s exhibit A in the case against disinterested faith.

The Catastrophe Terms (vv. 13-19)

The four catastrophes that destroy Job’s world are reported with the relentless compression of a war dispatch. The Hebrew vocabulary is spare, brutal, and architecturally precise – building toward the climactic blow with the merciless rhythm of a funeral drum.

14. Esh Elohim – “Fire of God”

The second catastrophe is reported in language designed to maximize theological confusion: “eshHebrew“אֵשׁ“esh“fire has fallen from the sky and consumed the sheep and the servants. The phrase is devastating because it bears the hallmarks of divine judgment. Whether this was lightning, a supernatural conflagration, or something else entirely, the messenger uses language that would have struck Job as unmistakable: God has opened fire on you.

Walton observes in the IVP Bible Background Commentary that “lightning is described here as the ‘fire of God.’ During the contest between Yahweh and Baal in 1 Kings 18:38, the lightning is called the ‘fire of the LORD’” (IVP BBC, p.508). The phrase carried unmistakable associations with direct divine action in the ancient world. Keil and Delitzsch observe that this language was “designed to tempt Job into believing that God had turned to be his enemy and fought against him – which was precisely Satan’s strategy.” If Job concluded that God was actively punishing him, the step from grief to blasphemy would be short. The fire consumed seven thousand sheep – the very animals from which Job drew his sacrificial offerings. Satan may have intended Job to conclude that his sacrifices were unacceptable, that worship was futile, that the God he served had become the God who destroyed him.¹²The phrase esh Elohim (“fire of God”) echoes the language of divine judgment throughout the Old Testament. In Genesis 19:24, “the LORD rained brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven” upon Sodom. In 1 Kings 18:38, “the fire of the LORD fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice” on Mount Carmel. In 2 Kings 1:12, fire came down from heaven and consumed Elijah’s challengers. The servant’s use of this phrase would have carried unmistakable connotations of direct divine hostility – precisely the interpretation Satan wanted Job to adopt.

15. Ruach Gedolah – “A Great Wind”

The fourth and final catastrophe – the one that kills Job’s children – comes as “ruachHebrew“רוּחַ“ruach“a. The word ruach in Hebrew means wind, breath, or spirit – and the overlap is not accidental. Wind in the Old Testament is frequently the instrument of divine action: the ruach of God hovered over the waters at creation (Gen 1:2), parted the Red Sea (Exod 14:21), and carried the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils (Gen 2:7). A ruach gedolah – a great wind – is a force that appears to come from God’s own arsenal.

The wind strikes “the four corners of the house” simultaneously. Wenham and Motyer point out in the New Bible Commentary that the four disasters “strike from all directions: the Sabeans come from the south (Sheba); the Chaldeans from the north; the lightning (fire from God) is from the storms that sweep in from the Mediterranean in the west; and the mighty wind comes from the desert in the east” (NBC, p.550). The structural symmetry is intentional: Job is struck from every compass point, leaving no direction of escape. This detail matters. A natural wind blows from one direction. This wind hit all four walls at once, as though the house were being compressed by an invisible fist. Keil and Delitzsch, following the broader scriptural testimony, attribute the storm to Satan as “the prince of the power of the air” (Eph 2:2), operating with divine permission but with infernal malice. The wind is natural in its medium but supernatural in its direction. It serves Satan’s purpose while appearing to bear God’s signature.

16. Hanne’arim – “The Young People”

The messenger reports that the wind “fell upon the young people, and they are dead.” The Hebrew “hanne’arim”Hebrew“הַנְּעָרִים”“hanne’arim”“the is epicene – it includes both male and female. All ten of Job’s children – seven sons and three daughters – perished together. The word na’ar (plural ne’arim) denotes young people who are past childhood but still in the prime of life. They were not elderly. They were not infants. They were men and women in full possession of their powers, with their best years ahead of them, dead in a moment without warning, without farewell, without the priestly intercession their father would have wanted to offer.¹³The epicene use of ne’arim (covering both sons and daughters) appears also in the Pentateuch and is characteristic of early Hebrew. The word emphasizes their youth and vigor – these were not aged parents or sickly dependents but vibrant young adults cut down at the height of life. The detail intensifies Job’s loss: he has not merely lost children but futures, grandchildren who will never be born, family lines that end in rubble.

