02_Burnight-co_347_370 28/10/14 10:35 Pagina 354 354 JOHN BURNIGHT The interpretation of the terms in 4,6a is more difficult. ha'ry> I lit- erally means “fear”, although here most modern scholars read it as an ellipsis for ~yhla tary (“fear of God”, i.e. “reverence” or “piety”) based on an assumed parallelism with $ykrd ~t in the sec- ond colon. $tlsk is then rendered as “your confidence”, “your as- surance”, or similarly, assuming parallelism with $twqt in 4,6b, and the verse as a whole is taken as Eliphaz’s expression of admiration for Job’s excellent moral character, and of his belief that Job should be comforted by recalling it. As a number of interpreters have noted, however, the ambiguity of both $tary and $tlsk means that the verse can be read in multiple ways, leading to very different assessments of Eliphaz’s intent 18. Wolfers, Seow, and others have pointed out that hary does not typ- ically mean “reverence” unless it is placed in construct with a name for God (e.g., ydv tary in Job 6,14; ynda tary in Job 28,28) or a pronominal suffix referring to God 19. The meaning of the other term in 4,6a, the rare hl's.Ki (which occurs elsewhere only in Ps 85,9), has also been the subject of de- bate. The segholate noun ls,K, is believed to have one of two mean- ings when used metaphorically: either “confidence” or “folly” (cf. lysiK., “stupid fellow, fool”). If the meaning of hl's.Ki is similar to one of those of ls,K, (as is often supposed), then the tone of 4,6 de- pends on which of these two senses is intended. If it is “confi- dence,” then Eliphaz is reassuring Job. If, on the other hand, hl's.Ki means “folly,” then Eliphaz is chastising Job, irrespective of whether hary is interpreted as “fear” or “reverence”. As Beuken writes, “[t]he 18 See Y. HOFFMAN, “Equivocal Words”, 115. Also N. HABEL, The Book of Job. A Commentary (Philadelphia, PA 1985) 124; BEUKEN, “Job’s Impre- cation”, 58-59, and a number of others. 19 D. WOLFERS, Deep Things Out of Darkness. The Book of Job. Essays and a New English Translation (Grand Rapids, MI 1995) 379. Also see Seow’s concise remarks (SEOW, Job 1–21, 395). Though Strahan, Rowley, and several others have cited the Joban poet’s use of hary in 15,4 and 22,4 as evidence that the term by itself can refer to “reverence”, neither passage requires this interpretation; “fear” works equally well in both cases. In 15,4, Eliphaz could be saying that Job is no longer fearful, but attacking God di- rectly, while in 22,4, the KJV’s “Will he reprove thee for fear of thee?” is as possible as “Is it because of your reverence that he reproves you?”