More than Just a Baby Boy! Could a Better Understanding of the Noun גבר (geber) in Job Enrich the Quality of the Translation?

Gird up your loins and answer God like the “hero” (geber) you claim to be! According to some scholars in both divine speeches God challenges Job to get ready and reply, according to his personal claim of being geber, a hero of faith. If it is true that Job being a geber, means he is a hero of faith, then a whole new dimension can be brought to light in the translation of the Hebrew lexeme geber in Job. This also has implications of how to translate Job 3:3 where Job is referring to himself, cursing the night he, being a geber, was born. This study contests the claim that this reference would be the only instance in the Bible where geber would mean baby boy.

If geber indeed emphasises the fact that Job is more than just a mere man, then in most translations the carefully construed Hebrew emphasis is lost. This relates to most mainline, as well as certain vernacular translations, which are just following suit, what a previous translation has done.

Nearly hundred percent of Bible commentaries and dictionaries gloss geber as man, but in consequent discussions a considerable percentage of them indicate that a geber is more than a mere man. He is someone at the height of his power, valiant, with strength, physical but also spiritual. Quite often the geber is the one in a close relationship with God.
The fact that most occurrences of geber are in poetic literature actually helps us getting a fuller understanding of what a geber is or is not, since that literature makes use of parallel structures.

This study tests the hypothesis that the quality of a translation can be enriched with a deeper understanding of the senses of a specific original lexeme, like geber.