Bible Dictionary

Daysman

Doctrine & Theology • Old Testament

A daysman was an umpire or arbitrator who stood between two parties and judged their dispute. In Job, the term expresses the longing for someone able to mediate between Job and God.

Definition

A daysman is an umpire, arbitrator, or judge who stands between two parties, hears their case, and is empowered by mutual consent to decide it. The term describes one who can impose authority upon both parties and enforce a sentence.

Biblical Usage

In Job, the absence of a daysman expresses the lack of an arbiter between Job and God who could lay a hand upon both. The word is translated “umpire” in the Revised Version. The supplied material also associates the New Testament idea of mediation with the one mediator between God and men.

Historical Background

“Daysman” was an older English term, more common in the sixteenth century. It referred to an arbitrator or referee. The eastern judicial custom of laying hands upon the heads of disputing parties emphasized the judge’s authority and impartiality.

Scripture References

Job 9:33

Historical Bible Dictionaries

Easton's Bible Dictionary

An umpire or arbiter or judge (Job 9:33). This word is formed from the Latin diem dicere, i.e., to fix a day for hearing a cause. Such an one is empowered by mutual consent to decide the cause, and to “lay his hand”, i.e., to impose his authority, on both, and enforce his sentence.

Smith's Bible Dictionary

an old English term meaning umpire or arbitrator . (Job 9:33)

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)

daz'-man (yakhach, "to argue, decide, convince," the Revised Version (British and American) UMPIRE): The use of this word appears to have been more common in the 16th century than at the later date of the translation of the King James Version, when its adoption was infrequent. The oldest instance of the term given in the Oxford English Dictionary is Plumpton Corresp. (1489), p. 82: "Sir, the dayesmen cannot agre us." It appears also in the 1551 edition of the Old Testament in 1Sa 2:25, where the English Versions of the Bible "judge" is translated "dayes-man." Tyndale's translation has for Ex 21:22, "He shall paye as the dayesmen appoynte him" (EV as the "judges determine"). See also Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, ii, c. 8, published in 1590. As used in the King James Version (Job 9:33) the word means an arbitrator, umpire, referee; one who stands in a judicial capacity between two parties, and decides upon the merits of their arguments or case at law. "Neither is there-any daysman (the Revised Version (British and American) "umpire") betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both" (compare Ge 31:37). It was the eastern custom for a judge to lay his hands upon the heads of the two parties in disagreement, thus emphasizing his adjudicatory capacity and his desire to render an unbiased verdict. Job might consider a human judge as capable of acting as an umpire upon his own claims, but no man was worthy to question the purposes of Yahweh, or metaphorically, to "lay his hands upon" Him.In the New Testament (1Co 4:3, anthropine, hemera) "man's judgment" is literally, "man's day," in the sense of a day fixed for the trial of a case. Both Tyndale and Coverdale so translate. See also 1Ti 2:5, where the Saviour is termed the "one mediator .... between God and men." Here the word understands a pleader, an advocate before an umpire, rather than the adjudicator himself (see Job 19:25-27).Arthur Walwyn Evans

Back to Dictionary Search