The Book of Job contains the only sustained, through-composed work in verse in the Hebrew Bible. This makes it very suitable as a testing area for the rules of verse structure and all other aspects of prosody that were developed in Major Poems of the Hebrew Bible Vol. II and are now also available in Reading Biblical Poetry. This fourth and last volume completes the study that in Vol. I started with Job 3 (curses and complaint), and continued with the first round of the debate (chs.4-14) in Vol. II. Again, the analysis follows two separate circuits: on the one hand that of language, style and structure, on the other hand that of measuring proportions on at least five textual levels. The poetry section of the Book of Job contains 412 strophes, of which the protagonist Job speaks exactly half. His portion of 206 strophes is also divided into equal halves: in 103 short and 103 long strophes. Even more than in the Psalms, the norm figures 7, 8 and 9 play an essential part in the composition of the poems and their average number of syllables per colon. The forty poems of the book exhibit various forms of numerical perfection, and the correct demarcation of strophes and stanzas is found to considerably improve and expand our understanding of its contents.

Major Poems of the Hebrew Bible

Chapter One

Example: Threni 5 Second round of the debate

Chapter Two Eliphaz’ second speech and Job’s answer ( Job 15 – 17)

Chapter Three Bildad’s second speech and Job’s answer ( Job 18 – 19)

Chapter Four Zophar’s second speech and Job’s answer ( Job 20 – 21) Third round of the debate

Chapter Five Eliphaz’ third speech and Job’s answer ( Job 22 – 24)

Chapter Six Bildad (short) and Job (long) ( Job 25 – 28)

Chapter Seven The dialectics of bliss and misery: three speeches by Job complete the debate proper ( Job 29 – 31) A fourth friend: mediation?

Chapter Eight Elihu ( Job 32 – 34)

Chapter Nine Elihu continued ( Job 35 – 37) The fifth discussion partner: God himself

Chapter Ten God’s answer from the storm (A) ( Job 38 – 39)

Chapter Eleven God’s answer from the storm (B) and Job’s reaction ( Job 40 – 42:6)

Chapter Twelve Results and conclusions

Appendices

I Full syllable counts for Job 15 – 42 II Full figures for all strophes and poems III Five text levels: the figures for the literary units IVa SL-configurations per chapter IVb Distribution of S- and L-strophes over the chapters Va Distribution of colon lengths per chapter Vb Distribution of colon lengths (3-14 syllables) in the book of Job VI Combinations of chapters (syllable counts)

Abbreviations Selected Bibliography Corrections to Volume III Changes to the original Hebrew text The full Hebrew text of Job 3 – 42 in its poetic form