Core Glossary
08 Core Glossary — Job (English → Mandarin)
A. Terms Reused Exactly from the Romans Baseline
These terms recur in Job with the same doctrinal referent as in Romans. The baseline rendering is authoritative and unchanged.
| Term | Mandarin | Risk (baseline) | Job occurrences / notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| God | 神 | Critical | Job’s dialogues prefer Eloah/El/Shaddai (poetic divine names); narrative frame (1–2, 38–42) and epilogue use YHWH/耶和华. 神 used for all generic divine-name occurrences per baseline. |
| Righteousness | 义 | Critical | Central to the friends’ retribution logic (“can a man be more righteous than God?” 4:17; “how can man be righteous before God?” 9:2, 25:4) and Job’s self-defense (ch.31). Every occurrence in a justification/moral-standing context requires the baseline’s Confucian-virtue distinguishing note. |
| Sin | 罪 | High | The friends’ repeated (false) accusation against Job; also עָוֹן/חֵטְא/פֶּשַׁע (see Section B) render as 罪/罪孽 depending on nuance. |
| Intercession | 代求 | Medium | Job 42:8, 10 (Job intercedes for his friends); anticipated in 16:20-21, 33:26 (mediator figure “prays” for the sufferer). |
| Glory | 荣耀 | High | Reserved for God’s own glory (e.g., implicit in God’s self-revelation, chs. 38–41); Job’s own lost social honor (chs. 29–30) uses a different Mandarin term, 尊荣 — see Section B, to avoid blurring divine glory with human social status. |
| Holy Spirit | 圣灵 | Critical | NOT used for Job’s ruach-of-God references (see 神的灵, Section B) — reserved strictly for the distinct NT Trinitarian Person; do not retroactively apply to OT “breath/spirit of God” language without qualification. |
| Wicked / sin-adjacent vocabulary | 罪 (root) | High | See עָוֹן below for the specific compound used for “iniquity.” |
B. New Terms Introduced by Job
| # | English gloss | Hebrew | Transliteration | Literal meaning | Mandarin | Pinyin | Risk | Doctrine | Key passages | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The LORD (covenant name) | יהוה | YHWH | the personal covenant name of God | 耶和华 | Yēhéhuá | Critical | Sovereignty of God | 1:6-12, 21; 2:1-7; 38:1; 40:1, 6; 42:1, 7-12 | CUV standard transliteration. Used only in narrative frame and God’s own speeches — never in the friends’ or Job’s dialogue speeches, which use Eloah/El/Shaddai. Teaching note: this pattern signals Job’s setting outside Israel’s covenant history while affirming the same one God. |
| 2 | The Almighty | שַׁדַּי | Shaddai | (etymology debated; traditionally “Almighty”) | 全能者 | Quánnéng Zhě | Medium | Sovereignty and Incomprehensibility of God | 5:17; 6:4; 8:3; 11:7; 22:3; 27:2; 40:2, and 31 more occurrences | Standard CUV rendering; most frequent divine title in the poetic dialogues. |
| 3 | Satan / the Accuser | שָׂטָן / הַשָּׂטָן | satan / ha-satan | adversary, accuser, prosecutor | 撒但 | Sādàn | Critical | Satan’s Limited Power under God’s Sovereignty | 1:6-12; 2:1-7 | NEVER present as an independent, co-equal evil power (avoiding any dualistic yin-yang-style cosmic-balance framing). Must be taught as a subordinate heavenly prosecutor operating strictly within limits God sets and revokes at will — the doctrinal anchor for the book’s opening. |
| 4 | Sons of God / heavenly beings | בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים | bene ha’elohim | sons of God, members of the divine council | 神的众子 | Shén de zhòng zǐ | High | Sovereignty of God; Satan’s Limited Power | 1:6; 2:1; 38:7 | CRITICAL DISTINCTION: never abbreviate or render in a form resembling 神的儿子 (baseline son_of_god, reserved exclusively for Christ’s unique eternal Sonship). Must remain clearly plural (“众子”) and generic (heavenly court members), not implying deity or unique sonship. |
| 5 | Blameless / integrity | תָּם / תֻּמָּה | tam / tummah | complete, whole | 完全 / 纯正 | wánquán / chúnzhèng | High | Faith and Integrity amid Suffering | 1:1, 8; 2:3, 9; 8:20; 9:20-22 | Moral wholeheartedness/integrity, not sinless perfection nor mystical wholeness. Distinguish from Daoist ideals of returning to primal, unselfconscious naturalness (朴) and from Confucian sage-perfection — Job’s integrity is relational faithfulness to a personal God under test, not self-cultivated moral or metaphysical completeness. |
| 6 | Upright | יָשָׁר | yashar | straight | 正直 | zhèngzhí | Medium | Faith and Integrity amid Suffering | 1:1, 8; 2:3 | Standard term; low collision risk when paired with 完全 as in the baseline pairing. |
| 7 | Fear of God | יִרְאַת אֱלֹהִים / יִרְאַת אֲדֹנָי | yirat Elohim / yirat Adonai | fear/reverence of God | 敬畏神 | jìngwèi Shén | High | Faith and Integrity; Sovereignty and Incomprehensibility of God | 1:1, 8-9; 2:3; 28:28 | Reverent trust, not appeasement-fear of capricious spirits (folk practice of placating ghosts/spirits to avert misfortune) nor impersonal Confucian awe of cosmic Heaven (敬天). |
| 8 | Justice / judgment | מִשְׁפָּט | mishpat | judgment, legal verdict, the exercise of judicial authority | 公平 | gōngpíng | High | Retribution Theology Challenged; The Problem of Suffering and Divine Justice | 8:3; 9:19; 19:7; 23:4; 24:1; 27:2; 29:14; 31:13; 34:4-12; 37:23; 40:8 | NEVER gloss using 报应 (karmic retribution, forbidden per baseline sin note) as though it were a neutral synonym — the book’s central argument dismantles exactly the mechanical retribution logic 报应 implies. |
| 9 | Wisdom | חָכְמָה | chokmah | wisdom, skill in living rightly | 智慧 | zhìhuì | High | The Sovereignty and Incomprehensibility of God | 11:6; 12:2-13; 13:5; 15:8; 28:12-28; 32:7; 38:36-37 | Distinguish from Buddhist transcendent wisdom (般若) attained by enlightenment and Daoist intuitive insight (悟) attained by mystical practice; biblical chokmah here is relational — accessed through reverent fear of a personal Creator (28:28), not technique. |
| 10 | Arbiter / mediator | מוֹכִיח / מֵלִיץ | mokiach / melits | one who lays a hand on both parties; intercessor/spokesman | 中保 | zhōngbǎo | Critical | The Mediator/Redeemer Hope | 9:33; 16:19-21; 33:23-24 | Reuses the established Chinese Christian technical term for “mediator” (cf. CUV 1 Timothy 2:5) to thread Job’s mediator-longing forward to its NT answer. NEVER confuse with a folk spirit-medium (灵媒) who channels spiritual communication — 中保 is strictly a legal-forensic advocate/reconciler. Human theologian review required at every occurrence. |
