faciebat h.e. facere solebat (Ges. §127, 4, b). Thus Job did every day, i.e., continually. As head of the family, he faithfully discharged his priestly vocation, which permitted him to offer sacrifice as an early Gentile servant of God. The writer has now made us acquainted with the chief person of the history which he is about to record, and in Job 1:6 begins the history itself.
Verse 6
Job 1:6 6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before Jehovah; and Satan came also in the midst of them.
The translation “it happened on a day” is rejected in Ges. §109, rem. 1, c.[1]
The article, it is there said, refers to what precedes - the day, at the time; but this favourite mode of expression is found at the beginning of a narrative, even when it cannot be considered to have any reference to what has preceded, e.g., 2Ki 4:18. The article is used in the opposite manner here, because the narrator in thought connects the day with the following occurrence; and this frees it from absolute indefiniteness: the western mode of expression is different. From the writer assigning the earthly measure of time to the place of God and spirits, we see that celestial things are represented by him parabolically. But the assumptions on which he proceeds are everywhere recognised in Scripture; for (1.) האלהים בּני, as the name of the celestial spirits, is also found out of the book of Job (Gen 6:2; cf. Psa 29:1; Psa 59:7;
- ↑ The references to Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar have been carefully verified according to the English edition published by Bagster and Sons, London. - Tr.
