The οικια Reference in Job 1.10 and Household Baptisms

I have been posting quite a bit on baptism issues lately (see posts on Acts 16:34 and 2:41), and I’m not really sure why.  I guess I think about the issue while I’m reading the sources and I make a note to come back to certain texts for further reflection.  When I was reading Job 1 a couple weeks ago, the reference to Job and his house struck me because I remembered Lee Irons’ post on this matter here.  Irons is a more acute theologian than I, but he is convinced by Jeremias’ argument that oikos texts in the Septuagint “refer to the immediate family unit, with particular focus on the under-age children.”  Now, one is struck by the impressive list of references, which Irons compiles in his paper; however, what if it can be shown in one clear instance that the oikos formula refers to a household which has no infants in the house?  Would not that reference cause someone to pause before concluding (assuming?) there are infants in every household text in the NT?  Well, that one reference is Job 1:10.  I first commented on this issue on Weedon’s blog, which is another thread worth reviewing, if one is interested in the matter of baptism from a church history perspective.

The Text of Job 3:3b

Well, I have finished reading the first two chapters of Job in the MT and the LXX with some spot readings from the Peshitta along the way.  I’m struck by differences between the LXX and MT, particularly the plus in LXX Job 2:9, which I will comment on later.  However, the differences do strike me as differences on the translation level not the textual level, which has already been observed by many (cf. the  NETS translation and Cox’s introduction to Job).

However, I’m more impressed with the simplicity of the Greek translation of the difficult Hebrew text. Job 3:3b offers a short example.  The Hebrew poetry commences in chapter 3 and with it comes a whole host of syntactical difficulties.  In 3:3b alone, the Hebrew text reads: והלילה אמר הרה גבר.  The text is translated as follows: and the night [which] he said a man was conceived.  There are two verbs in the stichos with no conjunctions to define their relationship to one another.  However, this is a common construction in Hebrew poetry called an asyndetic relative clause.  But how do we know to read the text in this way?