| 11 | Lawsuit / legal dispute | רִיב | riv | legal controversy, formal complaint | 诉讼 / 案件 | sùsòng / ànjiàn | Medium | The Problem of Suffering and Divine Justice | 9:3; 13:6, 18; 23:4; 31:35 | Courtroom-metaphor vocabulary structuring much of the book; no significant folk-religion collision. |
| 12 | Witness | עֵד | ed | one who testifies | 见证人 | jiànzhèngrén | High | The Mediator/Redeemer Hope | 16:19 | Anticipates the Go’el of 19:25; keep terminologically distinct from, but thematically linked to, 中保. |
| 13 | Pledge / guarantor | עָרַב | arab | to put up security for another | 保人 / 作保 | bǎorén / zuòbǎo | High | The Mediator/Redeemer Hope | 17:3 | Shares the root 保 with 中保, reinforcing lexical continuity of the mediator-hope thread for Mandarin readers. |
| 14 | Ransom | כֹּפֶר | kopher | price paid for release from deserved penalty | 赎价 | shújià | Critical | The Mediator/Redeemer Hope | 33:24 | Genuine OT anticipation of substitutionary atonement; must not be flattened into full NT atonement doctrine nor rendered via 功德 (merit-transaction, forbidden per baseline grace). Human theologian review required. |
| 15 | Redeemer | גֹּאֵל | go’el | kinsman-redeemer with legal right/duty to redeem a relative | 救赎主 | jiùshú zhǔ | CRITICAL | The Mediator/Redeemer Hope (core doctrine of the curriculum) | 19:25 (core passage) | Established CUV rendering. Must be taught with full legal-kinship background (Leviticus 25; Ruth); may be cautiously and explicitly qualified against the partial cultural analogy of Chinese clan-redemption custom (家族赎身), while stressing this Redeemer is transcendent, not an ordinary human kinsman. NEVER explained via 解脱/超度 (forbidden per baseline salvation). Every occurrence requires Human Theologian review per baseline escalation rules for Messianic/Redeemer language. |
| 16 | Spirit/breath of God | רוּחַ אֵל / רוּחַ אֱלוֹהַ | ruach El / ruach Eloah | the animating divine breath in humanity | 神的灵 | Shén de líng | High | Sovereignty and Incomprehensibility of God | 27:3; 32:8; 33:4 | ALWAYS the compound 神的灵, never bare 灵 (per baseline holy_spirit guidance — bare 灵 collides with ancestral/ghost-spirit folk usage). Distinct from, though canonically continuous with, the NT Holy Spirit (圣灵) — do not over-claim full Trinitarian precision onto this OT usage. |
| 17 | Repent / relent | נִחַם (niphal/reflexive sense) | nacham | change of heart/mind, retraction | 懊悔 | àohuǐ | High | Repentance and Restoration | 42:6 | Distinguish from Buddhist ritual confession (忏悔, chànhuǐ) aimed at purifying accumulated karma — Job’s repentance is a personal reorientation before the revealed greatness and mystery of God, not a merit-restoring ritual act, and notably follows no proof of specific sin. |
| 18 | Comfort / console | נִחַם (piel sense) | nacham | to comfort | 安慰 | ānwèi | Medium | Faith and Integrity amid Suffering | 2:11; 6:10; 16:2; 21:34; 42:11 | Same root as #17 but a distinct sense; the friends’ repeated failure to genuinely comfort (cf. Job’s “miserable comforters,” 16:2) is a key narrative motif. |
| 19 | Return / restore | שׁוּב | shuv | to turn back, be restored | 复原 / 转回 | fùyuán / zhuǎnhuí | High | Repentance and Restoration | 42:10 | Restoration is God’s sovereign, grace-initiated act following Job’s repentance and intercession for his friends — not an automatic mechanical reward release; keep distinct from a merit-ledger reading of restoration. |
| 20 | Iniquity / transgression | עָוֹן / חֵטְא / פֶּשַׁע | avon / chet / pesha | guilt / missing the mark / rebellion | 罪孽 / 罪 (reuse baseline root) | zuìniè / zuì | Medium | Retribution Theology Challenged | 22:5; throughout friends’ speeches | Three distinct Hebrew nuances (guilt-liability, failure, rebellion) converge in Mandarin to 罪/罪孽; teaching notes should flag that the friends wrongly assume ALL suffering necessarily indicates personal 罪 — the book’s central polemic. |
| 21 | Wicked (person) | רָשָׁע | rasha | guilty, wicked person | 恶人 | èrén | Medium | Retribution Theology Challenged | 15:20; 18; 20; 21; 27:7 | The friends’ generic category into which they wrongly place Job; ch.21 empirically challenges the assumed connection between this category and observable suffering/prosperity. |
| 22 | Hope | תִּקְוָה | tiqvah | expectation, hope | 盼望 | pànwàng | Medium | Faith and Integrity amid Suffering; The Mediator/Redeemer Hope | 6:11; 7:6; 14:7, 19; 17:15; 19:10 | Must not be rendered with fatalistic-resignation vocabulary (宿命/命运, forbidden per baseline election/calling notes) — biblical hope remains oriented toward a personal God’s future action, even at its lowest ebb. |
| 23 | Chaos-monster / sea-dragon | תַּנִּין / רַהַב | tannin / Rahab | primeval sea-serpent / chaos-power | 海怪 / 拉哈伯 (transliterate proper name) | hǎiguài / Lāhābó | High | Sovereignty and Incomprehensibility of God; Satan’s Limited Power under God’s Sovereignty | 26:12 (Rahab); cf. Isaiah 27:1 for tannin/Leviathan identification | NEVER render tannin as 龙 (lóng, “dragon”) without extensive qualification — Chinese culture treats the dragon as an overwhelmingly positive, imperial, auspicious symbol, the reverse cultural valence of the Hebrew Bible’s consistently negative chaos-monster association. See consolidated risk note in 07_semantic_analysis.md, Ch.40-41. |
| 24 | Behemoth | בְּהֵמוֹת | Behemoth | (proper name) a massive land creature | 河马 (CUV literal) | hémǎ | High | Sovereignty and Incomprehensibility of God | 40:15-24 | Domesticating literal rendering (“hippopotamus”) loses mythic-chaos overtones present in the Hebrew; requires mandatory teaching footnote (see semantic analysis) to preserve doctrinal weight. Human theologian review required for teaching-material pairing, even though the base translation itself is not “wrong.” |
| 25 | Leviathan | לִוְיָתָן | Leviathan | (proper name) a fearsome sea-creature, elsewhere identified with the chaos-dragon | 鳄鱼 (CUV literal) | èyú | High | Sovereignty and Incomprehensibility of God; Satan’s Limited Power under God’s Sovereignty | 41:1-34; cf. Isaiah 27:1; Psalm 74:14 | Same risk profile as Behemoth; additionally linked to the tannin/dragon-symbolism collision risk (#23). Mandatory teaching footnote required. |
| 26 | Counsel / purpose | עֵצָה | etsah | plan, considered design | 谋略 | móulüè | High | The Sovereignty and Incomprehensibility of God | 38:2 | ”Who is this that darkens counsel?” — God’s governing purposes for creation, inaccessible to human judgment; reframes the entire preceding debate. |
