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(Job 5:17-18). Eliphaz was not describing Job’s condition as a happy one; it was
“blessed,” however, inasmuch as God was concerned about him. Because it was a blessed
state and the outcome would be good, Job was expected to laugh at his adversity (Job
5:22).
God is not always the one who makes one “blessed.” At least, the Queen of Sheba
flatteringly told Solomon that this was the case (1 Kings 10:8).
One’s status before God (being “blessed”) is not always expressed in terms of the
individual or social conditions that bring what moderns normally consider to be
“happiness.” So although it is appropriate to render
as “blessed,” the rendering of
“happiness” does not always convey its emphasis to modern readers.
BLOOD
(
(
, 1818), “blood.” This is a common Semitic word with cognates in all the
Semitic languages. Biblical Hebrew attests it about 360 times and in all periods.
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is used to denote the “blood” of animals, birds, and men (never of fish). In Gen.
9:4, “blood” is synonymous with “life”: “But flesh with the life thereof, which is the
blood thereof, shall ye not eat.” The high value of life as a gift of God led to the
prohibition against eating “blood”: “It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations
throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood” (Lev. 3:17). Only
infrequently does this word mean “blood-red,” a color: “And they rose up early in the
morning, and the sun shone upon the water, and the Moabites saw the water on the other
side as red as blood” (2 Kings 3:22). In two passages,
represents “wine”: “He
washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes” (Gen. 49:11; cf.
Deut. 32:14).
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bears several nuances. First, it can mean “blood shed by violence”: “So ye shall
not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be
cleansed of the blood that is shed therein …” (Num. 35:33). Thus it can mean “death”:
“So will I send upon you famine and evil beasts, and they shall bereave thee; and
pestilence and blood shall pass through thee; and I will bring the sword upon thee” (Ezek.
5:17).
Next,
may connote an act by which a human life is taken, or blood is shed: “If
there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between blood and blood [one kind of
homicide or another] …” (Deut. 17:8). To “shed blood” is to commit murder: “Whoso
sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed …” (Gen. 9:6). The second
occurrence here means that the murderer shall suffer capital punishment. In other places,
the phrase “to shed blood” refers to a non-ritualistic slaughter of an animal: “What man
soever there be of the house of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb … in the camp, or that
killeth it out of the camp, and bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the
congregation, to offer an offering unto the Lord before the tabernacle of the Lord; blood
[guiltiness] shall be imputed unto that man” (Lev. 17:3-4).
In judicial language, “to stand against one’s blood” means to stand before a court and
against the accused as a plaintiff, witness, or judge: “Thou shalt not go up and down as a
talebearer among thy people: neither shalt thou stand against the blood [i.e., act against
the life] of thy neighbor …” (Lev. 19:16). The phrase, “his blood be on his head,”
signifies that the guilt and punishment for a violent act shall be on the perpetrator: “For