02_Burnight-co_347_370 28/10/14 10:35 Pagina 359 DOES ELIPHAZ REALLY BEGIN “GENTLY”? 359 If, on the other hand, hlsk is read with the meaning that it has in its only other biblical occurrence in Ps 85,9 (“folly, stupidity”), then 4,6 could be translated as “Is not your fear your folly? Your hope, and the integrity of your ways?” Whether $tary is an ellipsis for “your fear of God” or the more literal “your fright”, the two cola would then be in synthetic/sequential parallelism, with $tary, $twqt, and $ykrd ~tw all serving as subjects of the predicate nomi- native $tlsk. This interpretation would also account for the loca- tion of the waw in 4,6b ($ykrd ~tw $twqt), which would retain its most common function as a coordinating conjunction without any emendation being required. This is in fact the interpretation offered by Rashi 31, and indeed most of the ancient Versions and traditional authorities read Eli- phaz’s words here as criticism rather than praise 32. The translators of the Septuagint, for example, glossed hlsk with avfrosu,nh| (“folly”), interpreted it as the predicate of the other three terms, and translated the verse as a strong indictment of Job: Po,teron ouvc o` fo,boj sou, evstin Is your fear not founded evn avfrosu,nh|( in folly, kai. h` evlpi,j sou your hope also, kai. h` avkaki,a th/j o`dou/ sou and the mischief 33 of your way? The translators of the Peshiṭta also perceived a condemnation, rendering $tlsk with (“your blame, censure, accusation”), while the Vulgate renders the entire verse as a question that — though different in sense from the Septuagint and Peshiṭta — is also clearly critical: timor tuus fortitudo tua patientia tua et per- fectio viarum tuarum (“your fear, your fortitude, your patience, and the perfection of your ways”) 34. 31 Mikra’ot Gedolot Sefer Iyov, 14. 32 Cf. HOFFMAN, “Equivocal Words”, 115. Among traditional authorities, cf. e.g., John Chrysostom (Johannes Chrysostomos Kommentar zu Hiob her- ausgegeben und übersetzt von Ursula und Dieter Hagedorn [PTS 35; New York 1990] 61); Gersonides (Mikra’ot Gedolot Sefer Iyov, 16), and R. Joseph Ḳara (Perush Rabi Yosef Ḳara le-Sefer Iyov [Yerushalayim 1988] 11). 33 One manuscript reads avkaki,a, “guilelessness”, which seems a better fit with the MT’s ~OT. 34 All of the ancient Versions — even the Targum, which renders hlsk positively as $yywks (“your hopes, prospects”) — read the two cola as being