| 27 | Knowledge | דַּעַת | da’at | informed understanding | 知识 | zhīshi | Medium | The Sovereignty and Incomprehensibility of God | 38:2; 34:35; 35:16 | Paired with עֵצָה; God’s rebuke targets Job’s/the friends’ lack of cosmic-scale knowledge, not merely incorrect doctrine. |
| 28 | Wonders / marvelous deeds | נִפְלָאוֹת | niphla’ot | acts beyond ordinary human capacity | 奇妙的作为 | qímiào de zuòwéi | Medium | The Sovereignty and Incomprehensibility of God | 37:14-16 | Elihu’s survey of creation’s wonders directly anticipates God’s own speech in chs. 38-41. |
| 29 | Honor / social glory | כָּבוֹד (social sense) | kabod | weight, dignity, honor | 尊荣 | zūnróng | Medium | Faith and Integrity amid Suffering | 29:20; 19:9 | DISTINCT from divine glory (baseline 荣耀, reserved for God) — same Hebrew root, different referent; conflating the two risks blurring human social status-seeking with God’s radiant divine glory. |
| 30 | Oath / self-imprecation | אָלָה | alah | solemn oath invoking a curse-penalty for falsehood | 誓言 / 起誓 | shìyán / qǐshì | Medium | Faith and Integrity amid Suffering | 31:30 (and structuring all of ch.31) | Distinguish from Chinese folk-magical incantation/curse (咒语) — a judicial self-imprecation guaranteeing truthful testimony before God as witness, not a magical spell. |
| 31 | Pray / intercede | פָּלַל | palal | to pray, plead on behalf of | 代求 (reuse baseline intercession) | dàiqiú | Medium | The Mediator/Redeemer Hope; Repentance and Restoration | 42:8, 10 | Job’s own act of interceding for his friends closes the book’s mediator-hope thread; reuse baseline term exactly rather than the generic 祷告 when the sense is specifically intercessory. |
| 32 | Burnt offering | עוֹלָה | olah | wholly-consumed sacrificial offering | 燔祭 | fánjì | Medium | Repentance and Restoration | 1:5; 42:8 | Distinguish from folk-religious spirit-appeasement offerings (烧香/祭祖) — addresses guilt before a personal, holy God, anticipating final atonement in Christ. |
| 33 | Discipline / chastening | מוּסָר | musar | parental/pedagogical correction | 管教 | guǎnjiào | High | Retribution Theology Challenged | 5:17; 36:10 | Distinguish carefully from mechanical karmic punishment (报应); Elihu’s usage (chs. 36-37) reframes suffering as potentially formative divine instruction, a key nuance without fully restoring the friends’ simplistic retribution logic. |
| 34 | Steadfast love / loyalty | חֶסֶד | chesed | covenant loyalty, loving-kindness | 慈爱 | cí’ài | Medium | Faith and Integrity amid Suffering | 6:14; 10:12 | Distinguish from Buddhist compassion (慈悲, cíbēi) arising from enlightened detachment toward suffering beings in general — biblical chesed is covenant-based, personal loyalty from (and, in 6:14, owed by friends to) a specific relational party. |
| 35 | Trust | בָּטַח | batach | to trust, rely upon | 信靠 | xìnkào | High | Faith and Integrity amid Suffering | 13:15 (textually disputed: “though he slay me, yet will I trust in him”) | Thematically continuous with baseline faith/信心 (NT trust in Christ) but rendered with the distinct compound 信靠 to capture the OT relational-trust nuance amid unresolved suffering; cross-reference baseline faith entry in teaching notes rather than treating as an unrelated term. |
C. Risk Summary for Job-Specific New Terms
| Risk | Count | Terms |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | 5 | Satan (#3), Arbiter/Mediator (#10), Ransom (#14), Redeemer (#15), and by extension YHWH (#1, per baseline God-name conventions) |
| High | 16 | Sons of God (#4), Blameless (#5), Fear of God (#7), Justice (#8), Wisdom (#9), Witness (#12), Pledge/Guarantor (#13), Spirit/breath of God (#16), Repent (#17), Return/Restore (#19), Chaos-monster (#23), Behemoth (#24), Leviathan (#25), Counsel (#26), Trust (#35), Discipline (#33) |
| Medium | 13 | Almighty (#2), Upright (#6), Lawsuit (#11), Iniquity (#20), Wicked (#21), Hope (#22), Knowledge (#27), Wonders (#28), Honor/social glory (#29), Oath (#30), Pray/intercede (#31), Burnt offering (#32), Steadfast love (#34) |
| Low | 0 | — |
Review routing note: Consistent with baseline conventions, all Critical and High risk terms above require Human Theologian review at every occurrence in Phase 2; Medium risk terms require Native Speaker review; no Low-risk terms were identified among Job’s new vocabulary given the book’s concentration of doctrinally load-bearing material.
Critical Risk Terms
God
Approved rendering: 神
Transliteration: Shén
Doctrine: Deity of Christ
Rejected alternatives: 上帝, 天, 老天爷
Original: אֱלוֹהַ / אֵל / שַׁדַּי / אֱלֹהִים
Category: God
Inherited from Romans package. Standardizes on 神 (CUV ‘Shen edition’) rather than 上帝; never 天 or 老天爷 (impersonal folk Heaven). Job-specific extension: Job’s poetic dialogues chiefly use Eloah/El/Shaddai rather than the covenant name; all render as 神. Teaching material must make explicit that Job’s Eloah/El/Shaddai and the narrator’s YHWH (耶和华) are the same one God, not competing or lesser deities — a risk heightened by Job’s frequent use of generic-sounding divine titles that could otherwise be misread as one deity among many in the Chinese folk pantheon.
Righteousness
Approved rendering: 义
Transliteration: yì
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: 道德, 善行
Original: צֶדֶק / צְדָקָה
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. 义 is also a Confucian Five Constant Virtue cultivated by moral effort; never let it stand alone as if self-evidently that virtue. Job-specific extension: the risk is heightened here because the friends explicitly argue righteousness is earned through moral cultivation and can be withdrawn as punishment (4:17; 9:2; 25:4) — exactly the Confucian-virtue reading the baseline warns against, now voiced as the false position the book as a whole refutes (42:7-8).
Holy Spirit
Approved rendering: 圣灵
Transliteration: Shènglíng
Doctrine: Sanctification
Rejected alternatives: 祖灵, 灵
Original: πνεῦμα ἅγιον (NT referent; cf. OT ruach El)
Category: God
Inherited from Romans package. Never bare 灵 (folk ancestral/nature-spirit collision); always the compound 圣灵 for the distinct Trinitarian Person. Job-specific extension: this entry exists in the Job package specifically to ENFORCE A BOUNDARY — 圣灵 must NOT be used to render Job’s ruach El/Eloah references (27:3; 32:8; 33:4). Those Old Testament ‘breath/spirit of God’ references use the separate compound term 神的灵 (see spirit_of_god entry below) to avoid both the folk-spirit collision and over-claiming full New Testament Trinitarian precision onto Wisdom-literature usage.