17. Shamayyim – “Heaven”

The word “shamayyim”Hebrew“שָׁמַיִם”“shamayyim”“heaven, appears twice in the catastrophe sequence – once for the fire that “fell from heaven” (v. 16) and implicitly in the great wind that seems to carry heaven’s violence. The dual form of the word (-ayyim) may reflect the ancient Hebrew conception of heaven as a layered reality: the visible sky where weather occurs and the invisible realm where God dwells. In Job 1, both layers converge. The catastrophes come from the sky, but they appear to originate from the throne room. The word shamayyim connects the earthly disasters to the heavenly court scene the reader has already witnessed – a connection Job himself cannot see but the reader can.¹⁴The Hebrew shamayyim appears in dual form, which some scholars interpret as reflecting the ancient Near Eastern conception of multiple heavens (cf. Paul’s reference to “the third heaven” in 2 Cor 12:2). In the Job narrative, heaven is both the physical sky from which fire and wind descend and the spiritual realm where God and the angelic council convene. The reader’s knowledge of the heavenly court scene creates dramatic irony: we know the catastrophes originate from Satan’s malice under divine permission, but to Job they appear as the unmediated wrath of heaven itself.

The Worship Terms (vv. 20-22)

The final three verses of Job 1 contain the most concentrated display of faith under fire in the Old Testament. Every word is chosen with the precision of a man – and of a God – who knows what is at stake.

18. Me’il – “Robe” / “Mantle”

Job’s first response to the death of his children is to tear his “me’il”Hebrew“מְעִיל”“me’il”“robe,. The me’il was not an undergarment. It was the cloak of dignity, the outward mark of a man of standing and authority. In 1 Samuel 2:19, Hannah makes a little me’il for the young Samuel to wear in service at the tabernacle. In 1 Samuel 24:4-5, David cuts the corner of Saul’s me’il and is immediately stricken with guilt for having violated the symbol of royal authority.

To tear the me’il was the conventional expression of extreme grief in the ancient Near East – a ripping open of the external covering that symbolized a heart torn open by sorrow. But notice what it is not: it is not hysteria. Job does not flail. He does not throw himself against the walls. He performs the ancient rites of mourning with the steady hands of a man who knows exactly what he is doing and why. The tearing of the me’il is the grief of a man who refuses to pretend the pain is not real but also refuses to let the pain destroy his dignity before God.

19. Vayyishtachu – “And He Worshipped”

This is the pivot of the entire chapter. The same man who tore his robe and shaved his head now “vayyishtachu”Hebrew“וַיִּשְׁתָּחוּ”“vayyishtachu”“and – prostrated himself before God in worship. The verb hishtachavah is the standard Hebrew term for religious adoration: to bow down, to prostrate oneself, to press one’s face to the earth in the presence of the Almighty. It is the posture of total submission and total trust.

MacArthur identifies Job’s response as “the worship of submission” and writes: “When Job heard the news that everything he loved was gone – his possessions, his animals, and even his children – he worshiped the worship of submission. The Bible says, ‘Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head, and he fell to the ground, and worshiped’ (Job 1:20). Many people would have been bitter and cursed God” (Worship: The Ultimate Priority, p.159). The grammatical form is a wayyiqtol – a narrative sequential verb that indicates this act followed immediately upon the mourning. He tore. He shaved. He fell. He worshipped. The sequence is unbroken. There is no pause between grief and adoration, no transition period, no halftime. Job moves from the lowest posture of sorrow to the lowest posture of worship in a single continuous motion, because for him they are not opposites. They are two expressions of the same reality: a man who knows himself to be a creature in the hands of the Creator, whether the Creator gives or takes away.¹⁵The Hithpael (or Hishtaphel) form of the verb sh-ch-h, used here and throughout the Old Testament for worship, carries the reflexive sense of “causing oneself to bow down.” The act of worship is not involuntary – it is deliberate, self-initiated, and willful. Job chose to worship. In the context of the heavenly wager, this is the decisive moment: Satan predicted that Job would curse God to His face (al-panekha). Instead, Job pressed his face (al-panav) to the ground in adoration. The predicted posture of defiance became the posture of surrender.

This is the moment Satan was waiting for. This is the moment the heavenly court held its breath. What would the man do? Would he barak God in blasphemy, as Satan predicted? Or would he barak God in blessing, as his character demanded?

He worshipped. He blessed. And the word barak that Satan intended as blasphemy became, in Job’s mouth, the purest act of praise the Old Testament records.