Grace
Approved rendering: 恩典
Transliteration: ēndiǎn
Doctrine: Grace
Rejected alternatives: 功德, 造化, 福气, 阴德
Inherited from Romans package. NEVER 功德 (Buddhist merit-accounting) or 阴德 (hidden merit accruing to descendants). Job-specific extension: this forbidden-substitution rule extends directly to Job’s ransom (赎价) and redeemer (救赎主) vocabulary in chs. 19 and 33 — neither may be explained via 功德, since both describe an unearned, mediator-secured release from deserved judgment, not a purchased merit exchange within a karmic ledger. Also relevant to Satan’s wager (1:5-11; 2:5-9): the test is precisely whether Job’s devotion is disinterested, apart from reward — directly reinforcing grace ≠ merit.
Resurrection
Approved rendering: 复活
Transliteration: fùhuó
Doctrine: Resurrection of Christ
Rejected alternatives: 轮回, 投胎, 还魂
Inherited from Romans package. NEVER 轮回 (reincarnation cycle), 投胎 (rebirth into a new womb), or 还魂 (folk ghost-story reanimation). Job-specific extension: this forbidden-substitution rule governs the disputed bodily-hope language of Job 19:26 (‘in my flesh’/‘apart from my flesh I shall see God’) and the resurrection question posed at 14:14 (‘if a man dies, shall he live again?’). Whichever reading of 19:26 is followed, no resurrection-adjacent vocabulary may suggest an ongoing cycle of rebirth.
Salvation
Approved rendering: 救恩
Transliteration: jiùēn
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: 解脱, 超度, 得道
Inherited from Romans package. NEVER 解脱 (Buddhist liberation from samsara) or 超度 (posthumous ritual rite for the dead). Job-specific extension: this is the primary forbidden-substitution anchor for the Redeemer confession (Job 19:25, 救赎主) — Job’s hope is personal vindication of a living relationship by a living Redeemer in this life (and beyond death, if necessary), never liberation from a cosmic cycle or a rite performed on the sufferer’s behalf by others.
Yhwh
Approved rendering: 耶和华
Transliteration: Yēhéhuá
Doctrine: Sovereignty of God
Original: יהוה
Category: God
CUV standard transliteration. Used ONLY in Job’s narrative frame (1:6-12, 21; 2:1-7), God’s own speeches (38:1; 40:1, 6), and the epilogue (42:1, 7-12) — never in the dialogue speeches of Job or the friends, which use Eloah/El/Shaddai (rendered 神/全能者). This literary distinction signals Job’s setting outside Israel’s covenant narrative while affirming the same one God, and must not be flattened by using 耶和华 throughout, nor obscured by using 神 in the specific verses where the Hebrew has the covenant name.
Satan
Approved rendering: 撒但
Transliteration: Sādàn
Doctrine: Satan’s Subordinate Role in the Heavenly Court
Rejected alternatives: 对头 (generic adversary, loses the legal court-title force), 魔王 (folk-demonology overlord connotation)
Original: שָׂטָן / הַשָּׂטָן
Category: Satanology
CRITICAL: must never be presented as an independent, co-equal evil power balancing God — the specific collision risk is Chinese folk cosmology’s yin-yang (阴阳) intuition of two roughly matched opposing forces. 撒但 is a subordinate member of the heavenly court who must request and receive explicit, bounded permission (1:11-12; 2:5-6) and can be stopped instantly. Foundational for Satan’s Limited Power under God’s Sovereignty.
Mediator
Approved rendering: 中保
Transliteration: zhōngbǎo
Doctrine: Job’s Longing for a Heavenly Arbiter
Rejected alternatives: 灵媒 (folk spirit-medium who channels spiritual communication), 调解人 (secular mediator, loses the forensic-advocate weight)
Original: מוֹכִיח / מֵלִיץ
Category: Mediation
CRITICAL: reuses the established Chinese Christian technical term for ‘mediator’ (cf. CUV 1 Timothy 2:5, ‘在神和人中间只有一位中保’), threading Job’s mediator-longing (9:33 mokiach; 16:19-21, 33:23-24 melits) forward to its New Testament answer. Never confuse with 灵媒 — 中保 is strictly a legal-forensic advocate/reconciler standing between two disputing parties, never a channeler of spiritual communication. Human theologian review required at every occurrence.
Ransom
Approved rendering: 赎价
Transliteration: shújià
Doctrine: Elihu’s Anticipation of a Ransoming Mediator
Rejected alternatives: 功德 (merit-transaction — FORBIDDEN per baseline grace), 赎金 (secular ransom-money, loses the atonement register)
Original: כֹּפֶר
Category: Redemption
CRITICAL: Elihu’s heavenly mediator secures ‘a ransom’ for the sufferer (33:24) — a genuine Old Testament anticipation of New Testament substitutionary atonement. Must be taught along the canonical trajectory (Job → Suffering Servant → Christ) without asserting Job’s contemporaries possessed full New Testament atonement theology. Never explained via 功德 — this is an unearned, mediator-secured release from deserved judgment, not a purchased merit exchange.
Redeemer
Approved rendering: 救赎主
Transliteration: jiùshú zhǔ
Doctrine: Job’s Confession of the Living Redeemer
Rejected alternatives: 解脱 (FORBIDDEN per baseline salvation), 超度 (FORBIDDEN per baseline salvation), 救世主 (generic savior-word, loses the legal-kinship background)
Original: גֹּאֵל
Category: Redemption
CRITICAL — CORE PASSAGE TERM (Job 19:25: ‘我知道我的救赎主活着’). Kinsman-redeemer (גֹּאֵל, go’el) with the legal right and duty to redeem a relative in distress (cf. Leviticus 25; Ruth 4). Must be taught with this full legal-kinship background. May be cautiously and explicitly qualified against the partial cultural analogy of Chinese clan-redemption custom (家族赎身), while stressing this Redeemer is transcendent, personally ‘stands upon the earth’ (19:25), and is not an ordinary human clan member fulfilling routine kinship obligation. Every occurrence requires Human Theologian review.
High Risk Terms
Sin
Approved rendering: 罪
Transliteration: zuì
Doctrine: Universal Human Accountability
Rejected alternatives: 报应, 罪犯式的罪
Original: חֵטְא (general)
Category: Sin
Inherited from Romans package. Distinguish sin as moral offense against a personal God from criminal guilt or karmic retribution (报应). Job-specific extension: this term must never be used by narrative or teaching commentary in a way that pre-judges Job’s guilt, since the narrative frame (1:1, 8; 2:3) and God’s own verdict (42:7-8) explicitly vindicate Job against the friends’ false accusations — the opposite of the folk-retribution assumption that visible suffering proves hidden 罪.
Faith
Approved rendering: 信心
Transliteration: xìnxīn
Doctrine: Faith
Rejected alternatives: 虔诚, 迷信, 信仰
Inherited from Romans package. Personal trust in Christ specifically; object of faith must be recoverable from context. Job-specific extension: cross-reference for Job’s distinct compound 信靠 (batach, trust amid unresolved suffering, 13:15) — teaching material should note the Old Testament relational-trust nuance is continuous with, but not identical to, this New Testament term; do not silently substitute one for the other.
Calling
Approved rendering: 呼召
Transliteration: hūzhào
Doctrine: Divine Calling
Rejected alternatives: 天命, 命运
Inherited from Romans package. NEVER 天命 (Mandate of Heaven) alone, which carries a specific political-legitimacy history. Job-specific extension: cross-reference for the 盼望 (hope) fencing rule — biblical hope in Job, even at its lowest ebb (6:11; 7:6), remains oriented toward a personal God’s future summons/action, not passive acceptance of an impersonal fate comparable to 天命/命运.
Election
Approved rendering: 拣选
Transliteration: jiǎnxuǎn
Doctrine: Effectual Calling
Rejected alternatives: 天命, 命运, 缘分
Inherited from Romans package. NEVER 天命, 命运, or 缘分 (folk-Buddhist predestined connection). Job-specific extension: this forbidden list directly polices the 盼望 (hope) crowded semantic neighborhood identified in the Job linguistic gap analysis — Job’s hope-vocabulary must never drift toward this fatalism cluster even in its bleakest expressions.
Providence
Approved rendering: 神的护理
Transliteration: Shén de hùlǐ
Doctrine: Providence
Rejected alternatives: 天意, 命运
Inherited from Romans package. NEVER 天意 alone (‘heaven’s intention’, impersonal fatalistic phrase). Job-specific extension: directly relevant to God’s explicit, bounded permission granted to Satan (1:12; 2:6) — God’s governance of Job’s testing is personal and purposive, not an impersonal cosmic drift; teaching material describing why God ‘allowed’ Job’s suffering must not soften into 天意-style fatalism.
Sons Of God
Approved rendering: 神的众子
Transliteration: Shén de zhòng zǐ
Doctrine: Satan’s Subordinate Role in the Heavenly Court
Rejected alternatives: 神的儿子 (reserved exclusively for Christ’s unique, eternal, co-equal Sonship per Romans baseline son_of_god)
Original: בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים
Category: Divine Council
CRITICAL DISTINCTION: members of the heavenly council (1:6; 2:1; 38:7) — must remain visibly plural and generic. Never abbreviate or reshape to resemble 神的儿子; conflating the two would imply either that Christ is one heavenly-court member among many, or that ordinary angelic beings share Christ’s unique Sonship.
Integrity
Approved rendering: 完全
Transliteration: wánquán
Doctrine: Job’s Integrity Maintained under Testing
Rejected alternatives: 朴 (Daoist primal unselfconscious naturalness), 圣人 (Confucian self-cultivated sage-perfection)
Original: תָּם / תֻּמָּה
Category: Faith and Integrity
Also rendered 纯正 (chúnzhèng) as the abstract-noun form (2:3, 9). Job’s integrity (תָּם/תֻּמָּה) is moral wholeheartedness/relational faithfulness to a personal God sustained under active testing — not a static natural state (朴) or an achieved moral perfection (圣人之道). God himself, not Job, initiates and vouches for this integrity (1:8; 2:3), resisting any self-cultivation reading.
Fear Of God
Approved rendering: 敬畏神
Transliteration: jìngwèi Shén
Doctrine: Job’s Integrity Maintained under Testing
Rejected alternatives: 敬天 (impersonal Confucian awe of cosmic Heaven), 求平安式的敬畏 (folk appeasement-fear of capricious spirits)
Original: יִרְאַת אֱלֹהִים / יִרְאַת אֲדֹנָי
Category: Faith and Integrity
Reverent trust toward a personal God (1:1, 8-9; 2:3), equated with wisdom itself at 28:28. Must not be rendered as fear-driven ritual placation to avert misfortune, nor as impersonal cosmic reverence lacking relational content.
Mishpat Justice
Approved rendering: 公平
Transliteration: gōngpíng
Doctrine: The Problem of Suffering and Divine Justice
Rejected alternatives: 报应 (karmic retribution — FORBIDDEN even as a neutral explanatory gloss), 法律 (secular/civil law)
Original: מִשְׁפָּט
Category: Retribution Theology
Judgment, justice, legal verdict, or the created moral/legal order (8:3; 9:19; 19:7; 23:4; 24:1; 27:2; 29:14; 31:13; 34:4-12; 37:23; 40:8). The single most frequent, most doctrinally load-bearing lexical item in the book. NEVER gloss with 报应 as though a neutral synonym — the book’s central argument systematically dismantles the mechanical retribution logic 报应 presupposes; importing that term even in explanatory teaching material risks endorsing the very theology Job refutes.
Wisdom
Approved rendering: 智慧
Transliteration: zhìhuì
Doctrine: God’s Wisdom versus Human and Folk Wisdom
Rejected alternatives: 般若 (Buddhist transcendent wisdom via enlightenment), 悟 (Daoist intuitive insight via mystical practice/technique)
Original: חָכְמָה
Category: Wisdom
God’s unsearchable wisdom (11:6-7; 12:2-13; 13:5; 15:8; 28:12-28; 32:7; 38:36-37), always rooted relationally in reverent fear of a personal Creator (28:28), never accessed through esoteric practice or meditative technique.
Witness
Approved rendering: 见证人
Transliteration: jiànzhèngrén
Doctrine: Job’s Hope in a Heavenly Witness and Guarantor
Original: עֵד
Category: Mediation
‘Even now my witness is in heaven’ (16:19). First stage of the escalating mediator-hope image chain: witness (16:19) → guarantor (17:3) → mediator (中保, 9:33/33:23) → Redeemer (救赎主, 19:25). Keep terminologically distinct from, yet thematically continuous with, 中保.
Guarantor
Approved rendering: 保人
Transliteration: bǎorén
Doctrine: Job’s Hope in a Heavenly Witness and Guarantor
Rejected alternatives: 贷款担保人 (ordinary commercial loan-guarantee sense only)
Original: עָרַב
Category: Mediation
Also 作保 (zuòbǎo). ‘Lay down a pledge for me with yourself’ (17:3) — Job asks God to act simultaneously as advocate and guarantor. Shares the root 保 with 中保, reinforcing lexical continuity of the mediator-hope thread for Mandarin readers.
Spirit Of God
Approved rendering: 神的灵
Transliteration: Shén de líng
Doctrine: The Sovereignty and Incomprehensibility of God
Rejected alternatives: 灵 alone (FORBIDDEN — folk ancestral/nature-spirit collision), 圣灵 (reserved strictly for the NT Trinitarian Person; do not retroactively apply)
Original: רוּחַ אֵל / רוּחַ אֱלוֹהַ
Category: God
The animating divine breath sustaining human life (27:3), also claimed by Elihu as the source of understanding (32:8; 33:4). ALWAYS the compound 神的灵, never bare 灵. Distinct from, though canonically continuous with, the New Testament Holy Spirit (圣灵) — do not over-claim full Trinitarian precision onto this Old Testament Wisdom-literature usage.