20. YHWH – “The LORD”

In his confession of faith, Job uses the covenant name of God: “YHWH”Hebrew“יְהוָה”“YHWH”“the. “The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (v. 21). In a book where God is predominantly called Elohim, Eloah, or Shaddai, Job’s use of YHWH is deliberate and deeply personal.

This is not “God” in the abstract. This is not the generic deity of philosophical theism. This is the personal, self-revealing, covenant-keeping God who has made Himself known by name – the God who told Moses “I AM WHO I AM” (Exod 3:14). Job looks past every secondary cause – past the Sabeans, past the fire, past the Chaldeans, past the wind – and fixes his gaze on the primary cause. He does not say, “The LORD gave, and the Sabeans took away.” He says, “The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away.” The theology is precise. The faith is staggering.¹⁶The name YHWH appears in the dialogue portion of Job only twice in Job’s own mouth (1:21 and 12:9), whereas the speakers generally use Eloah and Shaddai – names appropriate to the patriarchal, pre-Mosaic period. This sparing use makes Job’s invocation of YHWH in 1:21 all the more striking: at the moment of his greatest loss, he reaches for the most intimate name of God available to him. Keil and Delitzsch observe: “Job, when he says YHWH, thinks of God not only as the absolute cause of his fate, but as the Being ordering his life according to His own counsel, who is ever worthy of praise.”

21. Shem YHWH – “The Name of the LORD”

Job does not merely bless God. He blesses “shemHebrew“שֵׁם“shem“the. The “name” in Hebrew thought is not a label. It is the character, the nature, the self-disclosure of the One who bears it. To bless the shem YHWH is to declare that God’s revealed character – His holiness, His justice, His sovereignty, His goodness – remains unchanged and remains worthy of praise, regardless of what has happened to the worshipper.

This is the antithesis of everything Satan predicted. Satan said Job would curse God to His face (“al-panekha”Hebrew“עַל־פָּנֶיךָ”“al-panekha”“to). Instead, Job falls on his own face and blesses God’s name. The predicted confrontation becomes a confession. The posture of defiance becomes the posture of devotion. Every word of Job’s response is the precise opposite of what the Adversary foretold.

22. Shammah – “Thither”

A small word that carries enormous weight. Job says, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return ”shammah”Hebrew”שָׁמָּה””shammah””thither,.” Where is “thither”? The most widely accepted interpretation, supported by Delitzsch and most commentators, is that Job refers to the earth – mother earth, from which Adam was formed and to which all flesh returns. “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19).

The word shammah points forward to the grave, the second womb, which we enter as naked as we entered the first. The logic is simple and devastating: if I brought nothing into the world, then everything I had was on loan. And if everything was on loan, then the Lender has the right to recall the loan at any time, for any reason, without explanation. Ecclesiastes 5:15 echoes the same thought: “As he came from his mother’s womb, naked shall he return, to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labor which he may carry away in his hand.”¹⁷The word shammah (“thither”) occasioned curiosity even in the ancient world. The occurrence of this word here is remarkable and, as Keil and Delitzsch note, “may have given rise to the question of Nicodemus: ‘Can a man enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?’” (John 3:4). The writer of Ecclesiastes (5:14) leaves out the difficult shammah entirely. The Sirach passage (40:1) provides the interpretive key: “From the day of departure from the mother’s womb to the day of burial in the mother of all” – identifying the earth as the universal mother to whose womb all return.

23. Tiphlah – “Folly”

The chapter’s final verdict contains a word that deserves careful attention. The narrator reports that “in all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.” The Hebrew word rendered “foolishly” is “tiphlah”Hebrew“תִּפְלָה”“tiphlah”“folly,. This is not ordinary foolishness. The word signifies that which is tasteless, insipid, devoid of substance and meaning – like food without salt (Job 6:6).

To attribute tiphlah to God would be to accuse Him of acting without wisdom, without purpose, without meaning – to say that what happened to Job was random, senseless, the act of a God who either did not know what He was doing or did not care. Job refused to make that accusation. He submitted to what he could not understand, without insisting that the incomprehensible was therefore unjust.

The Structural Terms

Several additional Hebrew terms function as structural beams in the chapter’s architecture – words that organize the narrative and carry theological weight beyond their surface meaning.