Repent
Approved rendering: 懊悔
Transliteration: àohuǐ
Doctrine: Job’s Repentance after Encountering God
Rejected alternatives: 忏悔 (Buddhist ritual confession aimed at purifying accumulated karma)
Original: נִחַם (niphal/reflexive)
Category: Repentance and Restoration
Job’s response after seeing God (42:5-6) — a change of heart/mind, not confession of a specific proven sin (the friends never succeed in proving any). Must not imply the friends’ accusations were retroactively vindicated. Distinguish from Buddhist 忏悔, a formal karma-purifying penitential rite.
Restore
Approved rendering: 复原
Transliteration: fùyuán
Doctrine: God’s Restoration of Job’s Fortunes
Rejected alternatives: 功德回报式的复原 (a merit-ledger automatic-payout reading)
Original: שׁוּב
Category: Repentance and Restoration
Also 转回 (zhuǎnhuí). ‘The LORD restored Job’s fortunes… and gave him twice as much as before’ (42:10). Must be taught as God’s sovereign, grace-initiated act following repentance and intercession — not an automatic mechanical reward released by a completed repentance-performance quota, which would re-legitimize the very retribution theology the book refutes.
Chaos Monster
Approved rendering: 拉哈伯
Transliteration: Lāhābó
Doctrine: God’s Sovereignty over Chaos and Hostile Cosmic Powers
Rejected alternatives: 龙 (lóng, dragon — FORBIDDEN without extensive qualification; overwhelmingly positive/imperial Chinese cultural valence, the exact reverse of the Hebrew Bible’s chaos-monster association)
Original: תַּנִּין / רַהַב
Category: Sovereignty/Cosmology
Transliterated proper name for the primeval chaos-power God alone subdues (26:12; cf. Isaiah 27:1 identifying tannin with Leviathan). The related generic term תַּנִּין (tannin) poses the acute risk: NEVER render as 龙 without a mandatory teaching footnote explaining the creature’s rhetorical function as an embodiment of untamable chaos fully subordinate to God.
Behemoth
Approved rendering: 河马
Transliteration: hémǎ
Doctrine: God’s Sovereignty over Chaos and Hostile Cosmic Powers
Rejected alternatives: 比蒙 (transliteration, breaks continuity with the established CUV Bible-translation tradition)
Original: בְּהֵמוֹת
Category: Sovereignty/Cosmology
CUV literal ‘hippopotamus’ rendering (40:15-24), retained for translation-tradition continuity though it domesticates the Hebrew’s mythic-chaos overtones (‘first among the works of God’). MANDATORY teaching footnote required at every occurrence explaining the creature’s rhetorical function as untamable power fully subordinated to God — without the footnote, the doctrinal payload is lost even though the base translation is not technically wrong.
Leviathan
Approved rendering: 鳄鱼
Transliteration: èyú
Doctrine: God’s Sovereignty over Chaos and Hostile Cosmic Powers
Rejected alternatives: 龙 (FORBIDDEN — see chaos_monster entry)
Original: לִוְיָתָן
Category: Sovereignty/Cosmology
CUV literal ‘crocodile’ rendering (ch. 41), the book’s climactic chaos-creature demonstration, elsewhere identified with the tannin/chaos-dragon (Isaiah 27:1; Psalm 74:14). MANDATORY teaching footnote required at every occurrence. A transliterated supplementary gloss, 利维坦 (Lìwéitǎn), may be introduced in teaching commentary (never the Scripture text itself) to signal the creature’s mythic, more-than-natural status. Directly reinforces Satan’s Limited Power under God’s Sovereignty: real terror, wholly bounded.
Counsel
Approved rendering: 谋略
Transliteration: móulüè
Doctrine: Divine Sovereignty over Creation
Rejected alternatives: 计谋 (human strategic scheming, too small a category)
Original: עֵצָה
Category: Sovereignty
‘Who is this that darkens counsel?’ (38:2) — God’s own governing purpose for creation, inaccessible to human judgment. Reserve exclusively for this sense; never render with vocabulary implying merely clever human-style tactics.
Discipline
Approved rendering: 管教
Transliteration: guǎnjiào
Doctrine: Suffering Reframed as Formative Discipline (Elihu)
Rejected alternatives: 报应 (FORBIDDEN — karmic retribution)
Original: מוּסָר
Category: Retribution Theology
Introduced punitively by Eliphaz (5:17), reframed by Elihu as potentially formative divine instruction (36:10). A genuine but PARTIAL theological advance — must not be presented as the book’s final, fully authoritative answer, since God’s own subsequent speech (chs. 38-41) neither fully endorses nor fully rejects Elihu’s contribution.
Trust
Approved rendering: 信靠
Transliteration: xìnkào
Doctrine: Trust in God amid Unresolved Suffering
Original: בָּטַח
Category: Faith and Integrity
The textually disputed but pivotal declaration ‘though he slay me, yet will I trust in him’ (13:15). Thematically continuous with the Romans baseline faith/信心 but rendered with this distinct compound to capture the Old Testament relational-trust nuance amid unresolved suffering. Preserve the Hebrew’s genuine textual ambiguity rather than resolving it into false certainty in either direction.
Flesh
Approved rendering: 肉身
Transliteration: ròushēn
Doctrine: Job’s Confession of the Living Redeemer
Rejected alternatives: 轮回 (FORBIDDEN), 投胎 (FORBIDDEN)
Original: בָּשָׂר
Category: Redemption
One of the Old Testament’s most debated bodily-resurrection-hope phrases (19:26): ‘in my flesh’ vs. an alternative reading ‘apart from my flesh’ (CUV follows the latter: 肉体之外). Teaching materials must present both readings without asserting more precision than the Hebrew supports, and must never use resurrection-adjacent vocabulary suggesting reincarnation cycles.
See Behold
Approved rendering: 得见
Transliteration: dé jiàn
Doctrine: Job’s Confession of the Living Redeemer
Rejected alternatives: 悟 (Daoist/Buddhist meditative-insight ‘seeing’ of an impersonal ultimate reality)
Original: חָזָה
Category: Redemption
Job anticipates direct personal sight of God (19:26-27), fulfilled at 42:5. Must retain personal, relational seeing — not mystical absorption into an impersonal ultimate reality; Job’s hoped-for sight is of a personal God who stands as his Redeemer.
Medium Risk Terms
Intercession
Approved rendering: 代求
Transliteration: dàiqiú
Doctrine: Prayer and Intercession
Rejected alternatives: 求签, 问卜
Inherited from Romans package. Prayer addressed to God directly on behalf of others, not divination. Job-specific extension: used for Job’s own act of interceding for his friends who wronged him (42:8, 10; Hebrew פָּלַל, palal), closing the book’s mediator/intercession theme (chs. 9, 16-17, 33) with Job himself now functioning in a mediating role. Always reuse this exact term; never substitute the generic 祷告 when the sense is specifically intercessory.
Glory
Approved rendering: 荣耀
Transliteration: róngyào
Doctrine: Deity of Christ
Rejected alternatives: 面子, 光宗耀祖
Original: כָּבוֹד (divine sense)
Category: God
Inherited from Romans package. Reserved strictly for God’s own radiant divine glory (implicit throughout God’s self-revelation, chs. 38-41). Job-specific extension: must be kept distinct from the human social-honor sense of the same Hebrew root (כָּבוֹד) used for Job’s lost social standing (chs. 29-30; 19:9), which instead uses the distinct term 尊荣 — never conflate the two, or divine glory collapses into human social status/face.
Shaddai
Approved rendering: 全能者
Transliteration: Quánnéng Zhě
Doctrine: The Sovereignty and Incomprehensibility of God
Rejected alternatives: 沙代 (transliteration obscures the title’s clear semantic content)
Original: שַׁדַּי
Category: God
Standard CUV rendering of ‘the Almighty’ (5:17; 6:4; 8:3; 11:7; 22:3; 27:2; 40:2, and 31 more occurrences) — the most frequent divine title in Job’s poetic dialogues. Must be taught as referring to the same personal 神, not an abstract impersonal cosmic power comparable to Daoist 天 or 道; always keep in relational/personal-pronoun context.
Upright
Approved rendering: 正直
Transliteration: zhèngzhí
Doctrine: Job’s Integrity Maintained under Testing
Rejected alternatives: 礼 (Confucian ritual propriety/social etiquette)
Original: יָשָׁר
Category: Faith and Integrity
Paired with 完全 to describe Job’s whole-life character (1:1, 8; 2:3). Low collision risk when consistently paired per the source pairing; avoid drift toward a Confucian ritual-propriety reading if used alone.
Blessing Curse Euphemism
Approved rendering: 咒诟
Transliteration: zhòugòu
Doctrine: Grace
Rejected alternatives: 祝福 (literal ‘bless’, loses the scribal euphemism’s actual curse-meaning)
Original: בָּרַךְ
Category: Satanology
Hebrew scribal euphemism substituting ‘bless’ for the unspeakable ‘curse [God]’ (1:5, 11; 2:5, 9). Context-dependent rendering (咒诟/背弃) rather than a literal ‘bless’. Satan’s wager tests whether Job’s devotion is disinterested — given apart from the blessings he receives — directly relevant to the Grace doctrine’s contrast with merit-transaction thinking (功德).
Lawsuit
Approved rendering: 诉讼
Transliteration: sùsòng
Doctrine: Job’s Legal Case (Lawsuit) against God
Rejected alternatives: 抱怨 (mere complaint, loses the formal legal-hearing sense)
Original: רִיב
Category: Legal/Courtroom
Also 案件 (ànjiàn). A formal legal complaint or contest (9:3; 13:6, 18; 23:4; 31:35) structuring the courtroom metaphor running through chs. 9, 13, 23, 31, and God’s answer in 38-41. Must retain the formal legal-hearing register.
Comfort
Approved rendering: 安慰
Transliteration: ānwèi
Doctrine: Faith and Integrity amid Suffering
Original: נִחַם (piel)
Category: Faith and Integrity
The friends’ stated purpose in coming to Job (2:11), ironically inverted by their ‘miserable comfort’ (16:2). Same Hebrew root (נִחַם) as repent, but a distinct sense — the friends’ repeated, failed comfort is a key narrative motif to be tracked, not a doctrinally loaded word in itself.
Iniquity
Approved rendering: 罪孽
Transliteration: zuìniè
Doctrine: The Friends’ Mechanical Retribution Doctrine
Original: עָוֹן / חֵטְא / פֶּשַׁע
Category: Sin
Converges three distinct Hebrew nuances (עָוֹן guilt-liability, חֵטְא moral failure, פֶּשַׁע rebellion) most pointedly in Eliphaz’s invented, unproven accusations (22:5ff). Must never be used in a way that pre-judges Job’s guilt — the friends wrongly assume all suffering necessarily indicates personal 罪孽.
Wicked
Approved rendering: 恶人
Transliteration: èrén
Doctrine: The Friends’ Mechanical Retribution Doctrine
Original: רָשָׁע
Category: Retribution Theology
The friends’ generic category into which they wrongly place Job (15:20; chs. 18, 20, 21, 27:7). Chapter 21 empirically challenges the assumed link between this category and observable suffering/prosperity; the term must not silently imply Job’s guilt in narrative framing.
Hope
Approved rendering: 盼望
Transliteration: pànwàng
Doctrine: Faith and Integrity amid Suffering
Rejected alternatives: 命运 (impersonal fate), 宿命 (fatalistic predetermination), 缘分 (folk-Buddhist predestined connection)
Original: תִּקְוָה
Category: Faith and Integrity
‘What is my hope?’ (6:11; 7:6) — nearly extinguished at Job’s lowest ebb, later transformed into the confident hope of 19:25. Even at its bleakest, biblical hope remains oriented toward a personal God who might yet answer, never passive acceptance of an impersonal fate.
Knowledge
Approved rendering: 知识
Transliteration: zhīshi
Doctrine: The Incomprehensibility of God’s Ways
Original: דַּעַת
Category: Sovereignty
Paired with 谋略 in God’s rebuke (38:2; cf. 34:35; 35:16). God’s rebuke targets a lack of cosmic-scale knowledge, not merely incorrect doctrine — teaching notes must avoid implying the resolution is intellectual acquisition of missing facts rather than humbled trust.
Wonders
Approved rendering: 奇妙的作为
Transliteration: qímiào de zuòwéi
Doctrine: Divine Sovereignty over Creation
Original: נִפְלָאוֹת
Category: Sovereignty
Elihu’s survey of God’s wonders in creation (37:14-16) directly anticipates God’s own speech in chs. 38-41. Standard vocabulary; keep consistent with the sovereignty vocabulary of the divine speeches.
Honor Social
Approved rendering: 尊荣
Transliteration: zūnróng
Doctrine: Job’s Integrity Maintained under Testing
Rejected alternatives: 荣耀 (reserved exclusively for divine glory), 面子 (too shallow, merely social ‘face’)
Original: כָּבוֹד (social sense)
Category: Faith and Integrity
Job’s lost social honor and public standing (29:20; 19:9), same Hebrew root (כָּבוֹד) as divine glory but a distinct, human-directed referent. Must never be substituted for 荣耀 despite the shared root, or the translation blurs God’s radiant glory with human social status.
Oath
Approved rendering: 誓言
Transliteration: shìyán
Doctrine: Job’s Oath of Innocence
Rejected alternatives: 咒语 (folk magical curse/incantation intended to cause harm through ritual power)
Original: אָלָה
Category: Faith and Integrity
Also 起誓 (qǐshì). Job’s extended self-imprecatory oath of innocence (ch. 31, explicit at 31:30) — a judicial self-curse invoking God as witness to truthful testimony, never a magical spell directed against another party.