24. Ish – “Man”

The chapter opens: “There was a ”ish”Hebrew”אִישׁ””ish””man, in the land of Uz.” The word ish is not merely a gender marker. It denotes a man of substance, dignity, and public reputation. Job is introduced not as a prophet, not as a priest, not as a king, but simply as a man. This is deliberate. The book of Job is the most universal book in the Old Testament. It contains no reference to the Abrahamic covenant, no mention of the Exodus, no appeal to the Mosaic law. Job is not an Israelite. He is a human being, and his story belongs to every human being who has ever walked the earth.

25. Bene Qedem – “Sons of the East”

Job is called the greatest of all the “beneHebrew“בְּנֵי“bene“sons. These are the tribal peoples extending from Arabia eastward toward Mesopotamia – the same peoples whose wisdom is mentioned alongside Egypt’s in 1 Kings 4:30. The phrase locates Job geographically and culturally outside Israel, reinforcing the book’s universal scope. His piety is not the product of Israelite covenant privilege. It is the work of grace in a man who had no Torah, no temple, no priesthood – nothing but God.

26. Shelach-Na Yadekha – “Stretch Out Your Hand”

Satan’s dare to God – “shelach-naHebrew“שְׁלַח־נָא“shelach-na“stretch – uses the particle na, which indicates entreaty or urgent request. It is almost a dare. Satan wants God Himself to strike Job. The “hand of God” in Hebrew idiom represents direct divine action – creation, judgment, deliverance, destruction. Satan cannot strike Job himself without permission; so he asks God to do it. The audacity is breathtaking. The Adversary is asking the Creator to destroy His own finest work.

27. Beyadekha – “In Your Hand”

God’s response – “All that he has is ”beyadekha”Hebrew”בְּיָדֶךָ””beyadekha””in” – transfers authority over Job’s possessions to Satan, with one limitation: “Only upon himself put not forth your hand.” The word yad (hand) now passes from God to the Adversary. Where God’s hand had been building and protecting, Satan’s hand will now be tearing down and destroying. But the transfer is bounded. God draws a line that Satan cannot cross. The accuser operates on a leash. He can touch the possessions. He cannot touch the person. Sovereignty is never surrendered – only a measure of permission is granted, and even that permission has walls.¹⁸The limitation “only upon himself put not forth your hand” (rak alav al-tishlach yadekha) establishes the principle of bounded permission that governs the entire book. Satan possesses no independent authority. Every act of destruction requires explicit divine authorization, and every authorization comes with boundaries the Adversary cannot transgress. This is the practical outworking of the doctrine of divine sovereignty applied to the problem of evil: Satan is real, his malice is genuine, his power is formidable – but he is a creature, and creatures do not set the boundaries of their own operations. God does.

Reading Job 1 Again for the First Time

You cannot unlearn what you have just read. The next time you open to Job 1 in your English Bible, you will hear what has always been there but was hidden behind the wall of translation. The tam that is not perfection but wholeness. The barak that can bless or curse, and on which the entire chapter pivots. The chinnam that asks whether any human being has ever loved God without a price tag. The vayyishtachu that answers the question – not with a creed, not with a sermon, but with a man’s body pressed to the ground in the wreckage of his life.

Every one of these words was chosen under divine inspiration with exacting precision. The writer of Job was not reaching for the nearest available term. He was constructing a theological argument in narrative form, and every word was load-bearing. The structure holds because every piece was placed with care.

Hebrew is not a decorative overlay on the text. It is the text. The inspired words are the Hebrew words – the sounds, the roots, the ambiguities, the echoes, the double meanings that no translation can fully reproduce. What English gives you is a faithful approximation. What Hebrew gives you is the thing itself.

Job sits in the ashes. His me’il is torn. His children are dead. His wealth has parats-ed in reverse – not bursting forth, but collapsing inward. The suk, the hedge, is down. The fire of Elohim has fallen from shamayyim. And this ish from the land of Uz, this eved YHWH who was tam and yashar, who feared Elohim and departed from ra – this man, stripped to his original nakedness, does the one thing the hasatan said he would never do.

He barak-s God.

He blesses the shem YHWH.

And heaven, which had been holding its breath, exhales.

This article is part of the Job Deep Dive Series. For related studies, see: – Job 1 Commentary: The Day Heaven Held Its Breath – Complete verse-by-verse exegesis – The World Behind Job 1 – The land of Uz, the patriarchal age, and the economy of the ancient East – Does Job Fear God for Nothing? The Theology of Job 1 – Sovereignty, suffering, and the question at the heart of all worship