Burnt Offering
Approved rendering: 燔祭
Transliteration: fánjì
Doctrine: Job’s Intercession for His Friends
Rejected alternatives: 烧香/祭祖 (folk-religious appeasement offerings to placate ancestral or nature spirits)
Original: עוֹלָה
Category: Repentance and Restoration
An animal sacrifice wholly consumed on the altar, associated with atonement and consecration (1:5; 42:8). Addresses guilt before a personal, holy God through a sacrificial system anticipating final atonement in Christ, not ritual pacification of an unpredictable spirit-world.
Steadfast Love
Approved rendering: 慈爱
Transliteration: cí’ài
Doctrine: Job’s Integrity Maintained under Testing
Rejected alternatives: 慈悲 (Buddhist compassion arising from enlightened detachment toward suffering beings generally)
Original: חֶסֶד
Category: Faith and Integrity
Covenant loyalty and loving-kindness (חֶסֶד, chesed; 6:14, 10:12) — covenant-based, personal loyalty owed within a specific relationship, explicitly the loyalty the friends failed to show Job (6:14), not generalized detached compassion.
Mortal Man
Approved rendering: 世人
Transliteration: shìrén
Doctrine: The Friends’ Mechanical Retribution Doctrine
Original: אֱנוֹשׁ
Category: Retribution Theology
‘Can mortal man be pure before God?’ (4:17) — opens the friends’ retribution-theology premise. Eliphaz uses this to argue no mortal can be truly pure, an overreach the book as a whole resists via Job’s maintained integrity.
Silence Before God
Approved rendering: 用手摀口
Transliteration: yòng shǒu wǔ kǒu
Doctrine: Job’s Repentance after Encountering God
Original: שׂוּם יָד עַל פֶּה
Category: Repentance and Restoration
Idiom, ‘I lay my hand on my mouth’ (40:3-5) — humbled silence, ceasing to argue. An important intermediate step before full repentance (42:1-6); teaching material must not collapse this earlier, minimal response into the fuller reoriented repentance (懊悔) that follows only in ch. 42.
Living Redeemer
Approved rendering: 活着
Transliteration: huózhe
Doctrine: Job’s Confession of the Living Redeemer
Rejected alternatives: 祖灵式的’活着’ (an ancestor-spirit ‘living on’ in the ancestor-veneration sense)
Original: חַי
Category: Redemption
‘I know that my Redeemer lives’ (19:25) — the ground of Job’s certainty. Must not be softened or reframed to suggest a spirit that merely ‘lives on’ as a departed ancestor spirit (祖灵, forbidden per baseline holy_spirit/father notes). This is bodily, personal, ongoing life — a living advocate, not a legal fiction.
Last Latter Day
Approved rendering: 末了
Transliteration: mòliǎo
Doctrine: Job’s Confession of the Living Redeemer
Rejected alternatives: 以后 (vaguer, loses the sense of a decisive final moment)
Original: אַחֲרוֹן
Category: Redemption
‘At the last he will stand upon the earth’ (19:25). CUV’s established 末了; retain rather than the vaguer 以后 to preserve the eschatological, decisive-finality sense the verse opens.
Stand Arise
Approved rendering: 站立
Transliteration: zhànlì
Doctrine: Job’s Confession of the Living Redeemer
Original: קוּם
Category: Redemption
CUV: ‘站立在地上’ (19:25). The Redeemer will personally, physically stand — a legal-courtroom posture (a witness or judge standing to speak) combined with the physical concreteness of ‘upon the earth’. Not an abstract, spiritual vindication.
Skin Destroyed
Approved rendering: 皮肉毁烂
Transliteration: pí ròu huǐlàn
Doctrine: Job’s Confession of the Living Redeemer
Original: עוֹר / נִקְפוּ
Category: Redemption
CUV renders the textually disputed clause of 19:26 as Job’s decaying flesh (我这皮肉毁烂之后). Must not resolve the textual difficulty by importing a resurrection doctrine more explicit than the Hebrew supports, nor flatten it into a merely spiritual sentiment that erases the bodily concreteness of the language.
Not A Stranger
Approved rendering: 不像外人
Transliteration: bù xiàng wàirén
Doctrine: Job’s Confession of the Living Redeemer
Original: זָר
Category: Redemption
Job insists his vindicating encounter with God will not be as a stranger’s (19:27) — reinforcing the personal-relationship emphasis running through Job’s Redeemer hope. Preserve the relational contrast (intimate vs. estranged) in any paraphrase.
Heart Faints
Approved rendering: 我心力衰竭
Transliteration: wǒ xīnlì shuāijié
Doctrine: Faith and Integrity amid Suffering
Original: כָּלוּ כִלְיֹתָי
Category: Faith and Integrity
Idiom, ‘my kidneys/inward parts are consumed’ (19:27) — the seat of deep emotion. Job’s declaration of hope does not resolve his anguish; he collapses in exhausted longing even while affirming certainty. Preserve this exhaustion-amid-hope tension; do not resolve it into either pure triumphant confidence or pure despair.
Low Risk Terms
Legal Record Testimony
Approved rendering: 记录
Transliteration: jìlù
Doctrine: Job’s Legal Case (Lawsuit) against God
Original: כָּתַב / סֵפֶר / חָקַק / צוּר
Category: Mediation
Covers 记录/写下 (write), 书卷 (scroll/book), 刻 (engrave), 石头/岩石 (rock) — Job’s escalating wish (19:23-24) for his testimony of innocence to be permanently, legally recorded ahead of the Redeemer confession (19:25). Ordinary, low-risk vocabulary; retain the legal-record connotation (a formal courtroom deposition, not a private diary) to set up the witness/testimony theme.
Job
Approved rendering: 约伯
Transliteration: Yuēbó
Doctrine: Proper Name
CUV standard transliteration for the protagonist (אִיּוֹב). Established form; no theological content requiring paraphrase.
Eliphaz
Approved rendering: 以利法
Transliteration: Yǐlìfǎ
Doctrine: Proper Name
CUV standard transliteration for the first friend (chs. 4-5, 15, 22).
Bildad
Approved rendering: 比勒达
Transliteration: Bǐlèdá
Doctrine: Proper Name
CUV standard transliteration for the second friend (chs. 8, 18, 25).
Zophar
Approved rendering: 琐法
Transliteration: Suǒfǎ
Doctrine: Proper Name
CUV standard transliteration for the third friend (chs. 11, 20).
Elihu
Approved rendering: 以利户
Transliteration: Yǐlìhù
Doctrine: Proper Name
CUV standard transliteration for the fourth speaker (chs. 32-37), whose partial theological advance (suffering as formative discipline) is neither fully endorsed nor fully rejected by God’s own subsequent speech.
Uz
Approved rendering: 乌斯
Transliteration: Wūsī
Doctrine: Proper Name
CUV standard transliteration for Job’s homeland (1:1), a place outside Israel’s covenant geography — relevant background for the doctrine that Job’s story affirms the one true God even outside Israel’s specific covenant narrative.
Referenced passages